Terrible Beauty A Cultural History Of The Twentieth Century

Author : Peter Watson
Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN 13 : 178022673X
Total Pages : 848 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Terrible Beauty: A Cultural History of the Twentieth Century written by Peter Watson and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the twentieth century which covers all the ideas, people, great events, literary and artistic movements, scientific discoveries which have shaped the twentieth century. Terrible Beauty presents a unique narrative of the twentieth century. Unlike more conventional histories, where the focus is on political events and personalities, on wars, treaties and elections, this book concentrates on the ideas that made the century so rich, rewarding and provocative. Beginning with four seminal ideas which were introduced in 1900 - the unconscious, the gene, the quantum and Picasso's first paintings in Paris - the book brings together the main areas of thought and juxtaposes the most original and influential ideas of our time in an immensely readable narrative. From the creation of plastic to Norman Mailer, from the discovery of the 'Big Bang' to the Counterculture, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Salman Rushdie, and Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the book's range is encyclopedic. We meet in these pages the other twentieth century, the writers, the artists, the scientists and philosophers who were not cowed by the political and military disasters raging around them, and produced some of the most amazing and rewarding ideas by which we live. Terrible Beauty, endlessly stimulating and provocative, affirms that there was much more to the twentieth century than war and genocide.

Author : Peter Watson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780297840756
Total Pages : 847 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Terrible Beauty written by Peter Watson and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 847 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All changed, changed utterly; A terrible beauty is born Easter 1916, W B Yeats Terrible Beauty presents a unique narrative of the twentieth century. Unlike more conventional histories, where the focus is on political events and personalities, on wars, treaties and elections, this book concentrates on the ideas that made the century so rich, rewarding and provocative. Beginning with four seminal ideas which were introduced in 1900 - the unconscious, the gene, the quantum and Picasso's first paintings in Paris - the book brings together the main areas of thought and juxtaposes the most original and influential ideas of our time in an immensely readable narrative. From the creation of plastic to Norman Mailer, from the discovery of the 'Big Bang' to the Counterculture, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Salman Rushdie, and Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the book's range is encyclopedic. We meet in these pages the other twentieth century, the writers, the artists, the scientists and philosophers who were not cowed by the political and military disasters raging around them, and produced some of the most amazing and rewarding ideas by which we live. Terrible Beauty, endlessly stimulating and provocative, affirms that there was much more to the twentieth century than war and genocide.

Author : Peter Watson
Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN 13 : 9781842124444
Total Pages : 847 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Terrible Beauty written by Peter Watson and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2001 with total page 847 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the twentieth century which covers all the ideas, people, great events, literary and artistic movements, scientific discoveries which have shaped the twentieth century. Terrible Beauty presents a unique narrative of the twentieth century. Unlike more conventional histories, where the focus is on political events and personalities, on wars, treaties and elections, this book concentrates on the ideas that made the century so rich, rewarding and provocative. Beginning with four seminal ideas which were introduced in 1900 - the unconscious, the gene, the quantum and Picasso's first paintings in Paris - the book brings together the main areas of thought and juxtaposes the most original and influential ideas of our time in an immensely readable narrative. From the creation of plastic to Norman Mailer, from the discovery of the 'Big Bang' to the Counterculture, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Salman Rushdie, and Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the book's range is encyclopedic. We meet in these pages the other twentieth century, the writers, the artists, the scientists and philosophers who were not cowed by the political and military disasters raging around them, and produced some of the most amazing and rewarding ideas by which we live. Terrible Beauty, endlessly stimulating and provocative, affirms that there was much more to the twentieth century than war and genocide.

Author : Jeanne Theoharis
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807075876
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A More Beautiful and Terrible History written by Jeanne Theoharis and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions. Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done. Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction

Author : Nancy Baker
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504095022
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Terrible Beauty written by Nancy Baker and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic fairy tale gets a horrifying, adult twist, in this suspenseful romance by the author of The Night Inside. Twenty years ago, Simon Donovan, an antiquities scholar, wronged Sidonie Moreau, his former research assistant—and she has not forgotten. Threatening to expose him, she demands he come to her remote mansion in the mountainous north to repay his debt. But she wasn’t expecting his son, Matthew, a struggling painter, to take his place. Matthew is intrigued by the mysterious Sidonie, but when she reveals what she wants, he is horrified: his blood, willingly given. No harm will come to him if he refuses, and his days leave him free to paint as he pleases, but each night she must ask and he must answer. Trapped by the vast wilderness all around them, Matthew has no choice but to submit to her terms. Although he vows to never surrender to Sidonie, Matthew cannot ignore her smile, her charm, or the sorrow in her eyes. Grappling with secrets within his heart, tempted by desire and despair, he knows one night he just might say yes . . . Praise for A Terrible Beauty “A polished and enchanting tale. . . . It is, in a word, breathtaking.” —Ottawa Citizen “Baker’s prose is lush and sensual . . . she has a real gift for making the fantastic seem plausible and investing the mundane with eerie significance.” —Sunday Sun (Toronto) “A Terrible Beauty is modern Canadian Gothic. . . . Nancy Baker shows her mastery of the form—the mysterious letter, the journey into the wilderness, the shadows that hide from the flickering firelight—and her real affection for a good ol’ fashioned vampire yarn.” —Telegraph-Journal “Baker’s narrative is seductive and compelling. Like Rice, she transcends the horror genre.” —The Province “Don’t hold your breath waiting for Disney to film this very adult and erotic version of Beauty and the Beast.” —Winnipeg Free Press

Author : Marian Eide
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813942365
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Terrible Beauty written by Marian Eide and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If art is our bid to make sense of the senseless, there is hardly more fertile creative ground than that of the twentieth century. From the trench poetry of World War I and Holocaust memoirs by Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel to the post-colonial novels of southern Asia and the anti-apartheid plays of the South African Market Theater, writers have married beauty and horror. This "century of trauma" produced writing at once saturated in political violence and complicated by the ethics of aesthetic representation. Stretching across genres and the globe, Terrible Beauty charts a course of aesthetic reconciliation between empathy and evil in the great literature of the twentieth century. The "violent aesthetic"—a category the author traces back to Plato and Nietzsche—accommodates the pleasure people take not only in destruction itself but also in its rendering. As readers, we oscillate between a fascination with atrocity and an ethical imperative to bear witness. Arguing for the immersive experience of literature as particularly conducive to ethical contemplation, Marian Eide plumbs the aesthetic power and ethical purpose of this creative tension. By invoking the reader as complicit—both stricken witness and enthralled voyeur— Terrible Beauty sheds new light on the relationship between violence, literature, and the moral burdens of art.

Author : Lizzie Ostrom
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1681772892
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Perfume: A Century of Scents written by Lizzie Ostrom and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Signature scents and now-lost masterpieces; the visionaries who conceived them; the wild and wonderful campaigns that launched them; the women and men who wore them—every perfume has a tale to tell. Join Lizzie Ostrom on an olfactory adventure as she explores the trends and crazes that have shaped the way we’ve spritzed. One hundred perfumes and scents in all their fragrant glory reveal a fascinating social history of the past century. From the belle epoque through the swinging sixties, to the naughty nineties and beyond, Ostrom brings intelligence and wit to this most ravishing of subjects. There was the patriotic impact of English Lavender during World War I and perfumes that captured the Egyptomania of the 1920s. Estee Lauder created "Youth Dew" and with it, distilled the essence of 1950's suburbia. Patchouli oil—the "anti-perfume" of the 1960s—was sure to keep money out of the hands of corporations and "the man." And who could forget the fervor created by the grunge androgyny of CK One? Scent is truly the passport to memory, making Perfume both a lush treat and an insightful examination of the twentieth century through the most mysterious of the five sense.

Author : Peter Watson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 847 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Modern Mind written by Peter Watson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 847 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of "War on the Mind" presents a major narrative history of the thoughts, ideas, individuals, scientific discoveries, literature, and art of the 20th century. This major narrative history of the people and ideas that shaped the modern world is a brilliantly reasoned examination of the thought and individuals that made twentieth-century culture. From Freud to Babbitt, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the books range is encyclopedic, covering the major writers, artists, scientists, and philosophers who produced the ideas by which we live. Beginning with four seminal ideas that were introduced in 1900 -- the unconscious, the gene, the quantum, and Picasso's first paintings in Paris-Peter Watson has produced a fluent and engaging narrative of the intellectual tradition of the past century. The book is divided into four parts -- Freud to Wittgenstein; Spengler to Animal Farm; Sartre to the Sea of Tranquility; the counterculture to Kosovo -- and there are forty-two chapters. Watson emphasizes that "the century may be understood as a period during which the scientific method colonized all modes of thought and changed the way thinking is done." He sees the first half of the century as a period of discovery and the last half as a period of analysis, synthesis, and understanding, and he explores the role of the United States in setting the century's agenda in many areas. Unlike more conventional histories, in which the focus is on political events and personalities, The Modern Mind is an illuminating blueprint of twentieth-century thought and culture and the men and women who created it.

Author : Michael Hulse
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 145329905X
Total Pages : 1140 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The 20th Century in Poetry written by Michael Hulse and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 1140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical timeline of more than four hundred 20th-century poems. “[A] prodigious harvest . . . an entire universe of poetry lives here” (Booklist, starred review). This groundbreaking anthology presents in chronological order over four hundred poems written during the twentieth century. The authors, both published poets themselves, give an overview of each period of history, while notes to the poems place each one in its historical context and trace the century’s poetic development. Concise biographies for each poet complete the anthology. By organizing the poems in chronological order, readers will see poets in a new light. Here A. E. Houseman, for example, rubs shoulders with T. S. Eliot, showing that traditional forms can hold their own against the modernist orthodoxy. All the major events of the twentieth century are reflected in the choice of poems within these pages. Including poems by Noël Coward, Rudyard Kipling, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Robert Frost, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Philip Larkin, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, W. H. Auden, e. e. cummings, Dylan Thomas, Kingsley Amis, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Frank O’Hara, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, John Updike, Robert Penn Warren, among a host of others, this richly rewarding collection captures the history of the twentieth century within one monumental volume.

Author : Alex Ross
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1429932880
Total Pages : 640 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rest Is Noise written by Alex Ross and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.