Books about Composed from Amazon.com

A wild, lyrical, and anguished autobiography, in which Charles Mingus pays short shrift to the facts but plunges to the very bottom of his psyche, coming up for air only when it pleases him. He takes the reader through his childhood in Watts, his musical education by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker, and his prodigious appetites--intellectual, culinary, and sexual. The book is a jumble, but a glorious one, by a certified American genius..
Price: $8.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As those who knew him will attest, Francophile and food writer Richard Olney was one of a kind—a writerly cook who had a tremendous influence on American cooking via his well-worn cottage on a hillside in Provence. Born in the Midwest in 1927 and drawn to France at the tender age of twenty-four, Olney was unapologetically attracted to the style, flavors, and tastes of French cooking when most Americans were smitten by the wonders of the new prepared foods in their markets. With unrelenting passion and precision, Olney studied and explored the cuisine, carefully documenting all he had learned for future generations of chefs, cooks, and food lovers. His first of several landmark works, THE FRENCH MENU COOKBOOK was well ahead of its time with its authentic French recipes and then-unheard-of seasonal approach to cooking. Little did we know then that THE FRENCH MENU COOKBOOK would provide inspiration for Alice Waters and her compatriots as they built the groundwork for a culinary revolution in America. Brimming with the honest and enlightening explanations of how the French really cook and the 150-plus authentic recipes, this book is a masterful resource that is a must for every serious cook..
Price: $12.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"These spare and elegant snapshots are both dramatic and poignant " -Public Radio Exchange Created by Emmy winning writer Joseph Dougherty, the plays of "Handwritten Theatre" have been heard on National Public Radio and performed live from Nebraska to Shanghai. Collected here for the first time they are as playful and provocative in print as they are in performance..
Price: $9.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Monarchia Controversy provides both the background to the imperial and ecclesiastical machinations that drove Dante Alighieri to begin penning the Monarchia in 1318 and also the subsequent history of the efforts by papal authorities to ban the book after the writer's death. Dante's political treatise on the Empire and the Papacy was listed by the Church in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1564, and it was removed only in 1881. Anthony Cassell's account of the Monarchia's genesis is both compelling and provoking, especially in the descriptions of the intransigence of Dante's proponents and antagonists. While earlier scholars have viewed Dante's treatise as peacefully divorced from its times, Cassell shows that Dante's pose of calm authority above the fray was at once traditional, forensic, courageous, and hard-won.

Cassell examines in close detail Dante's relations to his patron Can Grande della Scala, Pope John XXII's attempts to strip Can Grande of his privileges, the pertinent traditions of canon law, the culture of contemporary political and ecclesiastical publicists, the work of formal logicians, and the motives of Dante's first post-mortem opponent, Friar Guido Vernani. The author traces the treatise's reception through and beyond the first censorship and public burning that it suffered in Bologna from Cardinal Bertrand du Poujet in 1328, and the failure of Bertrand's threat to incinerate the writer too should his mortal remains be discovered.

To document the history, Cassell presents a fresh, annotated translation of the Monarchia, together with the first English versions of Guido Vernani's refutation of Dante's Monarchia (1329), and Pope John XXII's bull Si fratrum of 1316-17, which sparked the crisis. Cassell's volume will interest not only the general reader but scholars in many fields, such as medieval philosophy, history and theology, canon law, ecclesiastical history (especially Ockham and Marsilius of Padua studies), medieval Latin, Italian and Comparative Literature..
Price: $69.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Three generations of the Hog family set out to attend an operatic performance of Pigoletto They emerge from a pale-yellow house and stroll down the lawn to their sedan. They seek other unsuccessful modes of transportation, starting with young Horace Hog's two-wheeled scooter However, by the time the group finally decides to catch a bus the opera has ended, and they must reverse their journey Though this tale doesn't sparkle like some of Spinelli's previous picture books, Nash wryly pictures the hog sextet in their Sunday best, grinning despite the setbacks; a picture of Grandma Hog spinning on roller skates is especially entertaining. Ages 5-9. (Mar.) PreSchool-K-The Hog family is ready to go to the opera. However, the car refuses to budge. Brother Horace offers his scooter, followed by the punch line, When the tires go flat, sister Penelope suggests roller skates-and, of course, six hogs on roller skates makes an interesting sight as well. Mother and Grandpa come up with their own ideas (hot-air balloon, wagon), which also create transportation challenges. By this point, the pattern is fairly predictable, and the six hogs are not so interesting anymore. Grandma Hog finally wonders "-why we just don't take the bus?" The bus delivers them in no time-but by then the opera is over. Since the buses are no longer running, the Hog family settles in for a good night's sleep at the bus stop, where "Six Hogs sleeping at a bus stop makes a very interesting sight." The writing lacks the pizzazz needed to keep these hogs truly interesting. Nash's illustrations lift the tedious text, offering goofy double-page spreads of the animals as they try out their various modes of transportation. In each, they are posing with wide eyes and even wider smiles, as if blinded by the flash of a camera. Ultimately, though, the story misses the mark. If silly is a selling point with younger patrons, turn to James Marshall's The Cut-ups (Puffin, 1986)..
Price: $9.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]