Translated by Audie E. Bock. "A first rate book and a joy to read.... It's doubtful that acomplete understanding of the director's artistry can be obtainedwithout reading this book.... Also indispensable for buddingdirectors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefson the primacy of a good *, on *writing as an essentialtool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, andon the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novelsto detective fiction." -- Variety "For the lover of Kurosawa's movies...this is nothing short of mustreading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic andabsorbing screen entertainments." -- Washington Post Book World

A rich evocation of Nabokov's life and times, even as it offersincisive insights into his major works, including LOLITA, PNIN,DESPAIR, THE GIFT and others.

Fidel Castro is perhaps the most charismatic and controversialhead of state in modern times. A dictatorial pariah to some, he hasbecome a hero and inspiration for many of the world's poor,defiantly charting an independent and revolutionary path for Cubaover nearly half a century. Numerous attempts have been made to get Castro to tell his ownstory. But only now, in the twilight of his years, has he beenprepared to set out the details of his remarkable biography for theworld to read. This book is nothing less than his living testament.As he told reporters, his desire to finish checking its text wasthe one thing that kept him going through his recent illness. Hepresented a copy of the book in its Spanish edition to his compadrePresident Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. In these pages, Castro narrates a compelling chronicle thatspans the harshness of his elementary school teachers; the earlyfailures of the revolution; his intense comradeship with CheGuevara and their astonishing, against-all-odds victory over thedic

Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the secondcentury A.D., is a brilliant social history of the ancient world byone of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In whatis by far his most famous and influential work, Plutarch revealsthe character and personality of his subjects and how they ledultimately to tragedy or victory. Richly anecdotal and full ofdetail, Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus andTheseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many morepowerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome. The present translation, originally published in 1683 inconjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes andpreface are also included in this edition.

Humphrey Bogart: it’s hard to think of anyone who’s had thesame lasting impact on the culture of movies. Though he died at theyoung age of fifty-seven more than half a century ago, hisinfluence among actors and filmmakers, and his enduring appeal forfilm lovers around the world, remains as strong as ever. What is itabout Bogart, with his unconventional looks and noticeable speechimpediment, that has captured our collective imagination for solong? In this definitive biography, Stefan Kanfer answers thatquestion, along the way illuminating the private man Bogart was andshining the spotlight on some of the greatest performances evercaptured on celluloid. Bogart fell into show business almost by accident and worked fornearly twenty years before becoming the star we know today. Borninto a life of wealth and privilege in turn-of-the-century NewYork, Bogart was a troublemaker throughout his youth, gettingkicked out of prep school and running away to join the navy at theage of nineteen. After a short

A gathering ofbrilliant and viciously funny recollections from one of thetwentieth century’s most famous literary enfants terribles. Written in 1980 but published here for the first time, thesetexts tell the story of the various farces that developed aroundthe literary prizes Thomas Bernhard received in his lifetime.Whether it was the Bremen Literature Prize, the Grillparzer Prize,or the Austrian State Prize, his participation in the acceptanceceremony—always less than gracious, it must be said—resulted inscandal (only at the awarding of the prize from Austria’s FederalChamber of Commerce did Bernhard feel at home: he received thatone, he said, in recognition of the great example he set forshopkeeping apprentices). And the remuneration connected with theprizes presented him with opportunities for adventure—of thenew-house and luxury-car variety. Here is a portrait of the writer as a prizewinner: laconic,sardonic, and shaking his head with biting amusement at the w

"Authorized, intimate, and definitive, Ben Hogan: A Life isthe long-awaited biography of one of golf's greatest, mostenigmatic legends, narrated with the unique eloquence that has madeauthor James Dodson a critically acclaimed national bestseller. "One man is often credited with shaping the landscape of moderngolf. Ben Hogan was a short, trim, impeccably dressed Texan whosefierce work ethic, legendary steel nerves, and astonishing triumphover personal disaster earned him not only an army of adoring fans,but one of the finest careers in the history of the sport. Hogancaptured a record-tying four U.S. Opens, won five of six majortournaments in a single season, and inspired future generations ofprofessional golfers from Palmer to Norman to Woods. Yet for allhis brilliance, Ben Hogan was an enigma. He was an American herowhose personal life, inner motivation, and famed "secret" were thesource of great public mystery. As Hogan grew into a giant on thepro tour, the combination of his cool outward demeanor an

Most 31-year olds can't boast of being the instigator of a revolution. But then again, the world's leading promoter of open source software and creator of the operating system Linux does humbly call himself an accidental revolutionary--accidental being the operative word here. Just for Fun is the quirky story of how Linus Torvalds went from being a penniless, introverted code writer in Helsinki in the early 1990s to being the unwitting (and rather less than penniless) leader of a radical shift in computer programming by the end of the decade. OK, perhaps "story" in the traditional sense of the term is stretching it a bit. This whole book is more like a series of e-mails, an exercise in textual communication for someone more used to code language than conversation: choppy sentences packed into short paragraphs, and sometimes just one-liners. The pace is fast, but the quippy tone can get somewhat tiring, though it definitely suits the portrayal of a computer-dominated life. And like an e-mail conversation

Norman Rockwell ’s hundreds of memorable covers for The Saturday Evening Post made him a twentieth-centuryAmerican icon. However, because of the very popularity of hisidealized depictions of middle-class life, his more seriouspaintings have been largely ignored, and he has often been deemed amere illustrator, not a “real” artist. In this, the first comprehensive biography of America’s mostpopular artist, Laura Claridge breaks new ground with herappreciative but clear-eyed view of Rockwell’s work—and his life.Based upon previously unpublished family archives and hundreds ofinterviews, this account reveals for the first time the deepdisparity between the artist’s public image and his privatelife.

Far more than a superb memoir about the highest levels ofprofessional tennis, Open is the engrossing story of a remarkablelife. Andre Agassi had his life mapped out for him before he left thecrib. Groomed to be a tennis champion by his moody and demandingfather, by the age of twenty-two Agassi had won the first of hiseight grand slams and achieved wealth, celebrity, and the game’shighest honors. But as he reveals in this searching autobiography,off the court he was often unhappy and confused, unfulfilled by hisgreat achievements in a sport he had come to resent. Agassi writescandidly about his early success and his uncomfortable relationshipwith fame, his marriage to Brooke Shields, his growing interest inphilanthropy, and—described in haunting, point-by-point detail—thehighs and lows of his celebrated career.

When Newton was not yet twenty-five years old, he formulatedcalculus, hit upon the idea of gravity, and discovered that whitelight was made up of all the colors of the spectrum. By 1678,Newton designed a telescope to study the movement of the planetsand published Principia, a milestone in the history of science,which set forth his famous laws of motion and universalgravitation. Newton’s long-time research on calculus, finally madepublic in 1704, triggered a heated controversy as Europeanscientists accused him of plagiarizing the work of the Germanscientist Gottfried Leibniz. In this third volume in the acclaimed Ackroyd’s Brief Livesseries, bestselling author Peter Ackroyd provides an engagingportrait of Isaac Newton, illuminating what we think we know abouthim and describing his seminal contributions to science andmathematics. A man of wide and eclectic interests, Newton blurred theborders between natural philosophy and speculation: he was aspassionate about astrology as astronomy an

In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prizewinning author GnterGrass remembers his early life, from his boyhood in a crampedtwo-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when The TinDrum was published. During the Second World War, Grass volunteeredfor the submarine corps at the age of fifteen but was rejected; twoyears later, in 1944, he was instead drafted into the Waffen-SS.Taken prisoner by American forces as he was recovering fromshrapnel wounds, he spent the final weeks of the war in an AmericanPOW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist andmoved with his first wife to Paris, where he began to write thenovel that would make him famous. Full of the bravado of youth, therubble of postwar Germany, the thrill of wild love affairs, and theexhilaration of Paris in the early fifties, Peeling the Onionwhichcaused great controversy when it was published in GermanyrevealsGrass at his most intimate.

Robert Hughes has trained his critical eye on many majorsubjects, from the city of Barcelona to the history of his nativeAustralia. Now he turns that eye inward, onto himself and the worldthat formed him. Hughes analyzes his experiences the way he mightexamine a Van Gogh or a Picasso. From his relationship with hisstern and distant father to his Catholic upbringing and schoolyears; and from his development as an artist, writer, and critic tohis growing appreciation of art and his exhilaration at leavingAustralia to discover a new life, Hughes’ memoir is anextraordinary feat of exploration and celebration.

Gies recalls how, during WW II, she, her husband and some of their coworkers sheltered her boss Otto Frank, his family and several other Jews in a secret annex of their Amsterdam office building. PW found that although Gold's retelling is "disappointing," Gies's "sincerity, humility and courage emerge . . . and will not fail to inspire." Photos. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This comprehensive, original portrait of the life and work ofone of America's greatest poets--set in the social, cultural, andpolitical context of his time--considers the full range of writingsby and about Whitman, including his early poems and stories, hisconversations, letters, journals, newspaper writings, and daybooks. of photos.

Join the world's hottest pop star on his rollercoaster ride tosuperstardom! His debut album has already gone platinum. He's sungfor the President of the United States. His screaming fans havestormed TV studios and shut down shopping malls. Justin Bieber is aglobal superstar and now, for the first time ever, he's going totell all in his very own book. Justin's story is the stuff thatevery kid dreams of. Growing up an only child in Ontario, Canada,Justin had a natural talent for music; he was forever singingaround the house and taught himself to play drums, guitar, pianoand trumpet. He entered a local singing competition and despite nothaving had any vocal coaching, Justin came second aged only 12years old. But it was when he posted homemade pop videos on YouTubethat Justin's dreams really came true: the videos quickly became aword-of-mouth sensation, garnering an astonishing 10 million hits.Months later, Justin was spotted by top music manager Scooter Braunwho later joined forces with superstar Usher to

From one of the most important intellectuals of our time comesan extraordinary story of exile and a celebration of anirrecoverable past. A fatal medical diagnosis in 1991 convincedEdward Said that he should leave a record of where he was born andspent his childhood, and so with this memoir he rediscovers thelost Arab world of his early years in Palestine, Lebanon, andEgypt. Said writes withgreat passion and wit about his family and his friends from hisbirthplace in Jerusalem, schools in Cairo, and summers in themountains above Beirut, to boarding school and college in theUnited States, revealing an unimaginable world of rich, colorfulcharacters and exotic eastern landscapes. Underscoring all is theconfusion of identity the young Said experienced as he came toterms with the dissonance of being an American citizen, a Christianand a Palestinian, and, ultimately, an outsider. Richly detailed,moving, often profound, Out of Place depicts a young man'scoming of age and the genesis of a great modern think

The long-awaited second volume of the best Churchill biographyreveals the true portrait of this ambitious world leader.Discussion centers on the alarm he sounded about the terrible plotbeing hatched inside Hitler's deranged mind. Two 8-page photosinserts.

Filled with keen observations,autobiographical notes, and the seeds of many of Maugham's greatestworks, A Writer's Notebook is a unique and exhilarating lookinto a great writer's mind at work. From nearly five decades, Somerset Maugham recorded anintimate journal. In it we see the budding of his incomparablevision and his remarkable career as a writer. Covering the yearsfrom his time as a youthful medical student in London to a seasonedworld traveler around the world, it is playful, sharp witted, andalways revealing. Undoubtedly one of his most significant works, A Writer's Notebook is a must for Maugham fans and anyoneinterested in the creative process.