—“Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.”
—“That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.”
May 16 is Biographers Day – marking the 1st meeting of James Boswell & Samuel Johnson in 1763
Travelling with a book, of course, to cover about five and a half hours in a metal tube. Volker Reinhardt's "Der nach den Sternen griff" on the life of Giordano Bruno.
"That's the last thing he said, that he wanted to see Sean."
We’re digging through the castaway archives as Desert Island Discs returns next week. Today Kirsty Young talks to the artist Yoko Ono in a programme first broadcast in 2007.
All This I Promise explores everything from the end of British rule in India to the foundation of the United Nations, and the crucial role that monarchy played in the ever-shifting era.
#book -
How to win an information war : the propagandist who outwitted Hitler
by Peter Pomerantsev
a kind of #biography of Sefton Delmer, the Berlin-born British counter-propaganda expert who ran several successful anti-Nazi stations brodcasting into ww2 Germany.
Pomerantsev is an expert on contemporary propaganda, and parallels Nazi propaganda with that produced by Russia to justify its atrocities.
📚 Just finished reading: Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss (2022)
Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport- Gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics, All-American football player, star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for the New York Giants. But despite his talent, Thorpe’s life was a struggle against the odds.
Book review #25 for 2024 is Scott S Greenberger's The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A Arthur. A good biography of the 21st President of the United States. His reputation, and the reason for Garfield's murderer, created a cloud over Arthur's assumption of the presidency. ☕☕☕☕review
Adrian Edmondson remembers laughing and laughing and laughing with his friend and collaborator Rik Mayall, on Desert Island Discs with Lauren Laverne in September 2023.
This moment has been nominated in the Radio Academy Arias Awards 2024 for Moment of the Year.
Alvin Ailey is one of the most important choreographers in the history of modern dance.
In 1958 at just 27years old he founded the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater
Assembled from developer interviews, "EVERYBODY SHAKE!" has just been catalogued❗️
This book follows @hengineer on his journey from creating shareware on the Apple Macintosh and attaining senior positions at #BioWare and #EA to the inception of #Spaceteam.
#books#nonfiction#biography King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig, My rating:5 out of 5 stars, Read from: 04/04/2024 - 04/07/2024.
Book description: The first full biography in decades, King mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.
Book review #21 for 2024 is Edward P. Crapol's John Tyler, the Accidental President. I think that seeing the 1840's era Presidents getting more critical looks is good for the study of American History in general and presidential history in particular. I think that the work adds to the understand of not just Tyler's administration but of 1840's America as well. A ☕☕☕☕ review #books#bookstodon#POTUS#biography#JohnTyler@bookstodon@books@bookstodon
Book review #20 for 2024 is Robert Caro's The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. The first volume of this series, The Path to Power began a 40 plus year reading journey of every American President, that, with exception of POTUS 46 and 45, has continued to this day. This volume of Caro's series focuses on the 1960 election and up to the spring of 1964. Well written and moving.
A☕☕☕☕☕review. #books#bookstodon#POTUS#biography#LBJ@bookstodon@bookstodon@books
Einstein His Space and Times by Steven Gimbel, 2015
Steven Gimbel's biography presents Einstein in the context of the world he lived in, offering a fascinating portrait of a remarkable individual who remained actively engaged in international affairs throughout his life.
UNFORGETTABLE STAR ANNA MAY WONG, a pioneering Chinese-American actor whose career spanned screen, stage, radio, and television, is the topic of this fascinating, deeply researched biography. Old Hollywood glam through a very modern lens! B PLUS
Book 22, 2024: Themes for Great Cities by Graeme Thomson. This excellent biography of Simple Minds is a terrific read. Charting the history of the band from their early days, to their ‘cafes of Europe’ period, and stopping after Sparkle in the Rain, before their ‘stadiums of America’ period, it features in-depth interviews. Singer Jim Kerr in particular, is very open about how utterly driven he was to make the band a success.
If nothing else it made me fall in love again with albums such as Empires and Dance, Sons and Fascination, Sister Feelings Call, and New Gold Dream.
Today In Labor History March 26, 1918: American anarchist Philip Grosser wrote about being tortured in the prison on Alcatraz Island, while serving time there for refusing to serve in World War I. By 1920, he was the only draft resistor still serving time at Alcatraz. Alexander Berkman referred to him as "one of [my] finest comrades."