An ingeniously orchestrated popular history brings to life the most pivotal decade of the twentieth century As the Roaring Twenties wind down, Jean-Paul Sartre waits in a Paris café for a first date with Simone de Beauvoir, who never shows. Marlene Dietrich slips away from a loveless marriage to cruise the dive bars of Berlin. The fledgling writer Vladimir Nabokov places a freshly netted butterfly at the end of his wife's bed. Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Zelda and Scott, Dalí and Gala, Picasso and his many muses, Henry and June and Anaïs Nin, the entire extended family of Thomas Mann, and a host of other fascinating and famous figures make art and love, write and row, bed and wed and betray. They do not yet know that they, along with millions of others, will soon be forced to contemplate flight--or fight--as the world careens from one global conflict to the next.

Love in a Time of Hate: Art and Passion in the Shadow of War

Biographies & Memoirs

Illies, Florian

Arts & Literature

Riverhead Books

No German painter evokes such strong emotions as Caspar David Friedrich: his evening skies remain icons of longing, his mountain vistas testaments to the grandeur of nature.&nbsp; He inspired Samuel Beckett to write&nbsp;Waiting for Godot&nbsp;and Walt Disney to create&nbsp;Bambi. Goethe, however, was so enraged by the enigmatic melancholy of Friedrich's paintings that he wanted to smash them on the edge of a table. In a sweeping journey through time, bestselling author Florian Illies tells the story of Friedrich's paintings and their impact on subsequent generations.&nbsp; Many of his most beautiful paintings were burned, first in his birthplace and then in World War II; others, like the&nbsp;Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, emerge from the mists of history a hundred years after Friedrich's death. Illies recounts the story of how Friedrich's paintings ended up at the Russian czar's court, others among a pile of winter tires in a Mafia car repair shop, and others still in the kitchen of a German social housing apartment.&nbsp; Adored by Hitler and Rainer Maria Rilke, despised by Stalin and by the generation of 68, this compelling narrative dances through 250 years of history as seen through Friedrich's art and life. As a result, the man himself becomes flesh and blood before our very eyes.

The Magic of Silence: Caspar David Friedrich's Journey Through Time

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Polity

An International Bestseller “An absolute gem of a book.” —The Observer Just before one of its darkest moments came the twentieth century’s most exciting year . . . It was the year Henry Ford first put a conveyer belt in his car factory, and the year Louis Armstrong first picked up a trumpet. It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract, and Coco Chanel and Prada opened their first dress shops. It was the year Proust began his opus, Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring, and the first Armory Show in New York introduced the world to Picasso and the world of abstract art. It was the year the recreational drug now known as ecstasy was invented. It was 1913, the year before the world plunged into the catastrophic darkness of World War I. In a witty yet moving narrative that progresses month by month through the year, and is interspersed with numerous photos and documentary artifacts (such as Kafka’s love letters), Florian Illies ignores the conventions of the stodgy tome so common in “one year” histories. Forefronting cultural matters as much as politics, he delivers a charming and riveting tale of a world full of hope and unlimited possibility, peopled with amazing characters and radical politics, bristling with new art and new technology . . . even as ominous storm clouds began to gather.

1913: The Year Before the Storm

Melville House

1913: The Year before the Storm

A witty yet moving narrative worked up from sketched biographical fragments, 1913 is an intimate vision of a world that is about to change forever.
The stuffy conventions of the nineteenth century are receding into the past, and 1913 heralds a new age of unlimited possibility. Kafka falls in love; Louis Armstrong learns to play the trumpet; a young seamstress called Coco Chanel opens her first boutique; Charlie Chaplin signs his first movie contract; and new drugs like cocaine usher in an age of decadence.
Yet everywhere there is the premonition of ruin - the number 13 is omnipresent, and in London, Paris and Vienna, artists take the omen and act as if there were no tomorrow. In a Munich hotel lobby, Rilke and Freud discuss beauty and transience; Proust sets out in search of lost time; and while Stravinsky celebrates the Rite of Spring with industrial cacophony, an Austrian postcard painter by the name of Adolf Hitler sells his conventional cityscapes.

The Clerkenwell Press

1913: Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts

History

Military

FISCHER, S.

Gerade war der Himmel noch blau: Texte zur Kunst

1913 - Was ich unbedingt noch erzahlen wollte: Die Fortsetzung des Bestsellers 1913 (German Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

S. Fischer Verlag GmbH

In an inimitable and beguiling manner, Maki Na Kamura has developed a style in recent years that genuinely stems from the 21st century and nevertheless builds upon historical depths. As a conceptual artist she gets around the limitations and conventional definitions of the medium of painting. In her breathtakingly fine works, Maki Na Kamura also interweaves visions of European art history. We think we are seeing silk as the transparent colors softly peter out and yet give the paintings their forms. She marvellously shifts between periods, styles and a permanent questioning about certainties.The paintings in this catalogue are a response to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the illustrious French painter of the 19th century known for his mysterious works. Maki Na Kamura sensitively and challenging concentrates on the vibrant essence of the great Puvis – while leading her own enigmatic creations to new compositional and coloristic heights.

Seen by a Painter

Deutscher Kunstverlag Gmbh

Als Florian Illies vor drei Jahren Generation Golf vorlegte, glaubte er, es werde künftig keine weitere Generalinspektion seiner Jahrgänge anstehen, denn »Veränderungen wird die Zukunft kaum bringen«. Doch weit gefehlt! Denn plötzlich ist sie da, die Krise: die kranke Weltwirtschaft, der 11. September und die ersten Falten. Und sie hat das Lebensgefühl der um 1970 Geborenen entscheidend verändert – sie müssen also erneut durch den TÜV.Die Golfer sind aus ihrem Schönheitsschlaf gerissen worden, reiben sich nun verwundert die Augen über die eigene Naivität und bekennen: »Ich könnte mir vorstellen, auch mal was anderes zu machen.« Nur was? Was sollen sie bloß in der Zeit machen, in der sie früher über Aktienkurse sprachen? Wie wäre es mit einem Generationenkonflikt? Nichts schwerer als das, stellt Illies erstaunt fest. Denn seine Altersgenossen müssten das ja erst mit den Eltern beratschlagen.Illies konfrontiert uns in Generation Golf zwei mit der Quarterlife Crisis dieser so unentschiedenen Generation. Doch er stimmt dabei nicht in das allgemeine Klagelied ein. Die meisten seiner Altersgenossen haben das Gejammer sowieso längst satt und wollen endich wieder über sich selbst lachen. Humorvoll serviert er seine scharfen Beobachtungen und liefert uns so einen aktuellen Verkehrsbericht über die glamourösen Neunziger und die jetzt folgenden Crashtests.

Generation Golf Zwei (German Edition)

Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Illies, Florian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Illies, Florian