Oscar Books

This is a must read book for any Vail skier. I am the son of one of Vail's pioneers (Sigi Faller) and enjoyed many wonderful days on the Mountain in the "Glory Years". The book provides a perspective of Amercian history (Camp Hale and WWII) and relates a romantic business success story, especially for those who are independent, entrepreneural and have a love of the outdoors. It's a fascinating account of finding recreational "gold" in the Colorado Rockies. An excellent collection of photos is included.

This book captures the spirit of Peter Seibert and Earl Eaton and the early days of their lives and their dream to build Vail and Beaver Creek. The trimuphs are great. Hiking Vail for the first time with skins on the skis and seeing the bowls, what a trip! Getting fired from his dream and then getting asked back during the '89 World Championships - wow!! - what a roller coaster of emotions. If you love great stories and you know the Vail Valley and the ski industry - this book is a must read!!

This book is a fantastic introduction to Oscar Brown Jr. and his music. If you are a true fan of his work you will be left wanting more as I was. However, it is still a great keepsake and a nice gift for those who are into music history.

Finally, a great collection of Oscar Brown, Jr.'s lyrics, poems, and short essays. Oscar Brown, Jr.'s renowned lyrics to jazz standards such as "All Blues," and "Dat Dere," his classics "Signifying Monkey" and "Wham, Bam! Thank you Ma'am" and "Peace Pieces" such as "Hymn to the Homeless," and "Chant of the Welfare Mothers" are all collected here. As one of our foremost cultural and political activists, creative geniouses and undersung heroes, Brown's creative and political commitments shine throuh here. As fellow poet Kent Foreman puts it in the foreword, "the spoken word was Oscar's roots and his artistic genesis" who created "lyrics that were literature."

Who was that Man ? is a meditation and celebration of the form and meaning of gay life in London in the 19th century and the 1970s and 80s. Neil Bartlett puts together a collage of thoughts, excerpts and pictures to find the common threads of behavior and the disparate ways of understanding. He analyzes Wilde's work and life to find its relevance and irrelevance to today; the ways in which Wilde's downfall and persecution cast its shadow; the not very hidden subtext of all of Wilde's work that Wilde desperately denied as he fought for his life. Bartlett has ransacked the British Museum Library and the Collected Works of Oscar Wilde to uncover and restore forgotten history. Read together with Richard Ellman's biography and Neil Mc Kenna's Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, this book illuminates and goes far to explain Wilde's intentionally fascinating life and works. But more than that it casts light on the whole swath of gay experience.

A gay Londoner of the 80s goes searching for his roots and finds Oscar Wilde, a complex figure early on in the history of the cultural and social construction of twentieth-century homosexuality. If you're interested in Wilde, this is a very good book to read along with Richard Ellman's more standard biography.

This is an absolutely great book and it's too bad it's out of print and nobody seems to have read it! I have been listening to the audio tape in the car. The reader is a little over-dramatic in places...like he makes a walk down the street sound as breathless and ominous as a murder scene...but on the whole, he's excellent, too. It has mystery, wit, excitement, suspense! And Oscar Wilde to boot. It's completely captivating...bring it back!

This was the best bit of historical fiction I have ever read. I can't believe it's out of print. In an attempt to boost his income, Oscar Wilde tours on a lecture/performance circuit across the USA. Unfortunately, as his retinue crosses the West, dead prostitutes start appearing in ever city he and his entourage visit. He becomes a prime suspect, and attempts to solve the mystery himelf with, as he puts it, "...a systematic application of the poetic imagination." It is a wonderful story, with all the elements of great Old West Literature, including horses, trains, gunfights, Doc Holladay, a little sex, and a herd of goats.

This compendium of quotes from Oscar Wilde is arranged by subject matter alphabetically and provides a great deal of entertainment for $7 bucks. Not to mention it is the ultimate source for witty quotations to make you the life of the party. Seriously, a great book to page through at random for some laughs and thought provoking witticisms from the most quotable modern author.

Oscar Wilde once said "Drama is the meeting place of art and life." In this essential, compact volume Ralph Keyes leaves a trail to that corner by gathering the flamboyant author's thorniest, at times most insightful quotes and anecdotes. Keyes uses Wilde's plays, reviews, letters, interrogations, even conversational repartee (given its own section) which remained Wilde's signature to his time.

Keyes divides Wilde's epigrams and puns into brief, easily readable sections. Wilde twists traditional views on permanent truths and those of his day: altruism ("Charity creates a multitude of sins.") history ("History is merely gossip.") theology, poverty, dissent ("Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.")

Above all, Wilde (through Keyes' selections) quips and dissects each of the fine arts (music, prose, painting) and roles for creator, viewer, interpreter. He addresses the writer ("Even prophets correct their proofs.") critic ("Criticism is the highest form of autobiography"), and artist ("Like the Greek gods, artists are known only to each other.")

Amid his fast-paced one liners on male-female relations you sense how Wilde viewed marriage over and above his well-known bromide, "Divorces are made in heaven." The book ends with Wilde explaining and defending the homosexual relationship he called "the love that dare not speak its name". Whether or not you accept Wilde's lifestyle preferences, his eloquent, sad defense of a letter he wrote a younger man is moving as he describes the unique merge of intellect and youthful energy which to him formed "the noblest sort of affection." It is as close to heartfelt as anyone could get who once said, "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

Oscar Wilde was parodied, villified, and eventually imprisoned for his beliefs and flamboyance. But he eventually influenced artists from George Bernard Shaw to John Lennon, staking a claim as the earliest example of a postmodern artist. This book helps introduce Wilde's full books and plays (Keyes references them consistently and provides a full bibliography), or helps you reference witty, intellectual (or psuedo-intellectual, as Wilde might have preferred) quotes for any occassion. (As to plagarizing, Wilde himself called it, "the privilege of the appreciative man.") His full literary courses are nutritious and filling enough, but "The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde" is as savory when reading or writing as salt is when dining.

It has been very difficult to work on translating technical documents in the past since many dictionaries do not include scientific and technological terms. This dictionary covers many of the difficult engineering terms that I have not been able to translate in the past. I would recommend this book for anyone that is working in the technology or scientific fields.

For the translator who is faced with a variety of technical texts, Ernst's book offers relief! I've found the oddest of terms, all tucked away in this beatifully geeky but erudite book. If you buy any dictionary this year, make it Ernst.

This is a quality book of great pictures--not "Forever Young" that I wouldn't buy even if the price was right since I got it from the library first as one customer review recommended. This book is first class in clarity, paper quality, and quality of pictures. You also get three transcribed radio interviews which coincide with the times of the photographs.

The first photographs (black and white) were done at Cohen's place when Bob was just starting out in New York City, and he was 20 years old. You will see a few real stunners, some casual ones, funny offbeat ones, and then some color 1970 snapshots of him (probably on his property and just walking across the street).

The first photograph inside is the one offered in the booklet that goes with Bootleg #7, which is a real stunner only here you get a full photo and it's clearer and bigger. Then on page 6 is the one I like even more than the first one (maybe). I, being female, can tell you that this makes Bob look like a model. Guys may be shy of pointing out his good looks, but I can do that. So gals and guys who see Bob as a hero or idol should like this book. There is a casual photo of Bob strolling alongside his baby in a buggy, and I really like this one too because it reveals his high forehead--FINALLY!!!!!!!!

(Some movie-type small photos also.)

You will not be disappointed.

Get this book instead of wasting your money on "Forever Young."

I bought this book together with Douglas R. Gilbert's 'Forever Young' and they are both interesting portraits of Bob Dylan as a young artist. Yet taken as a book, John Cohen's is in a different league altogether. The paper on which this book is printed is wonderful (compared with the cheap seeming one used for 'Forever Young') and the printing of both B&W and colour images is first-rate.

As accompanying text there are three transcribed radios interviews with Bob Dylan which are contemporaneous to the photographs. This is also a winning point of this book; having both the photographs and the young Dylan speak for themselves.

In the early 1950s, the weekly magazine Collier's sponsored a symposium on space travel. The symposium became three special issues of the magazine. I was eight years old when the those issues came to our house. I couldn't understand much of the text, but I went bug-eyed over the pictures. Chesley Bonstell, who did the backdrops for Destination Moon, created colorful, highly detailed visions of the future: a three-stage rocket design by Werner von Braun, slightly larger than the Saturn V; a cross-section of a circular space station; a lunar colony; astronauts exploring Deimos, backlighted by an enormous Mars. The magazine articles became this book; I got it for Christmas in 1952. I'm replacing that long lost copy so I can actually read the articles. The authors ranged from members of the pre-WWII German Rocket Society to young American scientists who went on to long careers in astrophysics. Some of the most readable material was written by science writer Willy Ley. An amazing book.

one of the best 2 books ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


PS.: i am ready to argue for my point anytime, anywhere!!!!!!!!!!

From Back Cover:

"Alfredo Arribas constitutes the most spectacular phenomena of the late 80s Spanish interior design. Interested in the aesthetic and also environmental integrity of his extremely careful schemes, he cannot therefore treat the design of objects and furniture with disdain... Baroque or minimalist forms, contrast of materials, use or craftsmanship or any other resource that may serve to give shape to the expressive quality of his surprising creatures.