Book Description
Lois Gordon's absorbing biography tells the story of a writer, activist, and cultural icon who embodied the dazzling energy and tumultuous spirit of her age, and whom William Carlos Williams once called "one of the major phenomena of history."
Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) led a life that surpasses Hollywood fantasy. The only child of an English baronet (and heir to the Cunard shipping fortune) and an American beauty, Cunard abandoned the world of a celebrated socialite and Jazz Age icon to pursue a lifelong battle against social injustice as a wartime journalist, humanitarian aid worker, and civil rights champion.
Cunard fought fascism on the battlefields of Spain and reported firsthand on the atrocities of the French concentration camps. Intelligent and beautiful, she romanced the great writers of her era, including three Nobel Prize winners, and was the inspiration for characters in the works of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Pablo Neruda, Samuel Beckett, and Ernest Hemingway, among others.
Cunard was also a prolific poet, publisher, and translator and, after falling in love with a black American jazz pianist, became deeply committed to fighting for black rights. She edited the controversial anthology Negro, the first comprehensive study of the achievement and plight of blacks around the world. Her contributors included Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston, among scores of others.
Cunard's personal life was as complex as her public persona. Her involvement with the civil rights movement led her to be ridiculed and rejected by both family and friends. Throughout her life, she was plagued by insecurities and suffered a series of breakdowns, struggling with a sense of guilt over her promiscuous behavior and her ability to survive so much war and tragedy. Yet Cunard's writings also reveal an immense kindness and wit, as well as her renowned, often flamboyant defiance of prejudiced social conventions.
Drawing on diaries, correspondence, historical accounts, and the remembrances of others, Lois Gordon revisits the major movements of the first half of the twentieth century through the life of a truly gifted and extraordinary woman. She also returns Nancy Cunard to her rightful place as a major figure in the historical, social, and artistic events of a critical era.
Customer Reviews:
A Remembered Life.......2007-07-03
If Lois Gordon was writing about a fictional character she could not have told a story of a more exciting person than Nancy Cunard. However, Nancy Cunard was indeed an individual who lived in the early part of last century whose exploits, altruism, and literary talent were extraordinary by any standards. She was a legendary beauty, with a great mind, who was extremely devoted to the disadvantaged people of the world and their struggles. This is an unusual and remarkable combination of qualities that is brilliantly depicted throughout this wonderful book. Simply, I could not put the book down once I had started reading. I can highly recommend it.
Facinating.......2007-05-16
A facinating look at a most interesting woman. Well ahead of her time. Also many insights to a span of recent history often neglected.
Brilliant job, takes your breath away.......2007-05-12
This is a brilliant, sensitive, thoroughly researched biography which is a model example of how such things should be done. The author writes of the First World War experiences in London as if she had personally lived through them. Her understanding of the complex and bizarre Nancy Cunard, of her weird mother, of her strange friends, of her insane promiscuity, of her serial preying upon the creative elite by means of 'genital consumption', of her impossible psychlogy, of the whole phantasmagoria which Nancy Cunard represented, are really a triumph of empathy and insight, as well as of organisation of material. Lois Gordon's ability to master large volumes of action and hysteria without flinching qualify her for a top military command.
A lively, fascinating read from the first chapter..........2007-05-10
I just finished Lois Gordon's deeply moving tale of an unbelievably heroic, remarkable woman about whom I knew very little. I now feel I know the soul of Nancy Cunard, thanks to the author's wonderfully engaging, well-documented presentation. The book's fluent style and breadth of information are impressive. I agree with the majority here who have praised this fascinating biography. Buy this book, settle into your favorite chair, and prepare to meet the caring, complex, flawed, passionate woman that was Nancy Cunard.
Henry Crowder and Nancy Cunard.......2007-05-06
Regrettably, this biography is seriously flawed, frankly a disgrace, in respect of Henry Crowder and throughout. There is hardly a page in the book without demonstrable error of fact, misrepresentation, unfounded speculation or garbled citation. Columbia University Press were twice alerted that there were problems when an advance proof fell into the present writer's hands two or three months before publication. The Press did not respond. Caroline Weber's New York Times review is foolish in the extreme. Anne Chisholm's 1979 biography remains indispensable. While Gordon has uncovered new material (not about Henry Crowder in which she is particularly deficient) she has not been able to make sense of it. The true story of Crowder is told in the book+CD Listening for Henry Crowder scheduled fall 2007.
Although readers must judge for themselves, it is incumbent upon someone or other who has studied some of the particulars to point out the book's shortcomings, which are drastic. The book's flamboyant style may appear to be "a good read". All the more reason to alert the general reader. That Cunard's life was replete with extraordinary events and relationships does not confer upon the biographer the right to play fast and loose. Such treatment may befit an exploitative Hollywood movie but not a literary documentation with academic credentials. It may be that few care. Neverthless . . . In respect of, for example, Crowder, by Cunard's admission the single most important man in her life, a good deal of the information the author needed had been available to her for some years in an exploratory article in a journal, which was also posted online. Either she chose to ignore it or she did not find it, though it was easy to find. Unfortunately, she does not even get the facts right from the sources she does use and her misdemeanors extend far beyond that particular subject. (Crowder does not even figure in a list of Cunard's friends in an interview with the author on the publisher's website, while another, with whom she had no relationship whatsoever, is proposed as a lover.)
In response to a comment on my original brief posting: I have mentioned my forthcoming book on Crowder's life (which will not receive wide distribution or review) and Anne Chisholm's earlier, easily available, elegant, sober, generous, decent biography of Cunard, which is grudgingly noted and casually mistreated by Gordon, in order to give general readers the opportunity to find other takes on Cunard, which they might otherwise miss, and so allow them to judge from a well-informed position.
Book Description
The strange history of auditory hallucination throughout the ages, and its power to shed light on the mysterious inner source of pure faith and unadulterated inspiration.
Auditory hallucination is one of the most awe-inspiring, terrifying, and ill-understood tricks the human psyche is capable of. Muses, Madmen, and Prophets reevaluates the popular conception of the phenomenon today and through the ages, and reveals the roots of the medical understanding and treatment of it. It probes history, literature, anthropology, psychology, and neurology to explain and demystify the experience of hearing voices, in a fascinating and at times funny quest for understanding. Daniel B. Smith's personal experience with the phenomenon-his father heard voices, and it was the great torment and shame of his father's life-and his discovery that some people learn to live in peace with their voices fuels this contemplative, brilliantly researched, and inspired book.
Science has not been able to fully explain the phenomenon of auditory hallucination. It is a condition that has existed perhaps as long as we have-there is evidence of it in literature and even pre-literate oral histories from across all times and cultures. Smith presents the sophisticated and radical argument that a negative side effect of living as we do in this great age of medical science is that we have come to limit this phenomenon to nothing more than a biochemical glitch for which the only proper response is medical, pharmaceutical treatment. This "pathological assumption" can inflict great harm on the people who hear voices by ignoring the meaning and reality of the experience for them. But it also obscures from the rest of us a rich wellspring of knowledge about the essential source of faith and inspiration.
As Smith examines the many incidences of people who have famously heard voices throughout history-Moses, Mohammed, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, Rilke, William Blake, Socrates, and others-he considers the experience of auditory hallucination in light of its relationship to the nature of pure faith and as the key to the source of artistic inspiration. At the heart of Smith's exploration into the many extraordinary, strange, sometimes frightening and sometimes almost supernatural aspects of auditory hallucination is his driving personal need to comprehend an experience that, when considered in good faith, is as profound and complex as human consciousness itself.
Customer Reviews:
An alternate history of voice-hearing.......2007-08-13
Daniel B. Smith comes to his interest in voices in an unusual manner. He doesn't hear voices (of people who are not present), and he has no medical or scientific training on the topic. Rather, he is intrigued because his father secretly heard voices yet was not schizophrenic.
By approaching voice-hearing through a historical lens, Smith is able to show how our current concept of voices is the product of the modern era's overthrow of religion by science and medicine (and specifically psychiatry). To make his point, he focuses on three of the most well-known voice hearers in history - Socrates, Joan of Arc, and Daniel Schreber, a 19th-century judge whose madness was analyzed by Freud and Jung. All eras, he explains, subject the hearing of voices to a test. In Socrates' time, the test was political: "Are the voices subversive or corrupting to the state?" In the Middle Ages, the test was theological: "Are the voices those of God or of the Devil?" It is only in the modern era that the test has become a psychiatric one. He makes an interesting argument about the use of the term "hallucinations," saying that it was the adoption of that term that made the ultimate pathologization of voice-hearers inevitable.
Smith frames voice-hearing in the modern era as a human rights issue. Voice-hearers must struggle against the psychiatric establishment for self-determination - the right to keep their voices, and to decide for themselves about the meaning of those voices.
Although Smith's style is a bit meandering at times, his effort to normalize the hearing of voices is refreshing in the current psychiatrically dominated climate of pathology. And his accounts of the three historical figures are quite interesting in their own right. I recommend the book to anyone interested in an offbeat, alternate history and interpretation of the widespread, multi-determined phenomenon of voice-hearing.
Hearing Voices: A Deep, Rich and Rational Approach.......2007-07-03
This is a fascinating and important book about a common experience that has at different times led to inspiration, fear and sadly also misery and misunderstanding. It is estimated that at any given time about three percent of the population of the United States experiences auditory hallucinations, and over a lifetime the figure is much higher, particularly after a major stressor, such as bereavement. I say "United States" quite deliberately: there is evidence that in rural Africa and rural India visual hallucinations are more common than auditory.
As Daniel Smith says in his preface,
"It (hearing voices) occurs in cultures in al regions of the Earth and is an appropriate topic of study for an array of disciplines, including psychiatry, psychology, neurology, philosophy, anthropology, theology and linguistics."
To his list we could herbalism, pharmacology and parapsychology: there are hallucinogens that produce not only visual experiences, but also auditory and cross-modal hallucinations. And records of hearing discarnate entities have exercised parapsychologists for a century or more.
As Daniel says, he chose to be selective in his choice of material about unusual auditory experiences, and to try and tell a story. And what a story it is, running from ancient prophets to modern brain science. There are twelve chapters and the titles give you a good idea of his approach:
1. Prelude: The Pathological Assumption
2. The House of Mirrors
3. Noble Automatons
4. Interlude: Listening
5. The Tyranny of Meaning
6. The Soft-Spoken God
7. Enigmatical Dictation
8. Interlude: Floating
9. Personal Deity: Socrates Versus the State
10. Digna Vox: Joan of Arc Versus the Church
11. Morbid Offspring: Daniel Paul Schreber Versus Psychiatry
12. Postlude: Hearing Voices
Followed by Notes, quite a good Bibliography and Index.
Though he is not a specialist in the art and science of auditory hallucinations, Daniel has read widely, thought deeply and enlisted the help of some of the foremost experts in the field. He has the advantage of not only being able to think outside the box, but of throwing the box out of the window!
I sometimes sound like a broken record, insisting that hearing voices is NOT diagnostic of mental illness. Daniel makes the same point in this book, and it needs to be repeated until everyone "gets it." I have just had a discussion with some young and rather inexperienced psychiatrists who told me that if they met someone who was hearing voices, they would immediately prescribe antipsychotic medicines. There is not a shred of evidence that they should do anything of the sort unless someone is suffering or causing suffering. And even then, the "voices" should not be the focus of treatment.
Several reviewers have mentioned the work of Julian Jaynes, who postulated that auditory hallucinations were generated in the right, or non-dominant hemisphere of the brain. This book presents one of the best brief overviews of Jaynes' work that I have seen. There is an amusing little sidebar here. It is not widely known that Jaynes, like many creative innovators, had a hard time being taken seriously by other academics. He was ridiculed in some publications from the late 1970s, he was sometimes treated unkindly and people even tried to perpetrate hoaxes on him.
There is a region of the brain called the planum temporale that is the most highly lateralized part of the brain and is involved in the genesis of language and thought. Healthy right-handed volunteers usually have a large planum in the left hemisphere of the brain. In 1993 a team of people at Johns Hopkins first showed that people with schizophrenia do indeed have an equally large planum in the right hemisphere, suggesting that Jaynes was correct all along. When people hear voices, they really do: it is not something "made up." When Jaynes was called at his office at Princeton to be told about the research, he was initially suspicious that this was another hoax. Years of bad experiences had taught him to be cautious. He was thrilled when he was shown the data and that this was not some prank. The research was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1995, and has since been confirmed many times.
This tale is important for another reason: Daniel does not make the common mistake of trying to reduce the hearing of voices to a some aberrant wiring in the brain. Sometimes it may be, but usually it is not. Instead he examines not just the phenomenon, but also the experience, from multiple perspectives: historical, cultural, anthropological, artistic and more besides.
The is a rich, very well written and wise book that should be an easy read for a generalist with an interest in psychology, history and spirituality.
Highly recommended.
Hearing Voices Through History.......2007-05-31
Daniel B. Smith' Muses, Madmen and Prophets is a son's labor of love for his father. Smith's father, an attorney, heard voices throughout his life, a fact that shamed and terrified him. Smith's grandfather also heard voices, but in his case, he listened to the voices without distress.
Smith makes a good argument that voice hearing was accepted as a phenomenon in human experience until the rise of modern psychiatry in the first half of the nineteenth century. Socrates heard voices. Abraham, Moses and all eighteen prophets of the Old Testament reported hearing the voice of God, as did Joan of Arc. But as modern psychiatry developed, and because hearing voices is such a key symptom of schizophrenia, public opinion shifted to believe that all voice hearing was indicative of severe mental illness.
In the 1980's a Dutch psychiatrist went on a talk show with his voice hearing patient, and asked that anyone in the audience who had experienced voice hearing please telephone him. He received 450 calls, from which developed the Hearing Voices Network, an association of people who hear voices, many of whom lead normal lives and are not mentally ill. This break-through allowed a distinction to be made between voice hearing individuals who are schizophrenic and voice hearing individuals who are not. Thus ended more than 100 years of automatic classification as insane for people who hear voices.
Smith advances an interesting idea that at the time of the ancient Greeks, at the time of Moses, human beings experienced inspiration as coming from the outside, but as the human brain changed over thousands of years, inspiration came to be experienced as thought. Though he didn't mention it, there is a phenomenon called synesthesia in which people hear music when they look at certain sights and see colors and shapes when they hear particular musical notes. One explanation for synesthesia is that as the human senses have evolved, they have separated one from another, but in some cases, the senses remain bundled. Could human senses have been bundled at the time of the Muses and Oracles, at the time of Moses, or when Mohammed heard the Archangel Gabriel tell him to recite? Who knows?
Smith's book is scholarly and intriguing without being pedantic. His thought moves in great sweeps and his prose is luminous and fluid.
Underlying it all is the tragic loss of Smith's father. Had he known what his son discovered, this man might still be alive.
Penetrating!.......2007-05-25
"Those who hear voices and what they hear in their hallucinations is examined thoroughly and almost explained in this penetrating study."
A modern look at an ancient phenomenon.......2007-03-26
I have long been intrigued by the ideas put forth in the late Julian Jaynes's "The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Jaynes's theorized that humans did not achieve actual consciousness until comparatively recent times (it varied from culture to culture but in the Near- and Middle-East, according to Jaynes it would have been several centuries or a millennium or so BC). And he believed that the pre-conscious state was characterized by auditory hallucinations that were generally interpreted as the voices of the gods.
Jaynes's central theory about the origin of consciousness is probably beyond proof (exactly what is consciousness is a slippery concept, but Jaynes does NOT equate it self-awareness), but he does supply a great deal of evidence about how ancient humans did believe they regularly "heard" the voices of gods, and that at some point (again, it was not the same for all cultures), that ability went away, often with devastating consequences for a culture suddenly left without seeming divine guidance.
Daniel B. Smith's "Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination" addresses the survival of the phenomenon of "hearing voices" generated unconsciously by one's own mind. Popularly, hearing such voices is viewed as evidence of mental illness (indeed, schizophrenia has become in recent decades almost defined by the phenomenon), but Smith's book demonstrates that auditory hallucination is fairly common in people who are otherwise viewed as mentally normal. Surveys have supplied varying figures for the phenomenon (understandably, many people are reluctant to admit to a circumstance which might earn them a careless label of "crazy"; I suspect that the frequency of positive responses to the survey questions depend a great deal upon just how the questions were phrased), but it appears that at least a few percent up to maybe the majority of people at some time in their lives experience auditory hallucination, perhaps only a single time, although in some cases the phenomenon can be almost continual (Smith's own father and grandfather "heard voices" much of their lives). The condition is sometimes connected with stress (participants in combat and victims of rape appear to especially prone to it) and it sometimes is associated with bursts of great creativity. Smith discusses quite a number of famous people who regularly experienced what in today's rational world would be termed auditory hallucination: Socrates, Joan of Arc, and William Blake included.
Smith's book is not a dense, statistic-laden study, but rather a fast-flowing, somewhat ancecdotal introduction to a fascinating phenomenon which at one time may have played a decisive role in human culture and continues even today to shape some people's lives.
Book Description
Kurt Muse handed over his passport at Torrijos International Airport, just as he'd done countless times. Instantly, he sensed that something was wrong. Rather than the cursory glance followed by the whack of the entry stamp, the bureaucrat held the little book in both hands. He seemed to be studying it. And then he smiled. Kurt followed the clerk's gaze to a piece of paper taped to his partition. The sign was handwritten in Spanish:
Kurt Muse American Citizen Arrest Him
His life was over.
Born in the United States, raised in Panama, Kurt Muse grew up with a deep love for his adopted country. But by the late 1980s, Panama was suffering under the regime of Manuel Noriega. Innocent people disappeared. Beatings and murders became commonplace.
For Kurt Muse, accepting such a dictator was not an option. For two years, Kurt and a few friends operated clandestine radio stations on low-tech equipment smuggled into Panama. At first, they broadcast on a small scale. But in late 1987, the group realized that they could override any transmission from a government-run radio network, and Radio Constitucional was born.
Muse and his compatriots chose Noriega's Loyalty Day address, simulcast on every radio station in the country, for its first transmission. Just as Noriega began his self-serving message, Radio Constitucional seized the airwaves, urging the people to rise up in defense of their freedom. Kurt knew that if his identity was revealed, he and his family would be in grave peril. But he had no idea what kind of terror, confusion, and betrayal lay in store for all of them.
Six Minutes to Freedom spins the remarkable tale of Kurt's arrest by Noriega's henchmen and his months of imprisonment; the squalid conditions he faced in Panama's infamous Modelo Prison; his eyewitness accounts of his fellow inmates' torture; and the plight of Kurt's family as they fled for their lives. And it reveals, for the first time, the astonishing details of the long-awaited day when helicopters arrived in a firestorm of bullets to whisk Kurt Muse from under the noses of thugs who had been ordered to kill him.
This is Kurt's thrilling and highly personal story—the story of an American hero on foreign soil, who risked his life for his beliefs and for freedom…and became the only American civilian ever rescued by the elite Delta Force.
Customer Reviews:
Ron, Redding CA.......2007-08-24
I had seen this book once in a book store and passed it up. From reading the description and review on [...] I decided to buy it. The book was well written and very informative. I knew of the incident, Operation Urgent Fury and the rescue of Muse, but knew very few details. My attention was held until the very end. Although somewhat limited or shrouded I especially enjoyed th details of the rescue and the rescuers. This is one of those books that just make you proud to be an American.
Riviting.......2007-05-25
I rate this book right up there with my favorites "Endurance", "Touching The Void" and "Blackhawlk Down". I had a tough time putting this book down. Kurt Muse is one strong willed indivdual.
Edmund Burke said it best with "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
Amazingly true story.......2007-05-13
What an amazing story to be told. I can't believe this really happened - I couldn't put down this book until the very end. A very fast & enjoyable read.
Could not put the book down.......2007-01-16
I am from the Canal Zone but was not there when Noriega was in power. The book is very well written and I am glad I purchased it. I would recommend the book to anyone who wants a book that is exciting and historical. I think Kurt has accurately described this period in the history of Panama and the Canal Zone.
6 Minutes to Freedom.......2007-01-15
Good book. Outlines situation in Panama prior to departure and capture of Manuel Noriega. Author was imprisoned by Noriega's administration and only rescued through the use of US Special Forces.
Book Description
The Artist's Muse: Unlock the Door to Your Creativity is one of the most innovative ideas and concepts about painting on the market. Its contents are dual, for it contains a treasure trove --exceptional articles on creativity accompanied by creative painting challenges, and in addition, the kit contains a creative card game, which will show artists, fledgling or experienced exciting and different ways to express themselves by approaching their subjects "Out of the box." All in all, this package will inspire, provoke, and educate because it presents literally thousands of ways to create individual paintings. And, it combines traditional wisdom and modern approaches from some of the top watermedia artists in America. It's a winner.
Customer Reviews:
Inspiring!! Delightful. Gorgeously written. .......2007-06-11
This artist writes about art so that you cannot wait to paint.
She gives vivid examples of what she is talking about in her own works
and the paintings of others. I was moved to immediately sign up for one
of her workshops. Tbe book is a great read whether you're a would-be
painter or an already-am. As if this colorful book isn't enough,there
are also "inspiration" or "idea" cards that can help guide you to paint
creatively. It's GREAT! Inspiring. Delightful.
The Artists Muse.......2007-05-16
You have to take this book and it's challenges in slow, deliberate sections.
It stirs the imagination and makes you think....and can seem a bit confusing/overwhelming until the reader slows down and doesn't read ahead. I've been able to translate the challenges into fabric.
I'm lucky enough to study this book with an on line group. For me that works best and is how I'd recommend it be studied....either on line or at a local coffee house.
A kit for ongoing inspiration........2007-04-19
THE ARTIST'S MUSE: UNLOCK THE DOOR TO YOUR CREATIVITY isn't just another book on the topic: it's an actual tool kit that pairs a book with three decks of cards with creative prompts for ideas. By mixing and matching the deck, artists will find about 15,000 inspiring ideas for better art, from paintings and new subjects to new color ideas. Any with a creative block will find THE ARTIST'S MUSE the perfect toolkit for unlocking the block - and while the card/book combo may not lend to library lending, it will provide working and aspiring artists with something they can't be without: a kit for ongoing inspiration.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
The Artists' Muse........2007-01-15
I liked the physical format of this book- the spiral binding allows it to lie flat. Interesting and inventive ideas are provided by author.
Amazon.com
Musicians practice. Athletes practice. And so, too, argues Judy Reeves, should writers practice. Her Writer's Book of Days provides a "writing prompt" for each day of the year, and then some: "Write about a time someone said yes"; "Write about leaving"; "Something seemed different." The more you practice, says Reeves, the more you write. And writing from a prompt, she adds, is like having "someone provid[e] the music when you want to dance." The prompts are the backbone of this book, but its pages are fleshed out with advice, inspiration, quotations from writers, encouragement, and a profusion of literary tidbits. Write from the sense, Reeves recommends. Audition words. Take risks. And when all else fails, amuse yourself with these astonishing tidbits from literary lives: T.S. Eliot, we learn, preferred writing with a head cold; Flaubert kept his lover's slippers and mittens in his desk drawer; and Friedrich von Schiller liked to invoke his muse by sniffing rotten apples. --Jane Steinberg
Book Description
Playwright and editor Judy Reeves has taught writing, led creative writing workshops, and participated in writing groups for years. A Writer’s Book of Days is a compilation of all that she’s learned from getting together to write with other people. She says, “the book came about because I saw the difference ongoing, regular practice could make in a writer’s life.” Practice makes perfect, and this book makes practice easy by providing writers and would-be writers with stimulating topics, helpful instruction, monthly guidelines, dozens of inspiring quotes, writerly lore, and tips for special writing sessions such as marathons, cafe writing, and other ways to make the work of writing more creative and fun.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding book.......2006-03-14
This is wonderful for kicking of thoughts or story ideas with a suggested topic for each day. Fantastic!
Great Help to Young Writers.......2006-01-29
This book is an excellent tool for the young writer. It gets you writing every single day with all kinds of helpful prompts. Also in this book are helpful hints, looks at how other writers work, quotes, and exercises. This is by far the most useful book on writing I have bought thus far. I highly recommend it for writers who want to write everyday, but struggle with it and don't want to keep an actual journal. Through these exercises, I have had more story ideas this month than I did all of last year.
like an old friend...........2005-04-14
This book is one of my favorites. The author has such a friendliness about her writing, as if she is holding a conversation with you over a cup of coffee.
Her writing prompts are creative and lively, and will get you writing.
I love the quotes. Just about every page has a quote from a well known writer about writing.
Judy has plenty of advice in this book. She also fills it with hers, and others writing experiences.
Although the book is arranged so that it follows the twelve months, it doesn't have to be read that way. Many times I've just flipped to a page and started reading. I always came out of it inspired and ready to write.
Fantastic for the Writer in You!.......2005-01-26
Every writer should have this book in their Library. The prompts can be used in any way but I like them as they are planned out by date. If you enjoy prompt writing or are just in need of extra support this is a fantastic book.
I do not recommend buyin her Kit as it is very similar to this book. And this book is the Gem to complete your Journal topics.
The Perfect Writing Buddy - Lots of Ideas and Inspiration.......2004-12-08
I am always on the look out for quality writing books which will inspire me as a writer and that I can recommend to others to inspire their writing as well. Judy Reeve's well received book is successful on both counts - exceeds my hopes and expectations in every way (except, perhaps for the unusual color choice of orange for a highlight color in the layout of the book.)
The book is simple to understand and implement. Each month of the year has a guideline, some interesting content with fun facts like James Michener started writing at age 40 and easy to follow tips of the month.
There is a writing prompt for every day of the year. No writer would be lost for ideas with this book close at hand. I can see myself using it and re-using it and re-using it.
Reeves comes across as a writing buddy sharing thoughts and guidance in perfectly reasonable and re-readable doses.
Book Description
Isabelle d’Este, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, born into privilege and the political and artistic turbulence of Renaissance Italy, is a stunning black-eyed blond and an art lover and collector. Worldly and ambitious, she has never envied her less attractive sister, the spirited but naïve Beatrice, until, by a quirk of fate, Beatrice is betrothed to the future Duke of Milan. Although he is more than twice their age, openly lives with his mistress, and is reputedly trying to eliminate the current duke by nefarious means, Ludovico Sforza is Isabella’s match in intellect and passion for all things of beauty. Only he would allow her to fulfill her destiny: to reign over one of the world’s most powerful and enlightened realms and be immortalized in oil by the genius Leonardo da Vinci. Isabella vows that she will not rest until she wins her true fate, and the two sisters compete for supremacy in the illustrious courts of Europe.
A haunting novel of rivalry, love, and betrayal that transports you back to Renaissance Italy, Leonardo’s Swans will have you dashing to the works of the great master—not for clues to a mystery but to contemplate the secrets of the human heart.
Download Description
Chapter One
X * FORTUNA (CHANCE)
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF LEONARDO:
When Fortune comes, seize her firmly at the forelock, for I tell you, she is bald at the back.
IN THE YEAR 1489; IN THE CITY OF FERRARA
She grew up in a land of fairy tales and miracles. That is what Isabella is explaining to Francesco as they ride through Ferrara's streets. It is Christmastime, and though there is no snow on the dry stone road, the horses shoot clouds of steam into the frigid air through their nostrils.
This is the first time she has been allowed to escort her fiancé through the city on one of his visits. Francesco Gonzaga, future Marquis of Mantua, has come to Ferrara to romance his soon-to-be bride and to enjoy the city's many Christmas pageants ordered by Isabella's father, Duke Ercole d'Este, a great patron of the theater. Isabella believes that the more she tells Francesco of Ferrara's secrets and wonders, and the more she shows him of her father's spectacular building projects and improvements, the more he will realize her value.
In this very church, Isabella says, pointing to St. Mary's of the Ford, almost two hundred years ago on Easter Sunday, the priest broke the Eucharist in two, and flesh and blood came spraying forth, covering the walls of the church and splattering the entire flock.
"The parishioners watched in awe," Isabella says, eyes wide with drama. "The Bishop of Ferrara and the Archbishop of Ravenna came to see it. They instantly recognized it as the body and blood of Christ and declared it a true miracle of the Eucharist."
Francesco solemnly makes the sign of the cross as they ride past the church, but his eyebrows arch skeptically, making him look entirely out of step with the act.
Beatrice trots ahead of the pair of lovers, her long braid swinging in saucy rhythm with the horse's mane, as uninterested as her steed in their conversation.
"Isn't that right, Beatrice?" Isabella asks her sister for confirmation of her story, hoping that the odd girl does not say anything to contradict her. Beatrice is a puzzle to Isabella, a fact that the older sister blames on the girl's unsupervised upbringing in wild Naples. The girl is a feral, unformed thing, alternately shy, naive, aloof, and bold--the latter especially apparent when riding or hunting. How such a small fourteen-year-old girl, who is not particularly courageous outside of these activities, excels at all manly sport is a mystery to Isabella, but the fact of Beatrice's prowess remains, no matter how enigmatic.
"I wouldn't know. I wasn't there!" Beatrice finally answers without turning around, but they can hear her laugh at her own joke.
The animal's swaying ass taunts Isabella, who knows that her sister is dying to break away from them to test the horse's speed. Francesco has brought Drago, the pure white Spanish charger, from his family's stud farm on the island of Tejeto, as a gift for the girls' father. But Beatrice immediately took over the animal, talking to him in whispers that should be reserved for a lover, and hopping upon him and riding away, as if the painstakingly bred horse was meant to carry a little girl in a pink riding dress and not a fearsome knight in armor.
"I'll tell you a miracle that happened right here in Ferrara that is even better," Francesco says, sidling his horse right up to Isabella's so that their legs touch. She knows she should pull away, that her mother would rail against this sort of indiscriminate physical contact, even with leather riding boots providing a barrier to the couple's much-craved intimacy, but instead, she rides with slow care so that they might continue to brush against one another.
"What miracle is that?" she asks, suppressing a smile.
"That your father agreed that you should be my wife," he answers.
You have no idea j
Customer Reviews:
A Very Enjoyable Read.......2007-09-16
As one who normally gravitates to English historical fiction, I wasn't sure if I would enjoy this book, but was drawn to it because of the inclusion of Leonardo da Vinci. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing and the period of Italian history presented. It takes you to a different time and place with ease. After finishing the book, I find myself wanting to read more Italian historical fiction and to visit the works of Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre. Just the kind of inspiration you hope to get from a great book!
Well done.......2007-07-16
I enjoyed this novel more than Essex's IN THE COMPANY OF A COURTESAN. Over all, the book is a well done weaving of fact and fiction. Essex is a talented writer - I thoroughly enjoy her style and ability to move the story along rather quickly. My main critisim is lack of character development and telling nuances. Just a little more heart and depth to each of the main women characters would have really made this a show stopper. In general, it read like a very visual movie and a great story that I have not read in a novel version before.
I especially enjoyed *learning* a little more about several of the lovely faces that grace Leonardo's work. I say "learning," assuming that the general story is close to the facts and conceivably possible - which seems to be the case. Mind you that I am no Italian historical biographer - I'm sure Essex took the needed literary liberty as needed. A wonderful read!
A letdown in the genre of historical fiction.......2007-06-04
This book had very little to do with the aforementioned painting and with Leonardo da Vinci in general, in which case I was let down because it turned out to be something I did not expect. Based on a true tale of Renaissance era power families in Italy, the characters seemed like mere ciphers who existed solely to report the goings on of the day. Essex seemingly couldn't decide between an historical work or historical fiction and, as a result, this book is neither. Given authors like Dunant and Gregory, historical fiction can be so much more in the hands of a gifted storyteller. This book was a disappointment through and through.
Karen takes you back to DaVinci's life and times.......2007-05-22
Very enjoyable read, a real insight to Leonardo DaVinci and his contemporaries. The characters come alive!
Leonardo's Swans.......2007-05-13
For anyone who enjoys historical fiction AND/OR is planning a trip to Milan, THIS is the book for you. The story line was easy to follow and hard to put down. The details of the Sforza Castle, of Leonardo's various works and his quirks, and the history of ruling families in Italy during the 1400's-1500's was fascinating! It honestly made my last trip to Milan much more meaningful as I almost felt I knew Isabella and the Moro. A GREAT read!
Book Description
Genome science as a discipline is less than five years old, but has already spawned a revolution in the way in which genetics is taught in universities, approached by academic researchers, and applied by pharmaceutical and agricultural research companies. While over a dozen new journals devoted to genomics have appeared in the last few years, no introductory textbook that covers the range of disciplines incorporated into genome science has materialized, until now. A Primer of Genome Science bridges the gap between standard genetics textbooks and highly specialized, technical, and advanced treatments of the subdisciplines. It provides an affordable and up-to-date introduction to the field that is suited to advanced undergraduate or early graduate courses. Bioinformatic principles and experimental strategies are explained side-by-side with the experimental methods, establishing a framework that allows teachers to explore topics and the literature at their own pace.
The Primer is organized into six chapters. Each chapter includes: exercises that can be worked by students using the internet and freely available software for analysis of genomic data; discussion questions; a summary; and suggestions for further reading. An Appendix includes a glossary of terms, with a brief review of key genetic concepts.
Customer Reviews:
Up to Date and Very Well Done.......2005-08-11
With the basic science being so new and changing so rapidly, this second edition is timely and welcome. Virtually every chapter has been re-written to bring it up to date. The result is a text suitable for use in upper under grad or beginning grad level course in functional genomics or bioinformatics. The six chapter headings are:
Genome Projects: Organization and Objectives
Genome Sequencing and Annotation
SNPs and Variation
Gene Expression and the Transcriptome
Proteomics and Functional Genomics
Integrative Genomics.
The book is well written and profusely illustrated with color drawings and photographs. The book is closely allied with the web in form of accessable databases and the like which may keep it from going out of date so fast.
With most text books being so expensive, this book is a definite sleeper in the field.
Poorly Written, Good graphics.......2004-01-09
The book is very poorly written and is too difficult to follow to be called a "primer." Authors often focus on actual software tools and how to use them rather than the science behind them.
To be fair, the graphics offered in the book are excellent and sometimes are the only way to understand a difficult concept.
The preface says to be familiar with "the content of a typical 300 level undergraduate course in genetics" -- it should be a definite prerequisite for reading this book.
The future may view this text as a foundation for GS.......2003-05-15
Every technician and/or PI should own a copy of this text for their lab. With the logical diagrams and full explanation of the text, this book is really condensed and assumes some knowledge of molecular biology. This book does not assume knowledge of genomics, but rather serves as a manual.
Excellent overview of Functional and Structural Genomics.......2002-03-20
This somewhat understated book may be overlooked based on its title, and yet it represents the best book currently in print to provide a solid overview of the science and issues in genome science, functional and structural genomics, and the subdiscipline proteomics. Chapter 1 describes current progress with mapping genomes, including the human genome and other genomes in plants and animals. Chapter 2 describes sequencing approaches and gene identification. Chapter 3 deals with gene expression and technologies. Chapter 4 focuses on proteomics including brief introductions to 2D-PAGE and mass spectrometry. This chapter also briefly introduces the reader to structural genomics, or the prediction of protein structure based on sequence through threading and modeling. After a chapter on single nucletide polymorphisms and genotyping the book concludes with a chapter on integrating genome studies including the use of in silico approaches.
Although scant in detail in parts, a major strength of the book is the wide coverage given to science of genomics and its offshoots. Overall an excellent course text for undergraduate or early postgraduate students or others interested in these emerging disciplines. I am not aware of any competing texts which such coverage and certainly not at the price of this one.
Customer Reviews:
Haunting.......2007-07-19
I really enjoyed this book - I felt it was particularly haunting at the end when I realized it was based on a true story (afraid I never took art appreciation). To me the story was appealing partly due to the "Ugly Duckling" beauty is in the eye of the beholder theme but tragic at the end in a sort of Gone with the Wind way too. I felt that the story was believable and interesting at the same time. I noticed that the cover art didn't match the content but just goes to show you once again that you can't judge a book by its cover.
Wayward novelist.......2007-05-20
Perhaps because the actual lives of the Pre-Raphaelites were so over the top, most attempts to create their lives in fiction have been failures. Nonetheless, having spent decades of my academic career teaching Victorian literature and art, I ordinarily welcome any attempt to give fictional life to Rossetti and his circle. I had thought that Nerina Shute's "A Victorian Love Story" was destined to be the nadir of these failures, but Hickey here out-nerinas Nerina. "The Wayward Muse" reads like the worst of romance novels. The situations Hickey sets up are ludicrous: Rossetti deflowers Jane high up on the scaffolding in the Oxford Union, in full sight of the other painters; Morris in bed doesn't know where to put "it" and pokes around for awhile before finding Jane's "most sensitive part"; George Eliot asks about Morris's table manners. I find no evidence that Hickey read the many, many, many available primary sources (not to mention such secondary sources as Violet Hunt and Hall Caine): they might have helped her better plot this silly novel. Hickey additionally messes with the facts. For instance, she screws up the exhumation of Lizzie's body. One of Hickey's basic problems is that she doesn't seem to know who her audience is. She drops surnames with neither first names nor identification. She hints at the founding of the Kelmscott Press and meanders around the highlands of Scotland with Ruskin and the Millais'. For better use of your time read "The French Lieutenant's Woman" or watch Ken Russell's "Dante's Inferno."
Pre-Raphaelite Entanglements.......2007-04-29
Hickey is to be commended for trodding a road less traveled, focusing on the seldom-talked-about-in-popular-culture painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his favorite model, Jane Burden Morris. Told in third person from Jane's perspective, Hickey's story is well-paced and well-researched. She does what good historical novel authors should: start with the facts but veer into fictional territory in order to flesh things out. Her prose is lean and spare, which suits Jane's character. Most importantly, she does these colorful characters justice by capturing their essence. The fictional characters mesh convincingly with what we know of the historical ones.
I read Painted Kiss last year, and thought Wayward Muse better. The author seems to have really found her groove with this one!
Not the author's fault at all, but the publisher should have put a Rossetti painting on the cover.
terrific historical biographical tale .......2007-04-29
Jane Burden knows she is ugly having heard that from her mother as well as family, friends, and neighbors. She is too tall, with a freakishly long neck, arms and legs that belong on someone even taller, which leads to clumsiness and dresses that just never fit right. Adding to her being considered the ugliest female in the Oxford slums is that at seventeen she has no breasts. She expects to wed physically abusive Tom Barnstable as her mother reminds her that he is the best she will ever have.
Everything abruptly changes when noted artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti sees Jane and thinks she is a rare beauty he must paint as his Guinevere in a mural. Her mother agrees to allow her to pose because of the fee Rossetti provides. Jane enjoys her short time each week with the painter and his colleagues. She soon realizes she loves Rosetti, but is heartbroken when he weds his ailing fiancée Lizzie. Jane accepts wealthy William Morris' proposal mostly because he as Rossetti's friend and protégé will enable her to remain near her true love. Over the next few years Jane gives birth to two children, but when Lizzie dies, Rossetti makes it clear how he feels about his Guinevere, which upsets her spouse William, who has always known he was a second choice.
The key to this terrific historical biographical tale is the ability of Elizabeth Hickey to bring to life four real people from the latter half of the nineteenth century. The story line is driven mostly by the heroine who thanks to the artist turns from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan considered the ideal of pre-Raphaelite beauty and the muse for her spouse and the artist. Fans of period pieces will enjoy this deep rich Victorian Era tale starring real persona.
Harriet Klausner
Rich writing well worth reading.......2007-03-20
(Historical fiction)
The artiste world of 19th Century London is shown in lush colors, the brush strokes of Dante Gabriel Rosetti and his muse, a poor Oxford girl who is tall, willowy and plain according to her drunken mother. Rosetti discovers Jane Burden, and with the promise of payment, she becomes his model for a painting of Guinevere. His vision is that of Lancelot and the Holy Grail, the knights Galahad, Bors, and Percival receiving the precious Grail and Sir Lancelot in the Queen's chambers.
Rosetti becomes enamored of Burden and takes her virginity while on the scaffolding in the Debating Hall. He proclaims his love and Burden thinks she shall marry him, but he leaves Oxford the next day for London because his first love is ill with consumption. This leaves William Morris to finish the paintings in Oxford. Morris is overweight, but Burden's mother, a town gossip, finds out he is wealthy and receives an allowance from copper mines. Morris falls deeply in love with Burden, but her muse-like powers exert themselves over him poetically. He begs for her hand in marriage and her mother gives her an ultimatum, marry Morris or you will be kicked out of the house.
Still longing for her dark horse, Rosetti, she marries Morris hoping she will eventually love him. After two years they move to "Red House," a stunning brick home that Morris has built for his wife. Her life is full of artists of all persuasions: painters, tapestry makers, poets and others. Burden is the talk of London, designing her own clothes for her figure, and she often sits for Rosetti and his paintings. They begin an illicit affair that whispers its way through their circle of friends and those that find them interesting. But Burden is happiest in the company of Rosetti. As he falls into the throes of mental illness, Burden goes back to her husband, Morris, and takes care of her two children, maintaining a life-long friendship with Rosetti.
A must read for the voluptuousness of Hickey's writing and the casualties of love and desire.
Armchair Interviews says: A richly descriptive book of the life and times of the mid to late 1800s.
Customer Reviews:
I'll Tell You What I Can.......2006-04-19
I don't know Ian Peddie The Editor, but I do know Ian Peddie The Professor. So far as I can tell, he's put a lot of work into this edition and isn't the type to lead one of his audience astray. Trust him, and he'll get you where you need to be.
Average customer rating:
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Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast, 1945-1970
Peter Plagens
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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ASIN: 0520223926 |
Book Description
With a new Introduction by the Author
This book, full of rare illustrations, surveys and documents the work of West Coast artists from 1945 to the 1970s, with glances back to the art schools and movements of the first half of the century. Twenty-five years after its first publication it is still our most trenchant record of that period in American art history. Writing as an artist and critic who observed firsthand the vital and innovative postwar art scene in California, Plagens has provided an invaluable record of the artists and work created in Los Angeles and San Francisco and, more briefly, in Seattle and the northwest.
Books:
- New Edge of the Anvil: A Resource Book for the Blacksmith
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
- Oil Painting for the Serious Beginner: Basic Lessons in Becoming a Good Painter
- Oil Painting for the Serious Beginner: Basic Lessons in Becoming a Good Painter
- Painting Four Seasons Of Fabulous Flowers
- Painting Sharp Focus Still Lifes: Trompe L'Oeil Oil Techniques
- Painting Sharp Focus Still Lifes: Trompe L'Oeil Oil Techniques
- Painting Sharp Focus Still Lifes: Trompe L'Oeil Oil Techniques
- Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs
- Quilling for Scrapbooks & Cards
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