When it comes to classic French eateries in New York City, few are more iconic than SOHO’s Balthazar. We sent Alex Delany to this famous brasserie to try one of everything on the breakfast menu, and we didn’t send him alone. For this episode, he was joined by French-speaking pastry expert Claire Saffitz to eat way too much food and drink multiple bowls (yes, bowls) of milky coffee.
The Cord 810, and later Cord 812, was a luxury automobile produced by the Cord Automobile division of the Auburn Automobile Company in 1936 and 1937. It was the first American-designed and built front wheel drive car with independent front suspension. It followed the 1934 Citroën Traction Avant and the Cord L-29, both of which also had front wheel drive. Both models were also the first to offer hidden headlights.
The styling of the Cord 810 was the work of designer Gordon M. Buehrig and his team of stylists, which included young Vince Gardner and Alex Tremulis. While the first American front-wheel-drive car with independent front suspension, it had an archaic tube rear axle with semi-elliptic rear springs. Power came from a 4,739 cc (289 cu in) Lycoming V8 of the same 125 hp (93 kW) as the L-29. The semi-automatic four-speed transmission (three plus overdrive) extended in front of the engine, like on a Traction Avant. This allowed Buehrig to dispense with the driveshaft and transmission tunnel; as a result, the new car was so low it required no running boards. It had a 125 in (3,175 mm) wheelbase (shared with several 812 body styles), and in 1936 came in four models: the entry-level sedan at US$1995, the Beverly sedan ($2095), Sportsman ($2145), and Phaeton ($2195). The 1937 812s had the same models, priced $2445, $2545, $2585, and $2645, plus two more, on a 132 in (3,400 mm) wheelbase, the $2960 Custom Beverly and $3060 Custom Berline.
From Wikipedia
Challenging widely held assumptions about the diminishing abilities of an ageing brain, leading neuroscientist Daniel Levitin argues that we should view getting older as a beneficial experience rather than a form of cognitive entropy. Persuasively argued and consistently surprising, The Changing Mind will alter your perception of the relationship between age and intellect.
We have long been encouraged to think of old age as synonymous with deterioration. Yet, recent studies show that our decision-making skills improve as we age and our happiness levels peak in our eighties. What really happens to our brains as we get older?
More of us are living into our eighties than ever before. In The Changing Mind, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel Levitin invites us to dramatically shift our understanding of growing older, demonstrating its many cognitive benefits. He draws on cutting-edge research to challenge common and flawed beliefs, including assumptions around memory loss and the focus on lifespan instead of ‘healthspan’.
Levitin reveals the evolving power of the human brain from infancy to late adulthood. Distilling the findings from over 4000 papers, he explains the importance of personality traits, lifestyle, memory and community on ageing, offering actionable tips that we can all start now, at any age.
Featuring compelling insights from individuals who have thrived far beyond the conventional age of retirement, this book offers realistic guidelines and practical cognition-enhancing tricks for everyone to follow during every decade of their life. This is a radical exploration of what we all can learn from those who age joyously.
Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post–Second World War Germany, in both broad and very personal terms.
This handsomely designed book features approximately 100 of his key canvases, from photo paintings created in the early 1960s to portraits and later large-scale abstract series, as well as select works in glass.
New essays by eminent scholars address a variety of themes: Sheena Wagstaff evaluates the conceptual import of the artist’s technique; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh discusses the poignant Birkenau paintings (2014); Peter Geimer explores the artist’s enduring interest in photographic imagery; Briony Fer looks at Richter’s family pictures against traditional painting genres and conventions; Brinda Kumar investigates the artist’s engagement with landscape as a site of memory; André Rottmann considers the impact of randomization and chance on Richter’s abstract works; and Hal Foster examines the glass and mirror works. As this book demonstrates, Richter’s rich and varied oeuvre is a testament to the continued relevance of painting in contemporary art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden on 9th February 1932, the first child of Horst and Hildegard Richter. A daughter, Gisela, followed four years later. They were in many respects an average middle-class family: Horst worked as a teacher at a secondary school in Dresden and Hildegard was a bookseller who liked to play the piano.1 In an interview with Robert Storr, Richter described his early family life as “simple, orderly, structured – mother playing the piano and father earning money.”2
The study is divided into two parts: the first examines Dalí’s beginnings as an unknown artist. We witness how the young Dalí deployed all the isms―Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism, Fauvism, Purism and Futurism―with playful mastery, and how he would borrow from prevailing trends before ridiculing and abandoning them. The second part unveils the conclusions of Dalí’s lifelong inquiries, as well as the great legacy he left in works such as Tuna Fishing (1966/67) or Hallucinogenic Toreador (1970). It includes previously unpublished homages to Velázquez or Michelangelo, painted to the same end as the variations on past masters done by his contemporary, Picasso.
At the age of six, Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) wanted to be a cook. At the age of seven, he wanted to be Napoleon. “Since then,” he later said, “my ambition has steadily grown, and my megalomania with it. Now I want only to be Salvador Dalí, I have no greater wish.” Throughout his life, Dalí was out to become Dalí: that is, one of the most significant artists and eccentrics of the 20th century.
This weighty volume is the most complete study of Dalí’s painted works ever published. After years of research, Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret located painted works by the master that had been inaccessible for years―so many, in fact, that almost half the featured illustrations appear in public for the first time in this book.
More than a catalogue raisonné, this book contextualizes Dalí’s oeuvre and its meanings by examining contemporary documents, from writings and drawings to material from other facets of his work, including ballet, cinema, fashion, advertising, and objets d’art. Without these crutches to support analysis, the paintings would simply be a series of many images.
In this much-anticipated book, a leading economist argues that many key problems of the American economy are due not to the flaws of capitalism or the 
inevitabilities of globalization but to the concentration of corporate power. By lobbying against competition, the biggest firms drive profits higher while depressing wages and limiting opportunities for investment, innovation, and growth.
Why are cell-phone plans so much more expensive in the United States than in Europe? It seems a simple question. But the search for an answer took Thomas Philippon on an unexpected journey through some of the most complex and hotly debated issues in modern economics. Ultimately he reached his surprising conclusion: American markets, once a model for the world, are giving up on healthy competition. Sector after economic sector is more concentrated than it was twenty years ago, dominated by fewer and bigger players who lobby politicians aggressively to protect and expand their profit margins. Across the country, this drives up prices while driving down investment, productivity, growth, and wages, resulting in more inequality. Meanwhile, Europe―long dismissed for competitive sclerosis and weak antitrust―is beating America at its own game.
Philippon, one of the world’s leading economists, did not expect these conclusions in the age of Silicon Valley start-ups and millennial millionaires. But the data from his cutting-edge research proved undeniable. In this compelling tale of economic detective work, we follow him as he works out the basic facts and consequences of industry concentration in the U.S. and Europe, shows how lobbying and campaign contributions have defanged antitrust regulators, and considers what all this means for free trade, technology, and innovation. For the sake of ordinary Americans, he concludes, government needs to return to what it once did best: keeping the playing field level for competition. It’s time to make American markets great―and free―again.
At the heart of Central Asia lies a land where colossal mountains and sweeping valleys sleep under a blanket of lush greenery. Crowned with golden palaces and wondrous monuments, the architectural landscape of the region is so rich with detail, the structures have been said to mirror the heavens themselves.
One of the few destinations on Earth where imagination aligns with reality, Uzbekistan flourishes with unparalleled scenery and unforgotten traditions. The towns and cities are like ‘open museums’, each edifice offering a unique and intricate aesthetic, each a testament to diverse cultural influences and diverse periods of history. Nature and architecture have a unique relationship, seemingly inspired by each other, as if they were trying to to outdo each other with their beauty. Discover the beautiful colors, textures and flavors of this incredible culture and journey through the cities of the Silk Road and the lands of Alexander The Great with stunning original photography by Laziz Hamani.
For over 40 years, Yaffa Assouline has captured the luxury and publishing industry as a journalist, consultant and creative art director. She specializes in innovative and made-to measure publishing. Uzbekistan was inspired by Yaffa’s desire to introduce the world to a country unknown to most: an exotic land filled with immense beauty unseen to most eyes. For more than a year, Yaffa embarked on a journey where she captured the essence of the country, from east to west, north to south, filled with unforgettable encounters along the way. It was a vast undertaking—given a place with such a rich culture, long diverse history and all this beauty to offer—to give a taste of the flavor of the country. The book is an invitation to voyage, to discover more and to see what could only be fully appreciated with one’s own eyes.
Photographer Laziz Hamani, is long-time friend of Yaffa Assouline. With his talent and eye for intimate details, he was the only person who was suited to be Yaffa’s partner – a visual scribe in this adventure. Of Berber origin, he was born and lives in Paris. He is passionate about creating beautiful images, his life defined by a constant search for aesthetics and meaning. He has worked with many prestigious luxury brands, such as Dior, Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre and with designer Axel Vervoordt; and he has collaborated with Assouline Publishing on more than twenty titles.
The bard and the visual artists he inspired.
Phoebe C. Segal, Mary Bryce Comstock Curator of Greek and Roman Art
Homer is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy. Many accounts of Homer’s life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.
From Wikipedia
For the 1961 model year, the Dart continued as the smallest full-size Dodge. It retained the 118 in (2,997 mm) wheelbase, and was restyled to emulate the larger Polara. The same three trim levels were available: the premium Phoenix, mid-range Pioneer, and base Seneca. Once again, wagons shared the Polara’s 122 in/310 cm wheelbase; they also shared the Polara’s unique side-mounted taillights.
The Dodge Dart is a line of automobiles marketed by Dodge from the 1959 to 1976 model years in North America, with production extended to later years in various other markets.
The Dart name originally appeared on a 1956 Chrysler show car featuring a streamlined body designed by the Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Ghia that was later modified and renamed the Dart Diablo. The production Dart was introduced as a lower-priced, full-size Dodge in 1960 and 1961, became a mid-size car for 1962, and then was a compact from 1963 to 1976.
From Wikipedia
Take a close look at the tombs of the Napatan kings who conquered and ruled Egypt from the late 8th century to 666 BCE, using objects that the MFA excavated from 1913 to 1932 with archeologist George Reisner.
Napatan kings later held sway over the kingdom of Kush in the northern Sudan, and built pyramids for themselves and their wives in cemeteries at Kurru and Napata. Studying these lavishly decorated pyramids, and the mortuary rites that took place in the attached chapels, makes clear some of the differences between ancient Egyptian and Napatan beliefs and priorities.
Susan K. Doll, Nubian scholar
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Boomers Daily 