Books about Bullfighting from Amazon.com

Hemingway's Classic Portrait Of The Pageantry Of Bullfighting

Still considered one of the best books ever written about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon reflects Hemingway's belief that bullfighting was more than mere sport. Here he describes and explains the technical aspects of this dangerous ritual, and "the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped on a stick." Seen through his eyes, bullfighting becomes an art, a richly choreographed ballet, with performers who range from awkward amateurs to masters of great grace and cunning.

A fascinating look at the history and grandeur of bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon is also a deeper contemplation on the nature of cowardice and bravery, sport and tragedy, and is enlivened throughout by Hemingway's pungent commentary on life and literature.

.
Price: $7.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An Anchor Books Original

One day, on the brink of despair and contemplating her own mortality, novelist A. L. Kennedy is offered an assignment she can’t refuse–an opportunity to travel to Spain and cover a sport that represents the ultimate confrontation with death: bullfighting.

The result is this remarkable book, which takes Kennedy and her readers from the living room of her Glasgow flat to the plazas del toros of Spain and inside the mesmerizing, mystifying, brutal, and beautiful world of the bullfight. Here the sport is death: matadors (literally "killers")are men and, increasingly, women who, not unlike the Roman gladiators before them, provide a spectacle to the crowd, a dance in which their own death is as present as that of the bull. Wonderfully relaying the elements of the sport, from the breeding of the bulls and the training of the matadors to the intricate choreography of the bullfight and its strange connection to the Inquisition, Kennedy meditates on a culture that we may not countenance or fully understand but which is made riveting by the precision of her prose and the passion and humor of her narrative.
.
Price: $1.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

MOn Thursday, August 28, 1947, in the bull ring at the Spanish town of Linares, a thirty-year-old millionaire called Manolete (Manuel Laureano Rodriguez) and a Miura bull named Islero killed each other. Conrad recounts Manolete̢۪s extraordinary life in The Death of Manolete, for the first time in English.

He shows the breeding that made the Spanish boy, the tempering that made the young torero, the sacrifice that made the man, the girl who brought him love, the acclaim that brought him incredible success and finally its price...the undoing that began slowly and ended in one last great afternoon and in an untimely death that put out the brightest flame in Spain. Manolete fired the Latin imagination as no one had done since El Cid. He was a symbol of Latin pride, valor, and chivalry. But the crowds owned him and he did their bidding...and they had bid him to die.

.
Price: $7.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The matador flourishes his cape, the bull charges, the crowd cheers: this is the image of Spain best known to the world. But while the bull has long been a symbol of Spanish culture, it carries more meaning than has previously been recognized In this book, anthropologist Carrie B. Douglass views bulls and bullfighting as a means of discussing fundamental oppositions in Spanish society and explains the political significance of those issues for one of Europe's most regionalized countries. In talking about bulls and bullfighting, observes Douglass, one ends up talking not only about differences in region, class, and politics in Spain but also about that country's ongoing struggle between modernity and tradition. She relates how Spaniards and outsiders see bullfighting as representative of a traditional, irrational Spain contrasted with a more civilized Europe, and she shows how Spaniards' ambivalence about bullfighting is actually a way of expressing ambivalence about the loss of traditional culture in a modern world. To fully explore the symbolism of bulls and bullfighting, Douglass offers an overview of Spain's fiesta cycle, in which the bull is central. She broadly and meticulously details three different fiestas through ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a number of years, delineating the differences in festivals held in different regions. She also shows how a cycle of these fiestas may hold the key to resolving some of Spain's fundamental political contradictions by uniting the different regions of Spain and reconciling opposing political camps--the right, which holds that there is one Spain, and the left, which contends that there are many. Bulls, Bullfighting, and Spanish Identities is an intriguing study of symbolism used to examine the broader anthropological issues of identity and nationhood. Through its focus on the political discourse of bulls and bullfighting, it makes an original contribution to understanding not only Spanish politics but also Spain's place in the modern world..
Price: $18.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Ernest Hemingway, is best-known to layman and aficionado alike for his fiction and related prose accounts of bullfighting (toreo) as a cross between romantic risk and a drunken party. He sees it as an elaborate substitute for war, ending in wounds or death. Although Hemingway's descriptions of the "beauty" in toreo are lyrical, they are short on imaginative creation of how such beauty, through technique and discipline, comes about. John McCormick sorts through the complexities of toreo, to suggest the aesthetic, social, and moral dimensions of an art that is geographically limited, but universal when seen in round.

While attracted to Hemingway's approach, McCormick knew that he was being seduced by elements that had little to do with toreo. To try to right Hemingway's distortions, he named the first edition of this book The Complete Aficionado, but then realized that the volume was directed at a wider readership. Bullfighting is written from the point of view of the torero, as opposed to the usual spectator's impressions and enthusiasm. With the help of a retired matador de toros, Mario Sevilla Mascareas, who taught McCormick the rudiments of toreo as well as the emotions and discipline essential to survival, the author rescues toreo from romantic clichs. He probes the anatomy of the matador's training and technique, provides a past-and-present survey of the traditions of the corrida, and furnishes dramatic portraits of such famous figures as Manolete, Joselito, Belmonte, and Ordez. Here is an informed analysis and critique of the origins and myths of toreo and a survey of the literature it has inspired. Defending the faith in a lively as well as clear and discerning manner, this volume provides a committed and vivid approach to the rich history, ritual, and symbolism of the bullfight. This edition includes a new introduction by the author..
Price: $20.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A brilliant observer in the tradition of Adam Gopnik and Paul Theroux, Edward Lewine reveals a Spain few outsiders have seen. There's nothing more Spanish than bullfighting, and nothing less like its stereotype. For matadors and aficionados, it is not a blood sport but an art, an ancient subculture steeped in ritual, machismo, and the feverish attentions of fans and the press.
Lewine explains Spain and the art of the bulls by spending a bullfighting season traveling Spanish highways with the celebrated matador Francisco Rivera Ordóñez, following Fran, as he's known, through every region and social stratum. Fran's great-grandfather was a famous bullfighter and the inspiration for Hemingway's matador in The Sun Also Rises. Fran's father was also a star matador, until a bull took his life shortly before Fran's eleventh birthday.
Fran is blessed and haunted by his family history. Formerly a top performer himself, Fran's reputation has slipped, and as the season opens he feels intense pressure to live up to his legacy amid tabloid scrutiny in the wake of his separation from his wife, a duchess. But Fran perseveres through an eventful season of early triumph, serious injury, and an unlikely return to glory..
Price: $2.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book takes the reader where only brave souls dare to compete-the world of bullfighting Matadors risk serious injury or death to compete in their sport, one that has been a part of Spanish and Latin American culture for centuries. Beginning with an introduction to bullfighting as it relates to American culture (not overlooking the negative views it often attracts), the book is then devoted to American matadors, including women bullfighters, and novilleros (beginners). Chapters within each section are devoted to individual bullfighters. A major feature of this work are the numerous photographs, many of which were taken by the author himself and impressively portray the flair, skill, emotion, and faces of bullfighting..
Price: $133.03 [Notify me when price goes down.]