Against Interpretation and Other Essays
Sontag’s Wildean provocations reached their apogee in her famous 1964 essay, Notes on Camp, also collected here. The debt to Wilde is manifest on almost every page. Remarkably, Sontag holds her own wi ...
Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
A compelling (if a touch overly detailed) look at Florence, its architecture, and one of its artisans.
Dante’s nightmare vision becomes the book’s visual correlative for what its scientific calculations suggest.
To his credit, Meyer (The Tudors) is forthright about how this supposed âhidden historyâ of the Italian Renaissanceâs most controversial family came to be: it is the product of â[a] year of re ...
Ms. O'Connor has told an important story. Yet it is hard not to agree with the late John Updike, who upon visiting the Neue Galerie in 2007 lamented that there are "not enough" Klimts " ...
The Gift: A True Story of Life, Death, and Trust
A sugared concentrate of Steel's soothing-syrup craft (Accident, p. 16, etc.), in which a family tragedy, the plight of a unwed teen mother-to-be, and the drift of a grieving teenage boy conclude in a ...
Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire
A motley collection of previously published essays on topics ranging from Anne Frank to Bill Blass, by a New Yorker staffer and biographer (Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, 1999, etc.).
The digressions into art and art history are distracting, but crime buffs will receive a painless education while they enjoy a lively account of art thieves and the man who pursued them.
Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me
Antonia Quirke adores films especially their hunky male stars.