Books about Now famous from Amazon.com

The scandalous story of AmericaÂ’s first supermodel, sex goddess, and modern celebrity, Evelyn Nesbit, the temptress at the center of Stanford WhiteÂ’s famous murder, whose iconic life story reflected all the paradoxes of AmericaÂ’s Gilded Age.

Known to millions before her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her. When her life of fantasy became all too real, and her jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her lover—celebrity architect Stanford White, builder of the Washington Square Arch and much of New York City—she found herself at the center of the “Crime of the Century” and the popular courtroom drama that followed—a scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex.

The story of Evelyn Nesbit is one of glamour, money, romance, sex, madness, and murder, and Paula Uruburu weaves all of these elements into an elegant narrativethat reads like the best fiction— only it’s all true. American Eve goes far beyond just literary biography; it paints a picture of America as it crossed from the Victorian era into the modern, foreshadowing so much of our contemporary culture today..
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Just what kind of book is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men? It contains many things: poems; confessional reveries; disquisitions on the proper way to listen to Beethoven; snippets of dialogue, both real and imagined; a lengthy response to a survey from the Partisan Review; exhaustive catalogs of furniture, clothing, objects, and smells. And then there are Walker Evans's famously stark portraits of depression-era sharecroppers--photographs that both stand apart from and reinforce James Agee's words.

Assigned to do a story for Fortune magazine about sharecroppers in the Deep South, Agee and Evans spent four weeks living with a poor white tenant family, winning the Burroughs's trust and immersing themselves in a sharecropper's daily existence. Given a first draft of the resulting article, the editors at Fortune quite understandably threw up their hands--as did several other editors who subsequently worked with a later book-length manuscript. The writing was contrary. It refused to accommodate itself to the reader, and at times it positively bristled with hostility. (What other book could take Marx as the epigraph and then announce: "These words are quoted here to mislead those who will be misled by them"?) Response to the book was puzzled or unfriendly, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sputtered out of print only a few short years after its publication. It took the 1960s, and a vogue for social justice, to bring Agee's masterwork the audience it deserved.

Yet the book is far more interesting--aesthetically and morally--than the sort of guilty-liberal tract for which it is often mistaken. On an existential level, Agee's text is a deeply felt examination of what it means to suffer, to struggle to live in spite of suffering. On a personal level, it is the painful, beautifully written portrait of one man's obsession. In its collaboration with Evans's photographs, the book is also a groundbreaking experiment in form. In the end, however, it is more than merely the sum of its parts. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is, quite simply, a book unlike any other, simmering with anger and beauty and mystery. --Mary Park.
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A passionate literary innovator, eloquent in language and uncompromising in his social observation and his pursuit of emotional truth, James Agee (1909- 1955) excelled as novelist, critic, journalist, and screenwriter. In his brief, often turbulent life, he left enduring evidence of his unwavering intensity, observant eye, and sometimes savage wit.

This volume collects his fiction along with his extraordinary experiment in what might be called prophetic journalism, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a collaboration with photographer Walker Evans that began as an assignment from Fortune magazine to report on the lives of Alabama sharecroppers, and that expanded into a vast and unique mix of reporting, poetic meditation, and anguished self-revelation that Agee described as "an effort in human actuality." A 64-page photo insert reproduces Evans's now iconic photographs from the expanded 1960 edition.

A Death in the Family, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that he worked on for over a decade and that was published posthumously in 1957, re-creates in stunningly evocative prose Agee's childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the upheaval his family experienced after his father's death in a car accident when Agee was six years old. A whole world, with its sensory vividness and social constraints, comes to life in this child's-eye view of a few catastrophic days. It is presented here for the first time in a text with corrections based on Agee's manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.

This volume also includes The Morning Watch (1951), an autobiographical novella that reflects Agee's deep involvement with religious questions, and three short stories including the remarkable allegory "A Mother's Tale.".
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"A stunning sequel to the James AgeeWalker Evans' classic, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It is at times astonishing, at all times deeply moving."-Studs Terkel

"A book that reaches into this country's heart of darkness . . . A tragically human story more telling than a thousand polls. The photographs by Mr. Williamson are eloquent."-Herbert Mitgang, New York Times

"Mr. Williamson's photos are spellbinding and should become instant classics."-John Elvin, Washington Times

In this paperback reissue, an author/photographer team returns to the land and families captured in James Agee and Walker Evans's inimitable masterwork Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, extending the project of conscience and chronicling the traumatic decline of King Cotton. In 1936, during a brief window of national attention to the topic, Fortune magazine commissioned from Agee and Evans a story on poverty among tenant farmers in Alabama. Agee was famously ambivalent in his role, calling himself a spy and ultimately delivering a book-length manuscript unpublishable in magazine form. With this continuation of Agee and Evans's work, Maharidge and Williamson not only uncover some surprising historical secrets relating to the families and to Agee himself, but also effectively lay to rest Agee's fear that his work, from lack of reverence or resilience, would be but another offense to the humanity of its subjects.

Williamson's 90-part photo essay includes updates alongside Evans' classic originals.

Dale Maharidge (Homeland, Journey to Nowhere) has been a visiting professor of journalism at Columbia University and Stanford, and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1998.

Michael Williamson is a photographer for the Washington Post who won a second Pulitzer for his coverage of the war in Kosovo.

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Chic, sexy, and sophisticated, Femme Fatale pays tribute to a century of feminine glamour. Invoking not only iconic beauties like Jean Harlow, Brigitte Bardot, and Marilyn Monroe but also the looks that defined each decade from the 1900s to the new millennium, celebrity stylist Serge Normant crafts clothes, setting, hair, and makeup to transform today's most beautiful women. He re-creates Julia Roberts as Louise Brooks, and Cindy Crawford as a forties glamour goddess, a savvy paparazzi-stalked nineties superstar, and a twenties ingenue. Elizabeth Hurley frolics as a flower child and vamps as Mata Hari. Isabella Rossellini is a curvaceous fifties pinup and an eighties punk. And Britney Spears exudes all the poise of Grace Kelly.

This lavish exploration of fashion history, imagination, and stylish beauty carries with it Bridget Foley's cultural survey of each decade—from social and political issues to art movements and key style makers. Beauty, fashion, celebrity, and photography mavens will all love Femme Fatale—and so will every woman who has ever fantasized about looking like a star.

Text by Bridget Foley

Photography by Michael Thompson.
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All-Audio Advantages Take advantage of effective on-the-go learning! All Audio Learn on the go! Instruction is presented in an all-audio format on 16 digitally-recorded CDs. You have the opportunity to learn on the go, taking advantage of time normally wasted. Study in your car, while exercising, doing yard work anywhere you can safely listen to a CD player. No accompanying books are needed to help you complete the lesson activities. Why can t learning be fun? It can! Linguaphone has chosen to present the allTalk 1-2-3 in an entertaining, soap-opera format. No dry old teacher with a monotone voice putting you to sleep, you follow the adventures of a visitor to a Spanish-speaking country as she interacts with individuals in a variety of interesting situations, learning the language and beginning to understand the culture. Actually learn the language Tired of spending money on language courses that don t work? Did you ever think the problem could be with the course and not you? With Linguaphone s unique learning sequence: Listen, Understand, Speak, you will find yourself actually using the language in no time at all! You are presented with a unit of the language, it is then broken down and explained to you, then you put it back together with greater understanding than just repeating what you may not have understood in the first place. You don't just study the language--you gain real proficiency in using your new language! . . . and learn it well! The allTalk methodology not only teaches well, but will take you to full intermediate level in speaking and understanding spoken Spanish. Other popular all-audio courses require three times the cds, three times the money and three times the time to do what Linguaphone s allTalk does with 16-one hour cds..
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Journalists Cokie and Steve Roberts take a look at the institution of marriage American style, including their own match of thirty-three years, in this compelling and wise new book that is destined to be another bestseller

With a narrative structure similar to We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, Cokie and Steve Roberts use personal recollections as a springboard for the discussion of larger issues such as marriage, love, and family. When Cokie and Steve Roberts got married, some "friends" said it wouldn't last-just because she's Catholic and he's Jewish. Proving the doubters wrong, they have been married for over thirty years and have a few pieces of advice. Cokie and Steve will discuss issues from their own marriage as well as open a window onto famous unions in history, as seen from their different perspectives as husband and wife. Those stories tell a tale of the particular strengths and weaknesses of marriage in America and show the foundation of marriage as one that's undergone tremendous amounts of change while remaining fundamentally the same. With a narrative structure similar to We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, Cokie and Steve Roberts use personal recollections as a springboard for the discussion of larger issues such as marriage, love, and family. When Cokie and Steve Roberts got married, some "friends" said it wouldn't last-just because she's Catholic and he's Jewish. Proving the doubters wrong, they have been married for over thirty years and have a few pieces of advice. Cokie and Steve will discuss issues from their own marriage as well as open a window onto famous unions in history, as seen from their different perspectives as husband and wife. Those stories tell a tale of the particular strengths and weaknesses of marriage in America and show the foundation of marriage as one that's undergone tremendous amounts of change while remaining fundamentally the same.With a narrative structure similar to We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, Cokie and Steve Roberts use personal recollections as a springboard for the discussion of larger issues such as marriage, love, and family. When Cokie and Steve Roberts got married, some "friends" said it wouldn't last-just because she's Catholic and he's Jewish. Proving the doubters wrong, they have been married for over thirty years and have a few pieces of advice. Cokie and Steve will discuss issues from their own marriage as well as open a window onto famous unions in history, as seen from their different perspectives as husband and wife. Those stories tell a tale of the particular strengths and weaknesses of marriage in America and show the foundation of marriage as one that's undergone tremendous amounts of change while remaining fundamentally the same..
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An updated edition of The Famous Little Red Book That Makes Your Dreams Come True. Countless people followed the simple message and have seen dramatic changes in their lives. To get what you desire is no more mysterious or uncertain than the stereo waves all around you. Tune in correctly and you get a perfect result. In the simplicity of the original book, some people miss the depth of The Plan. Throughout this updated edition you will find Keys which are suggestions and exercises to assist you in utilizing the information you read. Reading these words alone will not create results, action is required. The Keys assist you in acceler- ating the results producing process. If you are really serious about changing your present condition, here is a concise, definite, result-full plan, with rules,explanations and suggestions. Others have these things. Why not you?.
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