High Art

In a work of romance and loss, a wandering boy loses his mother and finds solace in his only escape: painting. After countless portraits of her, he still can’t figure out how to sell or where to fit into the world. Stricken by poverty, he must commercialize his conflicted conscience. As Constantine rises through the world of social media influence and high-class murals, so does his addiction to drugs and reckless spending until one day, it all comes crashing down. Through this story of romance, love, and loss, with hands and soul crushed, Constantine goes on a journey to find the ...

In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo's key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives, and art, she traces the banjo's beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood.

Filled with logical yet counterintuitive answers to ordinary and extraordinary problems - whether it be buying a new home or pivoting a failing business model - Mudd's HEAD (High Efficiency Analytic Decision-making) methodology provides listeners with a battle-tested set of guiding principles that promise to bring order to even the most chaotic problems, all in five practical steps.

In Is College Worth It?, William J. Bennett and David Wilezol assess the problems of American higher education at various levels, from runaway costs to inferior academics to poor graduation rates to political indoctrination, and propose serious reforms and alternative methods for improving higher education so that it better serves our students.

5X Best-Selling & Award-Winning Author and Podcaster; Leadership, HR, Innovation, Future of Work, & Culture Global Thought Leader; Chair/Professor of Organizational Leadership; Change/OD/HR/Social Impact Consultant; Ranked in the top 20 of global researchers in the following topic areas - "Future of Work," "Global Leadership," "Organizational Development, "Public Service Motivation," and "Social Impact" (Google Scholar); ScholarGPS has ranked him the #18 scholar in the world for job satisfaction research. The Art and Science of Organizational Leadership provides actionable frameworks to ...

Gina Frangello spent her early adulthood trying to outrun a youth marked by poverty and violence. Now a long-married wife and devoted mother, the better life she carefully built is emotionally upended by the death of her closest friend. Soon, awakened to fault lines in her troubled marriage, Frangello is caught up in a recklessly passionate affair, leading a double life while continuing to project the image of the perfect family. When her secrets are finally uncovered, both her home and her identity will implode, testing the limits of desire, responsibility, love, and forgiveness.

All They Will Call You is the harrowing account of "the worst airplane disaster in California's history", which claimed the lives of 32 passengers, including 28 Mexican citizens - farmworkers who were being deported by the US government. Outraged that media reports omitted only the names of the Mexican passengers, American folk icon Woody Guthrie penned a poem that went on to become one of the most important protest songs of the 20th century.

The Show That Never Ends is the behind-the-scenes story of the extraordinary rise and fall of progressive ("prog") rock, epitomized by such classic, chart-topping bands as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Emerson Lake & Palmer, and their successors Rush, Styx, and Asia. With inside access to all the key figures, Washington Post national reporter David Weigel tells the story with the gusto and insight prog rock's fans (and its haters) will relish.

Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today's left, he's remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout—a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values.

Everybody's Doin' It is the eye-opening story of popular music's 70-year rise in the brothels, dance halls, and dives of New York City. It traces the birth of popular music, including ragtime and jazz, to convivial meeting places for sex, drink, music, and dance. Whether coming from a single piano player or a small band, live music was a nightly feature in New York's spirited dives, where men and women, often black and white, mingled freely - to the horror of the elite.

An oral-history biography of the legendary Latin American writer and Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Márquez, brimming with atmosphere and insight.

Elizabeth continues her transformation into Damon’s lifestyle, growing and embracing her desires while still hoping for something more than an arrangement. Damon comes face-to-face with emotions he has buried for years, believing the only way he can survive is to maintain control. A series of incidents finds them both beginning to deal with their emotions as they look for a middle ground. After casting Elizabeth aside, Damon realizes he may lose her and goes after her to bring her home. Pleasure is there for both, but the pain is emotional, with Damon trying to let go of some of the ...

From anonymous 10th-century troubadours to world-renowned 20th-century composers, this comprehensive commentary explores the roots of the most influential music genres of our time. Essential listening for students and lovers of great music, A History of Music in Western Civilization features music performed by world-renowned orchestras and enlightening discussions by 15 prominent music authorities, including Christopher Hogwood, Dr. Wilfrid Mellers, and others.

Dive into the world of dividend investing with "Dividend Dynamos: Mastering the Art of Dividend Investing." This comprehensive guide offers investors a step-by-step approach to building and managing a robust dividend portfolio. Learn the fundamentals of dividend stocks, strategies for selecting high-yield investments, and the power of reinvesting dividends for compounding growth. With practical insights on portfolio diversification, tax-efficient investing, and risk mitigation, this book equips both novice and seasoned investors with the tools to achieve long-term financial success through ...

Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.

Imagine a harmonious home with an ADHD child, even if your days now feel chaotic and overwhelming... Do you feel lost amidst the chaos of raising a child with ADHD, bombarded with advice that doesn’t seem to work for your unique challenges? You’re not alone. Many parents share this struggle, but there’s a way forward. This comprehensive guide offers practical, research-backed strategies to help you manage and embrace your child’s ADHD journey.

In Wild Things, Vanity Fair contributing editor Bruce Handy revisits the classics of every American childhood, from fairy tales to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and explores the back stories of their creators, using context and biography to understand how some of the most insightful, creative, and witty authors and illustrators of their times created their often deeply personal masterpieces.

Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty - a poet, a New Yorker, and an American - keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work.

With a connoisseur's insight and an offbeat sensitivity perfectly tailored to his subjects, Gifford's brief essays cover a hundred of the noir buff's favorites. His highly polished impressions take the listener through five decades of noir to find both the heart and the art of the plotline.

Set in Calcutta, London, the glacier-locked wilds of the Karakoram, and on Everest itself, The Last Englishmen is also the story of a generation. The cast of this exhilarating drama includes Indian and English writers and artists, explorers and Communist spies, Die Hards and Indian nationalists, political rogues and police informers. Key among them is a highborn Bengali poet named Sudhin Datta, a melancholy soul torn, like many of his generation, between hatred of the British Empire and a deep love of European literature, whose life would be upended by the arrival of war on his Calcutta doorstep.