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In 1849—months before the term “confidence man” was coined to identify a New York crook—Thomas Powell (1809–1887), a spherical, monocled, English poetaster, dramatist, journalist, embezzler, and forger, landed in Manhattan. Powell in London had capped a career of grand theft and literary peccadilloes by feigning a suicide attempt and having himself committed to a madhouse, after which he fled England. He had been an intimate of William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and a crowd of lesser literary folk. Thoughtfully bearing what he presented as a volume of Tennyson with a few trifling revisions in the hand of the poet, Powell was embraced by the slavishly Anglophile New York literary establishment, including a young Herman Melville. In two pot-boilers—The Living Authors of England (1849) and The Living Authors of America (1850)—Powell denounced the most revered American author, Washington Irving, for plagiarism; provoked Charles Dickens to vengeful trans-Atlantic outrage and then panic; and capped his insolence by identified Irving and Melville as the two worst “enemies of the American mind.” For almost four more decades he sniped at Dickens, put words in Melville’s mouth, and survived even the most conscientious efforts to expose him. Long fascinated by this incorrigible rogue, Hershel Parker in The Powell Papers uses a few familiar documents and a mass of freshly discovered material (including a devastating portrait of Powell in a serialized novel) to unfold a captivating tale of skullduggery through the words of great artists and then-admired journalists alike.
Leading authorities explore, in direct and accessible language, chamber-music masterpieces by twenty-one prominent composers since 1900.
Papers of L. W. Powell.
John Hammond's life is a gripping story of music, money, fame, and racial conflict, played out in the nightclubs and recording studios. A pioneering producer and talent spotter, Hammond discovered Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Benny Goodman, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
""I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, and Mr. Cary Grant." So said Peggy Lee, the North Dakota farm girl who transformed herself - with the help from some of the greatest musical artists of her time - into one of the most glamorous, distinctive, and important singer-songwriters ever to step into a spotlight. Einstein adored her. Duke Ellington dubbed her, simply, "the Queen." Often compared to her lifetime friend Frank Sinatra, she sang jazz, swing, bebop, ballads, rock and roll, the blues. Peggy Lee created drama, character, and poetry as an actress might - without ever losing the beat. With her silky whisper and platinum cool she sold 20 million records, made more money than Mickey Mantle, and helped create American music's greatest generation." "With Fever, Peter Richmond delivers the first biography of Lee - a portrait of a lady that is, above all, a portrait of an artist. It begins, in the Depression's hard days, with a kid named Norma, born with nothing but the wide open plains. Her mother died when she was only a child; her father drank and her stepmother beat her. But the music on the radio, from faraway cities, gave her a dream that would never fade. One day she hit the road, hoping that the music she loved would lead her someplace better. It did - to a new name and new towns where, in the midst of the great war, a gallery of brilliant innovators like Benny Goodman (who is often credited with discovering her) were ushering in a brand-new beat, a sound that would change American lives. Peggy Lee became on of the girls who sang with the bands, traveling the country with the jazzmen on buses and late-night trains." "Richmond traces how Peggy rose, right along with jazz itself, to become a star, an unstoppable hit-maker, and a lyricist whose soul-searching imagery paved the way for women who wanted to write their own songs. For Lee, there would ultimately be four marriages, a daughter, a one-woman Broadway show, Europe, the Waldorf, Vegas, Basin Street East, Ciro's, the White House, an Oscar nomination, more than a few lovers, and friends like Bing Crosby and Judy Garland (who called Peggy her favorite singer). There would be a mansion high in the California hills and a thousand and one nights of her name in lights. Yet beneath the diamonds Peggy Lee was and would always be Norma Deloris Egstrom, insecure, always looking for acceptance, perfection, and love."--BOOK JACKET.