Antonio Stradivari (1644—1737) was a perfectionist whosesingle-minded pursuit of excellence changed the world of music. Inthe course of his long career in the northern Italian city ofCremona, he created more than a thousand stringed instruments;approximately six hundred survive, their quality unequalled by anysubsequent violin-maker. In this fascinating book, Toby Fabertraces the rich, multilayered stories of six of these peerlesscreations–five violins and a cello–and the one towering artist whobrought them into being. Blending history, biography, meticulousdetective work, and an abiding passion for music, Faber takes usfrom the salons of Vienna to the concert halls of New York, andfrom the breakthroughs of Beethoven’s last quartets to the firstphonographic recordings. This magnificent narrative invites us toshare the life, the intrigue, and the incomparable beauty of theworld’s most marvelous stringed instruments.

Few music lovers realize that the arrangement of notes ontoday’s pianos was once regarded as a crime against God and nature,or that such legendary thinkers as Pythagoras, Plato, da Vinci,Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and Rousseau played a role inthe controversy. Indeed, from the time of the Ancient Greeksthrough the eras of Renaissance scientists and Enlightenmentphilosophers, the relationship between the notes of the musicalscale was seen as a key to the very nature of the universe. In this engaging and accessible account, Stuart Isacoff leads usthrough the battles over that scale, placing them in the context ofquarrels in the worlds of art, philosophy, religion, politics andscience. The contentious adoption of the modern tuning system knownas equal temperament called into question beliefs that hadlasted nearly two millenia–and also made possible the music ofBeethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, and all who followed. Filledwith original insights, fascinating anecdotes, and portraits ofsome of th

In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocativeguide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's mostwidely read cultural commentators tells the story of the rise ofthe classical recording industry from Caruso's first notes to theheyday of Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Callas, and von Karajan. Lebrechtcompellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached itsend point-but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. Itis, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form,analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini,Callas, Rattle, the Three Tenors, and Charlotte Church. It is thestory of how stars were made and broken by the record business; howa war criminal conspired with a concentration-camp victim to createa record empire; and how advancing technology, boardroom wars,public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation shaped the musicalbackdrop to our modern lives. The book ends with a suitable shrineto classical recording: the author's critical selectio

A Tribe Called Quest - Beastie Boys - De La Soul - Eric B. andRakim - The Fugees - KRS-One - Pete Rock and CL Smooth - PublicEnemy - The Roots - Run-DMC - Wu-Tang Clan - and twenty-five morehip-hop immortals It's a sad fact: hip-hop album liners have alwaysbeen reduced to a list of producer and sample credits, a publicityphoto or two, and some hastily composed shout-outs. That's a damnshame, because few outside the game know about the true creativeforces behind influential masterpieces like PE's It Takes a Nationof Millions. . ., De La's 3 Feet High and Rising, and Wu-Tang'sEnter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). A longtime scribe for the hip-hopnation, Brian Coleman fills this void, and delivers a thrilling,knockout oral history of the albums that define this dynamic andiconoclastic art form. The format: One chapter, one artist, onealbum, blow-by-blow and track-by-track, delivered straight from theoriginal sources. Performers, producers, DJs, and b-boys-includingBig Daddy Kane, Muggs and B-Real, Biz Markie, RZA, I

The companion volume to the ten-part PBS TV series by the teamresponsible for"The Civil War" and "Baseball." Continuing in thetradition of their critically acclaimed works, Geoffrey C. Ward andKen Burns vividly bring to life the story of the quintessentialAmerican music--jazz. Born in the black community ofturn-of-the-century New Orleans but played from the beginning bymusicians of every color, jazz celebrates all Americans at theirbest. Here are the stories of the extraordinary men and women whomade the music: Louis Armstrong, the fatherless waif whoseunrivaled genius helped turn jazz into a soloist's art andinfluenced every singer, every instrumentalist who came after him;Duke Ellington, the pampered son of middle-class parents who turneda whole orchestra into his personal instrument, wrote nearly twothousand pieces for it, and captured more of American life than anyother composer. Bix Beiderbecke, the doomed cornet prodigy whoshowed white musicians that they too could make an importantcontribution to the

One of Victorian Englands most charismatic characters, DanteGabriel Rossetti painted and wrote with equal passion. He wassimilarly passionate in his personal life: his etherealartist-wife, his earthy blond mistress, and the ravishing JaneMorris are al

These free-wheeling, often exhilarating dialogues—which grewout of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Talks—are an exchange betweentwo of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture: DanielBarenboim, internationally renowned conductor and pianist, andEdward W. Said, eminent literary critic and impassioned commentatoron the Middle East. Barenboim is an Argentinian-Israeli and Said aPalestinian-American; they are also close friends. As they range across music, literature, and society, they openup many fields of inquiry: the importance of a sense of place;music as a defiance of silence; the legacies of artists from Mozartand Beethoven to Dickens and Adorno; Wagner’s anti-Semitism; andthe need for “artistic solutions” to the predicament of the MiddleEast—something they both witnessed when they brought young Arab andIsraeli musicians together. Erudite, intimate, thoughtful andspontaneous, Parallels and Paradoxes is a virtuosiccollaboration.

This much acclaimed book, newly available in paperback, is thedefinitive retrospective of the most popular serious artist in theworld today, covering all media over almost fifty years. Presentedthematically to show the evolution and diversity of Hockney'sprolific paintings, drawings, watercolours, prints and photography,it also features quotes from the artist himself that illuminate thepassionate thinking behind the works produced. Its hugeinternational success confirms Hockney's position as the world'smost popular living artist.

From its ancient status as the jewel of an empire to itsmodern incarnation as a troubled, yet culturally vibrant Europeancapital, Rome has compelled the imagination of artists for over twothousand years. Now, in "The History of Rome in Painting", that

This book is a study of the figures and landscapes thatSargent painted from 1900 (after he was well established as one ofthe foremost portraitists of the age) through 1914 (and the arrivalof the Second World War).

What do you getwhen you cross a snail with the Indianapolis 500? If you’reDreamWorks, then the result is Turbo, an uplifting—andgear-shifting—story about the ultimate underdog, delivered with thedigital mastery, storytelling skill, and spellbinding imagery we’vecome to expect from the studio behind the Shrek and Madagascar.

Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christianscholars, Aristotle’s works have shaped Western thought, science,and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeon’s TheBasic Works of Aristotle –constituted out of the definitiveOxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover forsixty years–has long been considered the best available one-volumeAristotle. Appearing in paperback at long last, this editionincludes selections from the Organon, On the Heavens, The ShortPhysical Treatises, Rhetoric, among others, and On the Soul, OnGeneration and Corruption, Physics, Metaphysics, NicomacheanEthics, Politics, and Poetics in their entirety.

Asian Resorts is conceived to be the most comprehensivecollection on Asian resorts. Written and shot by the region'sbest known Asian architecture specialist, TanHock Beng, who has already put together five books on the designand aesthetics of tropical architecture, Asian Resorts promises toshow its readers the biggest variety of Asian resorts that no otherbook has ever shown. With its beautifully' shot images and relevantinformation, this book will certainly serve and entertain youbeyond just the coffee table. In fact, it is a must-have for everyarchitectural office and every home.

In 1958, the first edition of Robert Frank's TheAmericans was published in Paris. Les Américains contained Frank's 83 photographs in the same sequence as allsubsequent editions, with the image on the right hand page, butjuxtaposed with historical texts about American society andpolitics, gathered by Alain Bosquet. The following year, in thefirst American edition, the French texts were removed and anintroduction by Jack Kerouac was added. Over the subsequent 50years, The Americans has been republished in many editions,in numerous languages, with a variety of cover designs, and even ina range of sizes. It is the most famous photography book everpublished, and it changed the face of the medium forever. Robert Frank discussed with his publisher,Gerhard Steidl, the idea of producing a new edition using modernscanning and the finest tritone printing. The starting point was tobring original prints from New York to G?ttingen, Germany, whereSteidl is based. In July 2007, Frank visited G?ttingen. A new forma

Up-to-the-minute information on Billboard's hottest hits Back ina fully revised and updated fourth edition with eighty extraall-new pages, "Billboard's Hottest Hot 100 Hits" is the veneratedand reliablesource of information on the most popular songs of ourtimes. Immensely entertaining, endlessly informative, and filledwith fascinating facts and figures on the biggest hits right up to2007, this is the ultimate music trivia book. Separate chapters aredevoted to artists, songwriters, producers, labels, years, andsubjects. Within each chapter, readers will find fun-to-read,fun-to-share lists in 300 categories, including The Top 100 LoveSongs, The Top 50 Songs Written by Carole King, The Top 100 Songson Atlantic, The Top 100 Songs of 1999, and many more. A revisedand updated list of The Top 5,000 Songs of the Rock Era, plus achart and text section devoted to "American Idol" finalists, makethis book so hot it's cool.