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

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.

The most authoritative book of its kind, now with more entries than ever before, updated and revised for 2009. There’s just no competition for a book that has “essentially cornered the market” (New York Times Book Review).

The moral of this book is that behind every great engineeringsuccess is a trail of often ignored (but frequently spectacular)engineering failures. Petroski covers many of the best knownexamples of well-intentioned but ultimately failed design in action-- the galloping Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which you've probably seentossing cars willy-nilly in the famous black-and-white footage),the collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways -- andmany lesser known but equally informative examples. The line ofreasoning Petroski develops in this book were later formalized intohis quasi-Darwinian model of technological evolution in TheEvolution of Useful Things , but this book is arguably the moreilluminating -- and defintely the more enjoyable -- of these twotitles. Highly recommended.

"Eminem proves himself a peerless rap poet with a profound understanding of the power of language." Details "His ryhmes sting like a lungful of crack."

Coulmissioned via an anonymous letter delivered by anunknown messenger,Mozart's Requiem has haunted audiences and fueled myths for centuries. Legendsrecount the composer's premonitions of his untimely death amid his feverish attempts to complete the Requiem. A work of emotional power and dark fury, it evokes the pathos and injustice of dying young. The sublime beauty of its form, an elevated and exalted style of sacred music, provides the ultimate voice to the composer's genius. This affordable piano-vocal version of the Requiem is ideal for rehearsals and perform-ances as well as following along with recordings. It is reproduced from an authoritative edition.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the most typical and the most individual Impressionist painter. His long life he dedicated to a pictorial exploration of the sensations which reality, and in particular landscape, offer the human eye. But while Monet the painter was faithful and persevering in the pursuit of his motifs, his personal life followed a more restless course. Parisian by birth, he discovered plein-air painting as a youth in the provinces, where one of his homes, Argenteuil, has come to represent the artistic flowering and official establishment of Impressionism as a movement, with Monet as its creative leader. In his endeavor to capture the ever-changing face of reality, Monet went beyond Impressionism and thereby beyond the confines of self-contained panel painting: in Giverny he painted the Poplars, Grain Stacks and Rouen Cathedral series in which he addressed one motif in constantly new variations. Here, too, Monet laid out the famous garden with its water-lily pond which he was to paint on huge canv

The intimate story of one of the great American bands of ourtime, creators of the controversial masterpiece "Yankee HotelFoxtrot" When alt-country heroes-turned-rock-iconoclasts Wilcohanded in their fourth album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," to the band'slabel, Reprise, a division of Warner Brothers, fans looked forwardto the release of another challenging, genre-bending departure fromtheir previous work. The band aimed to build on previous sales andcritical acclaim with its boldest and most ambitious album yet, butwas instead urged by skittish Reprise execs to make the record more"radio friendly." When Wilco wouldn't give, they found themselveswithout a label. Instead, they used the Internet to introduce thealbum to their fans, and eventually sold the record to Nonesuch,another division of Warner. Wilco was vindicated when the albumdebuted at No. 13 on the "Billboard" charts and posted the band'sstrongest sales to date. "Wilco: Learning How to Die" traces theband's story to its deepest origins in Southern Illino

Born in Hawaii and raised in Australia, Nicole Kidman blossomed from a gawky young-ster into an elegant beauty whose heart was set on becoming an actress. Relying on the grit and dedication passed on to her by her activist parents, Nicole quickly became an award-winning ingenue. Her American debut in the acclaimed thriller Dead Calm grabbed the attention of movie audiences--and of Tom Cruise, who asked that Nicole audition for his car-racing epic,Days of Thunder. Tom, not yet divorced from actress Mimi Rogers, was immediately taken with the gorgeous newcomer. Suddenly, Tom and Nicole were everywhere--and the paparazzi were never far behind. By the early 1990s, Tom and Nicole had married, and their private relationship was more intense than anything they portrayed on the screen. It also brought its share of problems. Although Nicole's performances garnered exceptional reviews, many continued to see her simply as Mrs. Tom Cruise. Then came the movie--Stanley Kubrick's controversial Eyes Wide Shut--that

This illustratedsurvey of the work of Modigliani shows how he was regarded bycontemporaries as the very definition of a Parisian bohemian.Modigliani's style is seen as having roots in antiquity or Africa,and the text also brings to life the Parisian art scene of theearly 20th century.

"The Terracotta Dog" opens with a mysterious tete-a-tete with aMafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist,and some dying words that lead Inspector Montalbano gives to asecret grotto in a mountain cave where two young lovers dead fiftyyears ago and still embracing are watched over by a life-sizeterracotta dog. Montalbano's passion to solve this old crime takeshim, heedless of personal danger, on a journey through the island'spast and into a family's dark heart amid the horrors of World WarII.Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Salvo Montalbano has garneredmillions of fans worldwide with his sardonic, engaging take onSicilian small-town life and his genius for deciphering the mostenigmatic of crimes. 'The novels of Andrea Camilleri breath out thesense of place, the sense of humour, and the sense of despair thatfill the air of Sicily. To read him is to be taken to thatglorious, tortured island' - Donna Leon. 'Both farcical andendearing, Montalbano is a cross between Columbo and Chandler'sPhilip

Product De*ion Renowned among his contemporaries as one of the foremost painters of his era, Flemish baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) practically revolutionized northern European art. A shrewd businessman, international ambassador, passionate scholar, devout Catholic, and loving family man, Rubens--fluent in six languages, no less--cared about nothing more than painting, and thus devoted his life to it. Combining typical Flemish realism with classical themes influenced by the Renaissance, Rubens caught the attention of all of Europe and helped put his native Antwerp on the map. His very profitable workshop of accomplished artists, one of whom was Van Dyck, completed over 2000 works under his supervision. 作者简介： Gilles Neret (1933-2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer, and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He edited art reviews such as L'OEil and Connaissance

Renowned for such masterworks as the opera The Bartered Bride and Ma Vlast (My Fatherland), a cycle of symphonic poems, Czech composer Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) was also a composer of important chamber music. The two quartets in this volumeboth autobiographical in nature--are among his finest works in the genre. The String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor, a musical recollection of the composer's life, paints a picture of yearning ambition, a happy social life, and the delights of love; but the end brings hints of future difficulties that darken the quarter's sunny mood. The String Quartet No. 2 in D Minor, written in 1882 after deafness had overtaken Smetana, is less sanguine in tone. Its somber themes, suggesting the difficuhies of the composer's life with the handicap of hearing loss, exert a powerful, emotional pull on the listener. Remarkable for their quasi-programmatic realism in recalling Smetana's life, both works are frequently heard and performed today. Reproduced here from authoritative earl

《不朽的小提琴家》再现了历史上不朽小提琴家的魅力，简要而有趣地叙述其生活、个性与事业。作者就他们对作曲者、公众品味的影响以及演奏技巧的贡献等各个方面，讲述了这些小提琴家的特殊成就。 作者玛格丽特·坎贝尔参阅了大量的书信和私人文件，并且访问许多著名音乐家，很多人为《不朽的小提琴家》提供了从未发表过的回忆录和珍贵照片。 《不朽的小提琴家》是一本献给音乐会听众、唱片收藏者（有“唱片目录”）、弦乐演奏者和学生等所有爱好小提琴演奏艺术者的书。

FRENCH-GERMAN PAINTER COUNT BALTHASAR KLOSSOWSKI DE ROLA (1908-2001), KNOWN AS BALTHUS, SHOCKED THE PARISIAN ART WORLD IN 1934 WITH HIS DREAMY, SENSUAL, NEO-CLASSICAL PORTRAITS OF NYMPHETS AT A TIME WHEN SURREALISM AND ABSTRACTION WERE DE RIGUEUR. AS A PROVOCATEUR, BALTHUS WAS OFTEN SCORNED; AS AN ARTIST, HE WAS WIDELY EMBRACED AS A PRODIGY. IN RESPONSE TO CRITICS OF HIS REALIST STYLE, BALTHUS SAID: "THE REAL ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK YOU SEE. ONE CAN BE A REALIST OF THE UNREAL AND A FIGURATIVE PAINTER OF THE INVISIBLE." HIS EROTIC, POETIC PAINTINGS LIVE ON AS EXAMPLES OF THE BEST FIGURATIVE WORK OF THE MODERN ERA.

One of a series of authoritative pocket guides introduced lastyear, this guide highlights several of the city's newest and mostinteresting governmental, residential and commercial buildings byarchitects such as Steven Holl, Renzo Piano and Kees van der Valk,and also showcases distinctive interior design. Included are shortprofiles of more than seventy buildings and colour photographs toaccompany each. This is an indispensable little guide in anattractively designed package that comes with a site map for easyuse by tourists and professionals alike.

The goats of Vigata once grazed on the trash-strewn site stillknown as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sortflourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavour. Buttheir discreet trade is upset when two employees of the SplendourRefuse Collection Company discover the body of engineer SilvioLuparello, one of the local movers and shakers, apparently deceasedin flagrante at the Pasture. The coroner's verdict is death fromnatural causes - refreshingly unusual for Sicily. But InspectorSalvo Montalbano, as honest as he is streetwise and as scathing tofools and villains as he is compassionate to their victims, is notready to close the case - even though he's being pressured byVigata's police chief, judge, and bishop. Picking his way through alabyrinth of high-comedy corruption, delicious meals, vendettafirepower, and carefully planted false clues, Montalbano can berelied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of thematter.