If Elvis Presley was a white man who sang in a predominantly black style, Johnny Ace was a black man who sang in a predominantly white one. This title presents a treatment of this influential performer taking the reader to Beale Street in Memphis and to Houston's Fourth Ward, both vibrant black communities where the music never stopped.
The book describes how Lisa Meitner, of Jewish heritage, found herself working as a physicist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin when the Nazis came to power in 1933; how she was hounded out of the country and forced to relocate to Sweden; how German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman continued with the project – on the effect of bombarding uranium (the heaviest known element at the time) with neutrons, a project which Lise herself had initiated, being the intellectual leader of the group. It describes how Hahn and Strassmann, with whom she kept in touch, came up with some extraordinary results which they were at a loss to explain; how Lise, and her nephew Otto Frisch, who was also a physicist, confirmed what they had achieved - the ‘splitting of the atom’, no less, and provided them with a theoretical explanation for it. This laid the foundation for nuclear power, medical-scanning technology, radiotherapy, electronics, and of course, the atomic bomb - the creation of which filled Lise with horror. It describes the crucial part that Lise played in our understanding of the world of atoms, and how deliberate and strenuous attempts were made to deny her contribution; to belittle her achievements, and to write her out of the history books, even though Albert Einstein said she was even ‘more talented than Marie Curie herself’. The author is fortunate and honoured to have been granted several interviews with Lise’s nephew Philip Meitner – himself a refugee from the Nazis - who with his wife Anne, provided much valuable information and many photographs.
Originally a successful painter from Romania, Jean Negulesco worked in Hollywood first as an art director, then as a second unit director. He was later hired as a director by various studios--mostly for ballet and musical shorts--before being assigned to a number of commercially successful films. During his 30-year career, he worked in several European countries yet it was in the U.S. he achieved his greatest success, with Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox. Dubbed "The Prince of Melodrama" by critics, he directed films of all genres, working with stars like Joan Crawford, John Garfield, Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, Bette Davis, Richard Burton, Alec Guinness, Fred Astaire and many others. Negulesco was nominated for Best Director by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1948 for Johnny Belinda--now considered a classic, along with his The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), Humoresque (1946), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). This book--the first on him since his 1984 autobiography--covers his extraordinary life and career, with extensive analyses of his films.
What Americans call the Vietnam War actually began in December 1946 with a struggle between the communists and the French for possession of the country--but Vietnam's strategic position in southeast Asia inevitably led to the involvement of other countries. Written by an officer in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces, this poignant memoir seeks to clarify the nuances of South Vietnam's defeat. From the age of 12, Van Nguyen Duong watched as the conflict affected his home, family, village and friends. He discusses not only the day-to-day hardships of wartime but his postwar forced relocation and eventual imprisonment. A special focus is on the anguish caused by the illusive reality of Vietnamese independence. The political forces at work north and south, the hardships suffered by RVNAF soldiers after the 1975 U.S. withdrawal, and the effects of reunification on the Vietnamese people are discussed.
Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door examines the thirty-eight-year relationship between painter Beauford Delaney (born in Knoxville, 1901; died in Paris, 1979) and writer James Baldwin (born in New York, 1924; died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, 1987) and the ways their ongoing intellectual exchange shaped each other’s creative output and worldview. This full-color publication documents the groundbreaking exhibition organized by the Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA) and is drawn from the KMA’s extensive Delaney holdings, from public and private collections around the country, and from unpublished photographs and papers held by the Knoxville-based estate of Beauford Delaney. This book seeks to identify and disentangle the skein of influences that grew over and around a complex, lifelong relationship with a selection of Delaney’s works that reflects the powerful presence of Baldwin in Delaney’s life. While no other figure in Beauford Delaney’s extensive social orbit approaches James Baldwin in the extent and duration of influence, none of the major exhibitions of Delaney’s work has explored in any depth the creative exchange between the two. The volume also includes essays by Mary Campbell, whose research currently focuses on James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney within the context of the civil rights movement; Glenn Ligon, an internationally acclaimed New York-based artist with intimate knowledge of Baldwin’s writings, Delaney’s art, and American history and society; Levi Prombaum, a curatorial assistant at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum who did his doctoral research at University College London on Delaney’s portraits of James Baldwin; and Stephen Wicks, the Knoxville Museum of Art’s Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator, who has guided the KMA’s curatorial department for over 25 years and was instrumental in building the world’s largest and most comprehensive public collection of Beauford Delaney’s art at the KMA.
