Birth of a Dancing Star
Author: Delio, Ilia
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 2019-11-21
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 1608338118
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The Eighth
Author: Stephen Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-10-20
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 022674096X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis “thrilling study of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 8 . . . makes a strong case for its quality . . . we shall never listen to it in the same way again” (Guardian, UK). On September 12, 1910, Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony had its world premiere at Munich’s new Musik Festhalle. It was the artistic breakthrough for which the composer had yearned all his life. An array of royals and stars from the musical and literary world were in attendance, including Thomas Mann and the young Arnold Schoenberg. Also present were Alma Mahler, the composer’s wife, and Alma’s longtime lover, the architect Walter Gropius. In The Eighth, Stephen Johnson provides a masterful account of the symphony’s far-reaching consequences and its effect on composers, conductors, and writers of the time. The Eighth looks behind the scenes at the demanding one-week rehearsal period leading up to the premiere—something unheard of at the time—and provides fascinating insight into Mahler’s compositional habits, his busy life as a conductor, his philosophical and literary interests, and his personal and professional relationships. Johnson expertly contextualizes Mahler’s work among the prevailing attitudes and political climate of his age, considering the art, science, technology, and mass entertainment that informed the world in 1910. The Eighth is an absorbing history of a musical masterpiece and the troubled man who created it.
Whatever . . . Love Is Love
Author: Maria Bello
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-04-28
Total Pages: 176
ISBN-13: 0062351850
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe acclaimed actress and dedicated activist shares her personal journey of discovery, and destroys outdated ideas about partnership, love and family that will resonate with anyone in an unconventional life situation. Actress and activist Maria Bello made waves with her essay, “Coming Out as a Modern Family,” in the New York Times popular “Modern Love” column, in which she recalled telling her son that she had fallen in love with her best friend, a woman—and her relief at his easy and immediate acceptance with the phrase “Whatever Mom, love is love.” She made a compelling argument about the fluidity of partnerships, and how families today come in a myriad of designs. In her first book, Bello broadens her insights as she examines the idea of partnership in every woman’s life, and her own. She examines the myths that so many of us believe about partnership—that the partnership begins when the sex begins, that partnerships are static, that you have to love yourself before you can be loved, and turns them on their heads. Bello explores how many different relationships—romantic, platonic, spiritual, familial, educational—helped define her life. She encourages women to realize that the only labels we have are the ones we put on ourselves, and the best, happiest partnerships are the ones that make your life better, even if they don’t fit the mold of “typical.” Throughout this powerful and engaging read, Bello shares intimate stories and lessons on how she has come to discover her happiest self, accept who she is, and live honestly and freely, and tells the stories of those who came to her after her Times’ columns, grateful that someone gave voice to their life choices. Whatever...Love Is Love is not a memoir about an actress. It is a frank, raw, and honest book about the way every woman questions the roles she plays in love, work, and life, filled with wisdom, questions, and insights relevant to us all.
Dancing with Myself
Author: Billy Idol
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2014-10-07
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 1451628528
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA Rolling Stone Top 10 Best Music Books of the Year “That’s what I’m talking about…Of all these memoirs, Dancing With Myself was the only one that stimulated my envy—made me want to be Billy Idol for five minutes….He’s a genuine romantic, writing in a kind of overheated journalese about his London punk rock roots…and then falling head over heels for America.” —James Parker, The New York Times Book Review In this highly original memoir—following Billy Idol from his childhood in England to his rise to fame at the height of the punk-pop revolution—the iconic superstar tells the real story behind the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll that he is so fabulously famous for, in his own utterly indelible voice. An early architect of punk rock’s sound, style, and fury, whose lip-curling sneer and fist-pumping persona vaulted him into pop’s mainstream as one of MTV’s first megastars, Billy Idol remains, to this day, a true rock ‘n’ roll icon. Now, in his New York Times bestselling autobiography, Dancing with Myself, Idol delivers an electric, “refreshingly honest” (Daily News, New York) account of his journey to fame—from his early days as front man of the pioneering UK punk band Generation X to the decadent life atop the dance-rock kingdom he ruled—delivered with the same in-your-face attitude and fire his fans have embraced for decades. Beyond adding his uniquely qualified perspective to the story of the evolution of rock, Idol is a brash, lively chronicler of his own career. A survivor’s tale at its heart, this sometimes chilling and always riveting account of one man’s creative drive joining forces with unbridled human desire is unmistakably literary in its character and brave in its sheer willingness to tell. With it, Billy Idol is destined to emerge as one of the great writers among his musical peers. “I am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, I’ve put it all down, every bit from the heart. I’m going on out a limb here, so watch my back.” —Billy Idol
Making All Things New
Author: Delio, Ilia
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 2015-09-30
Total Pages: 154
ISBN-13: 1608336018
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIlia Delio introduces a new word, catholicity, which is destined to become as discussed and familiar in this century as the word Catholic was in the 2nd century. As Delio demonstrates, catholicity is a conscious awareness of how everything - sun and stars, maple trees and muddy rivers and all organisms from the single-celled to homo sapiens - forms one thing. It is a dynamic, spiritual quality that quite literally means "becoming whole." Catholicity is an inner principle which first burst forth in the life of Jesus, and has the power to reconnect all the dimensions of life: spirituality, religion, the new sciences, culture, and society."--Back cover
The Birth of Venus
Author: Sarah Dunant
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004-11-30
Total Pages: 426
ISBN-13: 1588364429
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAlessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.
Dancing Through It
Author: Jenifer Ringer
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2014-02-20
Total Pages: 335
ISBN-13: 069815150X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“A glimpse into the fragile psyche of a dancer.” —The Washington Post Jenifer Ringer, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, was thrust into the headlines after her weight was commented on by a New York Times critic, and her response ignited a public dialogue about dance and weight. Ballet aficionados and aspiring performers of all ages will want to join Ringer behind the scenes as she shares her journey from student to star and candidly discusses both her struggle with an eating disorder and the media storm that erupted after the Times review. An unusually upbeat account of life on the stage, Dancing Through It is also a coming-of-age story and an inspiring memoir of faith and of triumph over the body issues that torment all too many women and men.
Pirouette
Author: Robyn Bavati
Publisher: North Star Editions, Inc.
Published: 2013-11-08
Total Pages: 314
ISBN-13: 0738737577
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSimone was raised as a dancer, but she hates performing. Hannah loves nothing more than dancing, but her adoptive parents think it should only be a hobby. When the two girls meet at camp, they discover they’re identical twins. Choreographing a plan to switch places, they realize fooling their friends and family is harder than they expected.
Princess of the Silver Woods
Author: Jessica Day George
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2013-12-10
Total Pages: 353
ISBN-13: 1619631261
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhen Petunia, youngest of the dancing princesses, is ambushed by bandits in wolf masks on her way to visit an elderly neighbor, the line between enemies and friends becomes blurred as she and her sisters get a chance to end their family's curse once and for all.
Dancing Hands
Author: Margarita Engle
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2019-08-27
Total Pages: 40
ISBN-13: 148148740X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWinner of the Pura Belpré Illustrator Award A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book In soaring words and stunning illustrations, Margarita Engle and Rafael López tell the story of Teresa Carreño, a child prodigy who played piano for Abraham Lincoln. As a little girl, Teresa Carreño loved to let her hands dance across the beautiful keys of the piano. If she felt sad, music cheered her up, and when she was happy, the piano helped her share that joy. Soon she was writing her own songs and performing in grand cathedrals. Then a revolution in Venezuela forced her family to flee to the United States. Teresa felt lonely in this unfamiliar place, where few of the people she met spoke Spanish. Worst of all, there was fighting in her new home, too—the Civil War. Still, Teresa kept playing, and soon she grew famous as the talented Piano Girl who could play anything from a folk song to a sonata. So famous, in fact, that President Abraham Lincoln wanted her to play at the White House! Yet with the country torn apart by war, could Teresa’s music bring comfort to those who needed it most?
