?Most directors have one film for which they are known or possibly two,” said Francis Ford Coppola. ?Akira Kurosawa has eight or nine.” Through masterpieces such as Kagemusha, Seven Samurai, and High
Simone Weil, legendary French philosopher, political activist, and mystic, died in 1943 at a sanatorium in Kent, England, at the age of thirty-four. During her brief lifetime, Weil was a paradox of as
`Art is the most beautiful deception', said French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918). Trained within the traditionalist environment of the Paris Conservatoire, Debussy nonetheless created revolutio
From his emergence as the Bohemian 'gymnopediste' of fin-de-siecle Montmartre to his encounters with the Dada movement after World War I, composer Erik Satie famously flaunted convention, His reputati
`Marta Braun's Eadweard Muybridge will be a fundamental contribution to the history of the photographic representation of locomotion.'---Jonathan Miller`Offers a new perspective on Muybridge's life an
Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) is an iconic figure of the Beat generation. In this revealing study Phil Baker traces this cult writer's life - from the Ne
Muhammad was a religious visionary and political leader. Raised in the harsh Arabian Peninsula and orphaned while still a child, this unlikely leader and military genius received a calling to transfor
The idea of nonviolent resistance is still as essential and almost as radical today as it was when Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) first pioneered in India the protest of political tyranny—in his case ag
With a career in literature and art spanning more than sixty years, John Berger is characterized by an independent and anti-institutional approach to creativity. Working in a range of media including
American writer, composer, artist, and philosopher John Cage (1912–92) is best known for his experimental composition 4’33,” a musical score in which the performer does not play an instrument during t
He was relatively unknown in his lifetime, but Karl Marx’s theories about society, economics, and politics changed the world, led to the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union and th
The most radical and divisive composer of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg remains a hero to many, and a villain to many others. In this refreshingly balanced biography, Mark Berry tells the s
