Outros livros que poderiam interessá-lo

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  White Americans Feel Ceiling Effect

  PBS NewsHour

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  While White Americans Feel ‘Ceiling Effect,’ Blacks and Latinos Find Aspiration 
  A new study shows that since 2006 whites have grown more pessimistic about their economic outlook while African-Americans and Latinos have grown more optimistic. Ray Suarez talks with Matt Barreto of Latino Decisions and Ellis Cose, author of The End of Anger to examine the differences and shift in attitudes.

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  Idomen or The Vale of Yumuri

  Maria Gowen Brooks

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  Idomen (1843) is the creative-nonfiction memoir of the beautiful and brilliant American poetess Maria Gowen Brooks, who was compared in the 19th century to Byron and Swinburne. In it she tells the story of an ill-fated love affair she had twenty years earlier while traveling with her young son in Canada following the death of her much older husband. The traumatic breakup led to suicide attempts on her part, which romantic masochist Brooks byronically relates in full, albeit changing everybody's name. Herself she calls Idomen, which is apparently idiomatic Greek for "we shall see" – as indeed we shall!(Incidentally, the well-traveled Brooks had inherited a plantation in Cuba upon the death of her brother from malaria and went back there to live after Idomen was published, only to die of the same disease herself not long after.) - Summary by Grant Hurlock

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  Nikolai Gogol - A Short Story...

  Nikolai Gogol

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  Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on 1st April 1809 to a father, descended from Ukrainian Cossacks and a mother with a military background in the Ukrainian town of Sorochyntsi, then part of the Russian Empire and rich in Cossack traditions and folklore.   
   
  His father wrote poetry and plays which the young Gogol helped stage at his uncle’s home theatre.  This helped ignite in him a love of literature and blossomed when he attended, what is now, the Nizhyn Gogol State University at the age of 12.  Here he participated in school theatre productions and refined his mastery of his native Ukrainian and also the Russian of his Imperial masters. 
   
  In 1828 he went to St Petersburg and unsuccessfully tried to begin a career as an actor after finding that with no money and no connections the civil service was barred to him. 
   
  Embezzling money from his mother he embarked on a trip to Germany. When the money ran out, he returned to St Petersburg but the experiences were used in a series of stories he contributed to periodicals.  These tales were steeped in his childhood memories of the Ukrainian landscape and peasantry enlivened with the supernatural of its folklore woven with realistic events of the day.  He wrote in Russian in a whimsical, colloquial style with a smattering of Ukrainian words and phrases that provided an authenticity.  Eight stories were published as ‘Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka’.  Seemingly all at once fame and fortune arrived. Gogol was hailed by his contemporaries, including Pushkin, as a pre-eminent writer of Russian literature.   
   
  His success continued with his brilliant plays ‘The Inspector General’ and the comedy ‘The Marriage for the Theatre’, both being highly acclaimed.   
   
  In 1834 he became Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg but with little academic or teacher training, failed to adequately fulfil many of his duties and soon resigned this post.  With no obligations and using his earnings from his writing, which now included the impressionistic and immortal ‘Dead Souls’, Gogol travelled around Europe, spending the most time in Rome where he studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera.  
   
  In the 1840s Gogol became preoccupied with a need to purify his soul and embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In tandem he fell under the influence of a strict and austere spiritual ascetic who persuaded him to observe strict fasts that, allied with his depression and deteriorating health, contributed to his death on 21st April 1852 at the age of only 43. 
   
  1 - Nikolai Gogol - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 
  3 - The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol also known as 'The Overcoat' 
  4 - Old Fashioned Landowners by Nikolai Gogol 
  5 - St Johns Eve by Nikolai Gogol 
  6 - Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol

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  Simply Chopin

  William Smialek

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  Born in a small town near Warsaw, Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was a musical prodigy who began giving public concerts and composed his first piano pieces at the age of seven. Following studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, he left his native Poland in 1830, eventually settling in Paris, where he lived for the rest of his life. There he cultivated friendships with prominent musicians and intellectuals of the period and quickly achieved renown as a virtuoso performer and pioneering composer. However, by 1842, his lifelong health issues had become increasingly serious, and his brilliant career went into a precipitous decline, concluding with his untimely death at the age of thirty-nine.  
  In Simply Chopin, Dr. William Smialek presents an accessible and revealing portrait of a musical genius, including his artistic development, his tempestuous love life, and his towering artistic achievements. Relating Chopin’s life story to his historical place and time, Dr. Smialek intimately chronicles his influences and significant relationships, in particular, his long love affair with the writer George Sand. The book also draws on recent research to explore the compositional technique displayed in Chopin’s piano compositions, with commentary on his most important works.  
  Intended for a general readership, Simply Chopin is both a lucid introduction to a giant of classical music and an insightful look at a key moment in musical history, as nineteenth-century Europe turned toward Romanticism and the powerful idea of nationalism.

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  Wright and New York - The Making...

  Anthony Alofsin

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  An “immensely valuable” dual biography of the iconic American architect and the city that transformed his career in the early twentieth century (Francis Morrone, New Criterion). 
   
  Frank Lloyd Wright took his first major trip to New York in 1909, fleeing a failed marriage and artistic stagnation. He returned a decade later, his personal life and architectural career again in crisis. Booming 1920s New York served as a refuge, but it also challenged him and resurrected his career. The city connected Wright with important clients and commissions that would harness his creative energy and define his role in modern architecture, even as the stock market crash took its toll on his benefactors. 
   
  Anthony Alofsin has broken new ground by mining the Wright archives held by Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art. His foundational research provides a crucial and innovative understanding of Wright’s life, his career, and the conditions that enabled his success. The result is at once a stunning biography and a glittering portrait of early twentieth-century Manhattan.

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  Famous Figures - Exploring the...

  John Harpoon

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  This is a book bundle with four titles, which are: 
  - Eccentric Icons: Eccentricity has always held a peculiar charm, especially when it intertwines with fame. The world has an undeniable fascination with individuals who deviate from societal norms, and celebrities—already basking in the spotlight—amplify that intrigue when their beliefs and behaviors stray into the unconventional. These outliers captivate audiences not merely for their talents but for the mystique surrounding their lives and choices. 
  - Elites Unmasked: The power brokers of society have always operated behind a veil, their influence stretching across governments, corporations, and cultural institutions. These elites, shrouded in secrecy, wield disproportionate control over the mechanisms that shape our lives. This book seeks to unmask their agendas, exploring how they maintain power and why their influence often goes unchecked. 
  - Houdini's Last Trick: The story of Harry Houdini begins far from the glamour of theater stages and the awe-inspiring feats of magic that would later define his life. Born as Erik Weisz on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary, he was the fourth of seven children in a Jewish family facing the challenges of poverty. When Erik was four, his family emigrated to the United States, settling first in Appleton, Wisconsin. His father, Mayer Samuel Weisz, served as a rabbi, but his inability to sustain steady work placed the family in a constant struggle for survival. 
  - The Man Who Consumed Everything: Tarrare, a name that echoes through medical history as the embodiment of insatiable hunger, was a Frenchman whose life and condition baffled both his contemporaries and generations of scientists that followed. Born in 1772 in Lyon, France, to a poor farming family, Tarrare’s early years were marked by an extraordinary appetite that seemed to grow with him, quickly surpassing the needs of a typical child.

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