Tag Archives: Books

Classic Car Books: “The Impossible Collection Of Bentley” (Assouline)

The Impossible Collection of Bentley The 100 At 100 AssoulineAssouline presents yet another fascinating volume dedicated to the preeminent British car brand—Bentley: 100. Housed in a hand-stitched leather bound, limited edition case, this all-inclusive work presents an exhaustive list of the one hundred single most important and groundbreaking Bentley models, with detailed critiques and explanations relating to each automobile’s unique engineering excellence and the various creative avenues Bentley may have taken during the manufacturing process.

Collection of Bentley The 100 at 100 book Assouline

From the 1924 3-Litre, the first Bentley to win Le Mans; to the 1959 S2, the first to feature a V8 engine; all the way up to the stunning 2018 Continental GT, this book is a decisive list of all the masterful models that have helped Bentley become the dominant and illustrious luxury car manufacturer that it is today.

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Video Interviews: 69-Year Old Professor & Author Of “Find Me”, André Aciman

André Aciman (born 2 January 1951) is an American writer. Born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, he is currently distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, where he teaches the history of literary theory and the works of Marcel Proust. Aciman previously taught creative writing at New York University and French literature at Princeton and Bard College.

In 2009, he was Visiting Distinguished Writer at Wesleyan University.

He is the author of several novels, including Call Me by Your Name (winner, in the Gay Fiction category, of the 2007 Lambda Literary Award and made into a film) and a 1995 memoir, Out of Egypt, which won a Whiting Award. Although best known for Call Me by Your Name, Aciman stated in an interview in 2019 his best book to be the novel Eight White Nights.

From Wikipedia

Video Interviews: Author Joseph S. Nye, Jr. On His Book “Do Morals Matter?”

As one of the leading figures in the field of international relations, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, has had a major influence on the way that policymakers think American foreign policy.

In his new book, “Do Morals Matter: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump,” Professor Nye explores the question of how heavily moral questions weigh on the decisions of U.S. presidents since the end of World War II. On this episode of Behind The Book, produced by Library and Knowledge Services at Harvard Kennedy School, we take a look at Professor Nye’s new book and how he assesses the legacy of past presidents based on the morality of their foreign policy.

“Do Morals Matter: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump” is published by Oxford University Press.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., is the University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus and former Dean of the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology.

His most recent books include The Power to Lead; The Future of Power; Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era; and Is the American Century Over. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the American Academy of Diplomacy.

In a recent survey of international relations scholars, he was ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers.

Collectors Books: “Watches – A Guide by Hodinkee” (Assouline)

Watches A Guide by Hodinkee Assouline book December 2019For our debut, we wanted to do something that would appeal to anyone and everyone who has the slightest interest in watches. Whether you are new to the game or have been scouring flea markets since you could walk, we want you to be able to pick up this book and gain a greater understanding of watches and all they have to offer.

So we broke it down into nine chapters: “A Brief History of Time,” “Chronographs,” “The Dive Watch,” “Travel Time,” “Military Watches,” “High Complications,” “Women and Watches,” “Dress Watches,” and “Icons.” Each chapter was written by one of our editors: Benjamin Clymer, Cara Barrett, Cole Pennington, Jack Forster, James Stacey, Jason Heaton, Jonathan Bues, and Stephen Pulvirent, with a foreword by Mr. Joe Thompson.

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New Books: “The Making Of Poetry – Coleridge, The Wordsworths And Their Year Of Marvels”

The Making of Poetry Coleridge, The Wordsworth and Their Year of Marvels Adam Nicolson 2020 US ReleaseIn The Making of Poetry, Adam Nicolson embeds himself in the reality of this unique moment, exploring the idea that these poems came from this particular place and time, and that only by experiencing the physical circumstances of the year, in all weathers and all seasons, at night and at dawn, in sunlit reverie and moonlit walks, can the genesis of the poetry start to be understood.

June 1797 to September 1798 is the most famous year in English poetry. Out of it came Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and “Kubla Khan,” as well as his unmatched hymns to friendship and fatherhood, and William Wordsworth’s revolutionary songs in Lyrical Ballads along with “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth’s paean to the unity of soul and cosmos, love and understanding.

Excerpt from The Prelude by Wordsworth and Coleridge

The poetry Wordsworth and Coleridge made was not from settled conclusions but from the adventure on which they embarked, thinking of poetry as a challenge to all received ideas, stripping away the dead matter, looking to shed consciousness and so change the world. What emerges is a portrait of these great figures seen not as literary monuments but as young men, troubled, ambitious, dreaming of a vision of wholeness, knowing they had greatness in them but still in urgent search of the paths toward it.

The artist Tom Hammick accompanied Nicolson for much of the year, making woodcuts from the fallen timber in the park at Alfoxden where the Wordsworths lived. Interspersed throughout the book, his images bridge the centuries, depicting lives at the source of our modern sensibility: a psychic landscape of doubt and possibility, full of beauty and thick with desire for a kind of connectedness that seems permanently at hand and yet always out of reach.

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Profiles: The Minimalist Aesthetic Of London Architect John Pawson

From a The Modern House online article:

“Simplicity in architecture can sometimes only be achieved by the most complex of means.”

John Pawson Anatomy of Minimum PHAIDON Publishing 2019British architectural designer John Pawson has, in a career spanning over three decades, created an inimitable body of work characterized by its distillment of the fundamental ingredients of architecture into their most elemental, elegant expressions.

His design practice, which began primarily with residential commissions, now extends to churches, museums, ballet sets, textiles, kitchenware and furniture. Despite his minimalistArchitect John Pawson approach, Pawson is sensitive to the intimate rituals of daily life and his buildings are far from austere: instead, they elegantly make the case for the clarity and freedom to be found in the act of reduction.

In a new book published by Phaidon, writer Alison Morris explores Pawson’s most recent projects, shedding light on his working process and influences accompanied by stunning photographs, drawings and imagery from his personal journal.

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Performing Arts: “The Letters Of Cole Porter” (New Yorker Review)

From a New Yorker online article review:

The Letters Of Cole Porter Yale University Press November 2019Beneath his smooth, genial, almost inhumanly productive and evasive surface, there were turbulent waters. His very name, for all its air of Ivy League ease, represents a burdened legacy. The Porters were his difficult, scapegrace father’s family; the Coles were his mother’s rich and ambitious Indiana family. He was a Porter by birth but, if his mother had anything to do with it, would be a Cole for life.

Certainly, Porter’s ghost could not ask for better care than he has been given in “The Letters of Cole Porter” (Yale), edited by Cliff Eisen, a professor of music history at King’s College London, and Dominic McHugh, a musicologist at the University of Sheffield (and the editor of Alan Jay Lerner’s letters). Laid out with a meticulous scholarly apparatus, as though this were the correspondence of Grover Cleveland, every turn in the songwriter’s story is deep-dived for exact chronology, and every name casually dropped by Porter gets a worried, explicatory footnote.

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New Literary Books: “Parisian Lives – Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir And Me” (Bair)

Deirdre Bair Parisian Lives Samuel Beckett Simone de Beauvoir and Me A Memoir BookDe Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other – and lived essentially on the same street. While quite literally dodging one subject or the other, and sometimes hiding out in the backrooms of the great cafés of Paris, Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile.

Drawing on Bair’s extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes and details that were considered impossible to publish at the time, Parisian Lives is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.

In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted PhD who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could write his biography despite never having written – or even read – a biography herself. The next seven years of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games resulted in Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch?

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Top New Travel Books: “52 Places to Go in 2020” (NYT)

Through more than 100 full-color photographs, “52 Places to Go in 2020” takes you to tranquil beaches, ice kingdoms, ground-breaking museums, jungle paradises, picturesque mountains and world-class restaurants.

And for those who like to keep their travels close to home, it contains seven surprising locations in America, including (spoiler alert) Washington, D.C., the No. 1 destination of 2020.

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Take a trip around the world with this must-have book detailing our selection of the top destinations of 2020. Whether you’re a frequent flier, weekend traveler or daring explorer, The Times’s annual “52 Places to Go” list will help you plan vacations, set aspirations and check off bucket lists. For the first time, the 52 locations are presented as a hardcover book packed with photographs, maps and information.

The Times has been publishing “Places to Go” in its Travel section since 2006 to inspire, delight and motivate readers to explore the world. This year’s list provides travel inspiration to cities and countries that are amazing, beautiful, culturally significant and, most important, timely. Each destination has a compelling reason to visit this year.

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Literature: “Prometheus Unbound” By Percy Bysshe Shelley First Published 200 Years Ago In 1820

Prometheus Unbound Percy Bysshe Shelley 1820Prometheus Unbound is a four-act lyrical drama by Percy Bysshe Shelley, first published in 1820. It is concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus, who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity, for which he is subjected to eternal punishment and suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by the classical Prometheia, a trilogy of plays attributed to Aeschylus. Shelley’s play concerns Prometheus’ release from captivity, but unlike Aeschylus’ version, there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Jupiter (Zeus). Instead, Jupiter is abandoned by his supportive elements and falls from power, which allows Prometheus to be released.

Excerpt:

As you speak, your words
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
With shapes. Methought among these lawns together
We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;

prometheus-unbound-percy-bysshe-shelley.jpg

Political – Prometheus, then, is also Shelley’s answer to the mistakes of the French Revolution and its cycle of replacing one tyrant with another. Shelley wished to show how a revolution could be conceived which would avoid doing just that, and in the end of this play, there is no power in charge at all; it is an anarchist’s paradise.

Shelley finishes his “Preface” to the play with an evocation of his intentions as a poet:

My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that, until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness.

From Wikipedia