Critic (930 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Fair. First Edition. With dust jacket. The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way. Ex-Library.

Hardback. Condition: Good. A New York Times bestseller--a dazzling and inspirational survey of how art can be found and appreciated in everyday life Michael Kimmelman, the prominent New York Times writer and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, is known as a deep and graceful writer across the disciplines of art and music and also as a pianist who understands something about the artist's sensibility from the inside. Readers have come to expect him not only to fill in their knowledge about art but also to inspire them to think about connections between art and the larger world - which is to say, to think more like an artist. Kimmelman's many years of contemplating and writing about art have brought him to this wise, wide-ranging, and long-awaited book.It explores art as life's great passion, revealing what we can learn of life through pictures and sculptures and the people who make them. It assures us that art - points of contact with the exceptional that are linked straight to the heart - can be found almost anywhere and everywhere if only our eyes are opened enough to recognize it. Kimmelman regards art, like all serious human endeavors, as a passage through which a larger view of life may come more clearly into focus. His book is a kind of adventure or journey.It carries the message that many of us may not yet have learned how to recognize the art in our own lives. To do so is something of an art itself. A few of the characters Kimmelman describes, like Bonnard and Chardin, are great artists. But others are explorers and obscure obsessives, paint-by-numbers enthusiasts, amateur shutterbugs, and collectors of strange odds and ends. Yet others, like Charlotte Solomon, a girl whom no one considered much of an artist but who secretly created a masterpiece about the world before her death in Auschwitz, have reserved spots for themselves in history, or not, with a single work that encapsulates a whole life.Kimmelman reminds us of the Wunderkammer, the cabinet of wonders - the rage in seventeenth-century Europe and a metaphor for the art of life. Each drawer of the cabinet promises something curious and exotic, instructive and beautiful, the cabinet being a kind of ideal, self-contained universe that makes order out of the chaos of the world. The Accidental Masterpiece is a kind of literary Wunderkammer, filled with lively surprises and philosophical musings. It will inspire readers to imagine their own personal cabinet of wonders.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Condition: good. Cover image may vary. Paperback. Item has underlining and writing.

Soft cover. Condition: Good. Good Condition paperback 206 pages.

Soft cover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The public image of Elgar as patriotic country squire was established in his lifetime, but, in reality, it concealed a highly complex, sometimes baffling, private individual. Although acquaintances found him a man of endless curiosity and good humour, his family and close friends knew him to be rather different: a prey to despair, neurotically mistrustful both of himself and of those who loved him and so damaged by the condescension and neglect of his early years that emotionally he never recovered. This is a reissue of the third edition of Michael Kenedy's portrait of this complexman - not an analytical survey of the music but a faithful likeness of the composer, recognizable, but at the same time a thoroughly individual interpretation of the subject. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This anthology demonstrates to the full just how rewarding an art form the aphorism can be, and just how brilliantly the aphorist can illuminate the hidden truth, or lay bare the ironies of existence. Specific sections including 'Religion', 'Money & Rank', 'Men, Women, Marriage' and 'Politics', cover the whole range of aphoristic literature. This book brings together the most diverse figures-the classic aphorists, like La Rochefoucauld; the philosophers, from the Greeks to Samuel Johnson to Virginia Woolf-as well as statesmen, scientists, boulevardiers, Olympians, and gadflies. John Gross draws on their wisdom and wit to produce an anthology that will be referred to time and time again. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. …

hardcover. Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. Grade 4 out of 5 points. This is a used book. Book may have wear due to handling. Has no markings on pages. May not include extra materials like access codes, CDs, accessories, etc. All orders ship by next business day! We are a small company and very thankful for your business.…

paperback. Condition: Very Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. V. S. Pritchett, one our greatest short-story writers, has chosen forty-one stories written in the English language for this volume, producing a collection that successfully displays the wealth and variety of an art that spans some 200 years. Great Britain, America, and especially Eire have fine traditions of short-story writing that have developed from the time of Sir Walter Scott and Nathaniel Hawthorne, while in the last century the art was perfected by Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, W. Somerset Maugham, John Updike, and V. S. Pritchett himself. The Irish contribution includes such masters as James Joyce, Frank O'Connor, and Liam O'Flaherty, and stories by Canadian, Indian, New Zealand, and Australian writers show the full range of invention and ability in a genre that continues to flourish. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. …

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The Caribbean has produced one of the most vigorous and exciting bodies of poetry of the last one hundred year. The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse is the only contemporary anthology to present the best of the English-language poetry of the region alongside selections from the poetry of both the French and Spanish Caribbean. Featuring a range of established poets from Derek Walcott to Jesus Cos Causse, Olive Senior to Aime Cesaire, as well as exciting new voices, this is a rich and challenging book. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. John Ford's Stagecoach, starring John Wayne in the part that made him a star, remains the most famous Western ever made. Shedding new light on an old favourite, this is an enjoyable account of how the film got made, combined with a careful scene-by-scene analysis, a wealth of illustrations and the most complete credits yet assembled. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. From wicked queens, beautiful princesses, elves, monsters, and goblins to giants, glass slippers, poisoned apples, magic keys, and mirrors, the characters and images of fairy tales have cast a spell over readers and audiences, both adults and children, for centuries. These fantastic stories have travelled across cultural borders, and been passed on from generation to generation, ever-changing, renewed with each re-telling. Few forms of literature have greater power to enchant us and rekindle our imagination than a fairy tale. But what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean? What do they try and communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and society? The range of fairy tales stretches across great distances and time; their history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over a long writing life, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan's Labyrinth. In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich hoard of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. Her book makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and culture. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. …

Hardback. Condition: Good.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: New.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: New.

Condition: New.

Condition: New.

Condition: New.

Condition: New.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: New.

Hardback. Condition: Good.