Great Art

Whether it’s the high-stakes pressure of solving a last-minute problem on set or the joy of pulling off a perfect shot by the skin of your teeth, Attias brings you right into the director’s chair, sharing his knowledge and taking you through the process one challenging episode at a time.

In the early 20th century, World War I was the most devastating event humanity had yet experienced. New machines of war left tens of millions killed or wounded in the most grotesque of ways. The Great War remade the world's map, created new global powers, and brought forth some of the biggest problems still facing us today. But it also birthed a new art form: the horror film, made from the fears of a generation ruined by war. From Nosferatu to Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man, the touchstones of horror can all trace their roots to the bloodshed of the First World War.

Most art history books just go over dates and major style changes, without letting the artists speak for themselves. In For Artists by Artists, you will learn directly from the top 40 of some of the most famous artists in the world. You will see how they thought about art, nature, truth, beauty, work, other artists, and God. You will journey through the last 750 years of art history in chronological order, seeing the evolution of how painters taught and thought over time.

Are you a pub trivia enthusiast looking for some new challenges? The Great Book of Pub Trivia is the perfect companion for game nights, fun family times, fun evenings with friends, or just brushing up on your pub trivia knowledge. These trivia questions will get your brain working, and these random facts will give you bragging rights with all your friends (if you get them right).

In a half century on the national stage, William F. Buckley Jr. achieved unique stature as a polemicist and the undisputed godfather of modern American conservatism. He knew everybody, hosted everybody at his East 73rd Street maisonette, skewered everybody who needed skewering, and in general lived life on a scale, and in a swashbuckling manner, that captivated and inspired countless young conservatives across that half century.

Have you ever wanted to pick up a musical instrument and just play? Maybe it seems too late in life and, without formal education, just a hopeless dream. Maybe you already have musical ability but don’t know how to take it to the next level. The great news is that there is a powerful way to learn and develop real music-making skills without countless hours of traditional education. Both beginners and highly skilled musicians can reap the benefits.

What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it? Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms.

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental. Only 23 and newly married to the already world-famous 43-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary, a riveting first-hand account of the Battle of Okinawa from the first officer ashore, who served at the front for the battle’s entire 82-day duration, heroism that earned him a Bronze Star. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, 1,500 Allied ships and 1.5 million men gathered off the coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa and launched the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific War. The first American officer ashore was Major Art Shaw, a unit commander in the US Army’s 361 Artillery Battalion of the 96th Division, often called the Deadeyes.

During the upheavals of 2007-9, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of a Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill, and author of Lombard Street, the still-canonical guide to stopping a run on the banks, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that - decades later - inspired the radical responses to the world's worst financial crises.

Have no fear! The Great Book of Pub Trivia Volume 2 is finally here, and it’s the perfect companion for game nights, fun family times, fun evenings with friends, or just reading to brush up on your pub trivia knowledge. You’ll get instant access to fun quizzes covering different topics such as film, politics, science, history, fashion, and many more.

The Art of Writing is Yang's highly practical treatise on the four key principles of dazzling, effective writing - economy, transparency, variety, and harmony. Far from your garden-variety style guide, the principles in this audiobook apply to everyone, whether you're writing an inauguration speech or a letter home to Mom.

When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Liam Gallagher in 1994, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news all over the world. This fascinating pop history, exploring the moment British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, UNCOMMON PEOPLE takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, films like Trainspotting were international hits, rave became what everybody did - and it felt like the revolution was happening.

Ear training is one of the most rewarding skills you can develop, and it’s one that you can work on every day. Which makes total sense: Music is an aural experience, after all. Ear training helps you turn the music you hear into music you make on your guitar. This works for your own musical ideas, too: When you dream up a great riff or chord progression, you naturally want to sit down and play it right away. Ear training helps you do just that.

In another time and place, E. Gab Blackman and William Sousa "Sou" Bridgeforth might have been as close as brothers, but in 1950s Nashville they remained separated by the color of their skin. Gab, a visionary yet opportunistic radio executive, saw something no one else did: a vast and untapped market with the R&B scene exploding in Black clubs across the city. He defied his industry, culture, government, and even his own family to broadcast Black music to a national audience.

However you found your way into indie rock, once you were a listener, it felt like being part of a secret club of people who had discovered something special, something secret, something superior. In Such Great Heights, music journalist Chris DeVille brilliantly captures this cultural moment, from the early aughts and the height of indie rock, until the 2010s as streaming upends the industry and changes music forever.

A perfect introduction for anyone interested in the rich history of Western Art. Great Artists takes its listeners on a comprehensive journey through the history of art. This book, part one, provides a dedicated chapter on each of the following artists: Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Bruegel. These major painters of Western art are considered, placed in their social context, and discussed in terms of the most recent scholarship.

On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London. Simon Winchester deftly uses the resulting image - as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation - as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realized portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, his advisors Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, his wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the age, Holbein was a multifaceted genius: a humanist, satirist, and political propagandist, and a deft man whose work was rich in layers of symbolism and allusion.

Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve was a popular character appearing regularly on The Fibber McGee & Molly Show. On August 31, 1941, the character landed his own situation comedy show, The Great Gildersleeve, becoming radio’s first spin-off. Gildy moved from the town of Wistful Vista to Summerfield, where he raised his orphaned niece and nephew, Marjorie (originally played by Lurene Tuttle and followed by Louise Erickson and Mary Lee Robb) and Leroy (Walter Tetley). The household also included a cook named Birdie (Lillian Randolph).