This book of thirteen conversations introduces us to the life of an exceptional person—theatre critic, Germanist, and long-time chair of the Open Lithuania Fund board—Irena Veisaitė. The dialogue ...between Lithuanian historian Aurimas Švedas and a woman who reflects deeply on her experiences reveals both one individual’s historically dramatic life and the fate of Europe and Lithuania in the twentieth century. Through the complementary lenses of history and memory, we confront with Veisaitė the horrific events of the Holocaust, which brought about the end of the Lithuanian Jewish world. We also meet an array of world-class cultural figures, see fragments of legendary theatre performances, and hear meaningful words that were spoken or heard decades ago. This book’s interlocutors do not so much seek to answer the question “What was it like?" but instead repeatedly ask each other: “What, how, and why do we remember? What is the meaning of our experiences? How can history help us to live in the present and create the future? How do we learn to understand and forgive?" A series of Veisaitė’s texts, statements, and letters, presented at the end of the book suggest further ways of answering these questions.
In this examination of Solzhenitsyn and his work, Lee Congdon explores the consequences of the atheistic socialism that drove the Russian revolutionary movement. Beginning with a description of the ...post-revolutionary Russia into which Solzhenitsyn was born, Congdon addresses the Bolshevik victory in the civil war, the origins of the concentration camp system, the Bolsheviks' war on Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church, Solzhenitsyn's arrest near the war's end, his time in the labor camps, his struggle with cancer, his exile and increasing alienation from the Western way of life, and his return home. He concludes with a reminder of Solzhenitsyn's warning to the West—that it was on a path parallel to that which Russia had followed into the abyss.
I must first express my heartfelt thanks to Susanne Herrmann-Sinai and Christoph Schuringa for convening this debate. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to the four commentators for generously ...taking the time to read and think about my book, and for their thought-provoking and challenging comments. I have responded to as many of the latter as I could, and I look forward to hearing or reading, on other occasions, further comments on my responses.1
In this volume, editors Harvey Molotch and Davide Ponzini take a decidedly different approach to the analysis of Gulf cities to show that what is happening in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar is ...not so abnormal and is more indicative of emerging trends in urbanization than what first meets the eye. Organized under four thematic sections, the volume brings together a wide-array of essays, generated by a diverse group of scholars from a numerous disciplines including architecture, architectural history, urban planning, area studies, political science, sociology, geography, and art. Taking cues from Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour’s well-known book, Learning from Las Vegas (1972), this volume situates Gulf cities within the transnational contexts of colonialism, globalization, neo-liberalism, and emergent trends of human and capital migration.
Finalist, 2021 Writers' League of Texas Book
Award Regarded as both a legend and a villain, the critic
Dave Hickey has inspired generations of artists, art critics,
musicians, and writers. His 1993 ...book The Invisible Dragon
became a cult hit for its potent and provocative critique of the
art establishment and its call to reconsider the role of beauty in
art. His next book, 1997's Air Guitar , introduced a new
kind of cultural criticism-simultaneously insightful, complicated,
vulnerable, and down-to-earth-that propelled Hickey to fame as an
iconoclastic thinker, loved and loathed in equal measure, whose
influence extended beyond the art world.
Far from Respectable is a focused, evocative
exploration of Hickey's work, his impact on the field of art
criticism, and the man himself, from his Huck Finn childhood to his
drug-fueled periods as both a New York gallerist and Nashville
songwriter to, finally, his anointment as a tenured professor and
MacArthur Fellow. Drawing on in-person interviews with Hickey, his
friends and family, and art world comrades and critics, Daniel
Oppenheimer examines the controversial writer's distinctive takes
on a broad range of subjects, including Norman Rockwell, Robert
Mapplethorpe, academia, Las Vegas, basketball, country music, and
considers how Hickey and his vision of an "ethical, cosmopolitan
paganism" built around a generous definition of art is more
urgently needed than ever before.
