Author: Kenneth Turan
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767931696
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 642
Book Description
Free for All is an irresistible behind-the-scenes look at one of America’s most beloved and important cultural institutions. Under the inspired leadership of founder Joseph Papp, the Public Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival brought revolutionary performances to the public for decades. This compulsively readable history of those years—much of it told in Papp’s own words—is fascinating, ranging from a dramatic early showdown with Robert Moses over keeping Shakespeare in the Park free to the launching of such landmark productions as Hair and A Chorus Line. To bring the story to life, film critic Kenneth Turan interviewed some 160 luminaries—including George C. Scott, Meryl Streep, Mike Nichols, Kevin Kline, James Earl Jones, David Rabe, Jerry Stiller, Tommy Lee Jones, and Wallace Shawn—and masterfully weaves their voices into a dizzyingly rich tale of creativity, conflict, and achievement.
Free for All
Author: Kenneth Turan
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767931696
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 642
Book Description
Free for All is an irresistible behind-the-scenes look at one of America’s most beloved and important cultural institutions. Under the inspired leadership of founder Joseph Papp, the Public Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival brought revolutionary performances to the public for decades. This compulsively readable history of those years—much of it told in Papp’s own words—is fascinating, ranging from a dramatic early showdown with Robert Moses over keeping Shakespeare in the Park free to the launching of such landmark productions as Hair and A Chorus Line. To bring the story to life, film critic Kenneth Turan interviewed some 160 luminaries—including George C. Scott, Meryl Streep, Mike Nichols, Kevin Kline, James Earl Jones, David Rabe, Jerry Stiller, Tommy Lee Jones, and Wallace Shawn—and masterfully weaves their voices into a dizzyingly rich tale of creativity, conflict, and achievement.
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767931696
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 642
Book Description
Free for All is an irresistible behind-the-scenes look at one of America’s most beloved and important cultural institutions. Under the inspired leadership of founder Joseph Papp, the Public Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival brought revolutionary performances to the public for decades. This compulsively readable history of those years—much of it told in Papp’s own words—is fascinating, ranging from a dramatic early showdown with Robert Moses over keeping Shakespeare in the Park free to the launching of such landmark productions as Hair and A Chorus Line. To bring the story to life, film critic Kenneth Turan interviewed some 160 luminaries—including George C. Scott, Meryl Streep, Mike Nichols, Kevin Kline, James Earl Jones, David Rabe, Jerry Stiller, Tommy Lee Jones, and Wallace Shawn—and masterfully weaves their voices into a dizzyingly rich tale of creativity, conflict, and achievement.
Joe Papp: An American Life
Author: Helen Epstein
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 755
Book Description
Joseph Papp (1921-1991), theater producer, champion of human rights and of the First Amendment, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival and Public Theater, changed the American cultural landscape. Born Yussel Papirofsky in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he discovered Shakespeare in public school and first produced a show on an aircraft carrier during World War II. After a stint at the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood, he moved to New York, where he worked as a CBS stage manager during the golden age of television. He fought Parks Commissioner Robert Moses (as well as Mayors Wagner, Lindsay, Beame and Koch) winning first the right to stage free Shakespeare in New York’s Central Park, then municipal funding to keep it going. He built the Delacorte Theater and later rebuilt the former Astor Library on Lafayette Street, transforming it into the Public Theater. In addition to helping create an "American" style of Shakespeare, Papp pioneered colorblind casting and theater as a not-for-profit institution. He showcased playwrights David Rabe, Elizabeth Swados, Ntozake Shange, David Hare, Wallace Shawn, John Guare, and Vaclav Havel; directors Michael Bennett, Wilford Leach and James Lapine; actors Al Pacino, Colleen Dewhurst, George C. Scott, James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Sam Waterston, and Denzel Washington; and produced Hair, Sticks and Bones, for colored girls, The Normal Heart, and A Chorus Line, the longest running musical in Broadway history. "This first biography of the late Joseph Papp will be a hard act to follow." — Booklist "The final portrait that emerges might have been jointly painted by Goya, Whistler and Francis Bacon." — Benedict Nightingale, front-page New York Times Sunday Book Review Playwright Tony Kushner called Papp "one of the very few heroes this tawdry, timid business has produced" and the book, a "nourishing and juicy biography." "Helen Epstein recounts [Papp's] career in [this] definitive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography. [...] It is a tribute to Epstein’s narrative skill that the detailed account of Papp’s decline and eventual defeat by cancer [...] reads as both riveting and horrifying." — Ellen Schiff, All About Jewish Theatre Oklahoma-born Paul Davis created 51 iconic posters for Joseph Papp, starting in 1975 with the New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Hamlet" starring Sam Waterston. "It was inspiring to work with Joe," says Davis. "We would discuss what he wanted to achieve in a production, and he trusted me to find a way to express it. And he respected the poster as its own dramatic form." The artist’s work has been exhibited in the U.S., Europe and Japan. He is a recipient of a special Drama Desk award created for his theater art. Davis was elected to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame and the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 755
Book Description
Joseph Papp (1921-1991), theater producer, champion of human rights and of the First Amendment, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival and Public Theater, changed the American cultural landscape. Born Yussel Papirofsky in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he discovered Shakespeare in public school and first produced a show on an aircraft carrier during World War II. After a stint at the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood, he moved to New York, where he worked as a CBS stage manager during the golden age of television. He fought Parks Commissioner Robert Moses (as well as Mayors Wagner, Lindsay, Beame and Koch) winning first the right to stage free Shakespeare in New York’s Central Park, then municipal funding to keep it going. He built the Delacorte Theater and later rebuilt the former Astor Library on Lafayette Street, transforming it into the Public Theater. In addition to helping create an "American" style of Shakespeare, Papp pioneered colorblind casting and theater as a not-for-profit institution. He showcased playwrights David Rabe, Elizabeth Swados, Ntozake Shange, David Hare, Wallace Shawn, John Guare, and Vaclav Havel; directors Michael Bennett, Wilford Leach and James Lapine; actors Al Pacino, Colleen Dewhurst, George C. Scott, James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Sam Waterston, and Denzel Washington; and produced Hair, Sticks and Bones, for colored girls, The Normal Heart, and A Chorus Line, the longest running musical in Broadway history. "This first biography of the late Joseph Papp will be a hard act to follow." — Booklist "The final portrait that emerges might have been jointly painted by Goya, Whistler and Francis Bacon." — Benedict Nightingale, front-page New York Times Sunday Book Review Playwright Tony Kushner called Papp "one of the very few heroes this tawdry, timid business has produced" and the book, a "nourishing and juicy biography." "Helen Epstein recounts [Papp's] career in [this] definitive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography. [...] It is a tribute to Epstein’s narrative skill that the detailed account of Papp’s decline and eventual defeat by cancer [...] reads as both riveting and horrifying." — Ellen Schiff, All About Jewish Theatre Oklahoma-born Paul Davis created 51 iconic posters for Joseph Papp, starting in 1975 with the New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Hamlet" starring Sam Waterston. "It was inspiring to work with Joe," says Davis. "We would discuss what he wanted to achieve in a production, and he trusted me to find a way to express it. And he respected the poster as its own dramatic form." The artist’s work has been exhibited in the U.S., Europe and Japan. He is a recipient of a special Drama Desk award created for his theater art. Davis was elected to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame and the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
Shakespeare Alive!
Author: Joseph Papp
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553270818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
From Joseph Papp, American’s foremost theater producer, and writer Elizabeth Kirkland: a captivating tour through the world of William Shakespeare. Discover the London of Shakespeare's time, a fascinating place to be—full of mayhem and magic, exploration and exploitation, courtiers and foreigners. Stroll through narrow, winding streets crowded with merchants and minstrels, hoist a pint in a rowdy alehouse, and hurry across the river to the open-air Globe Theater to see that latest play written by a young man named Will Shakespeare. Shakespeare Alive! spirits you back to the very years of that London—as everyday people might have experienced it. Find out how young people fell in love, how workers and artists made ends meet, what people found funny and what they feared most. Go on location with an Elizabethan theater company to learn how plays were produced, where Shakespeare’s plots came from and how he transformed them. Hear the music of Shakespeare’s language and words we still use today that were first spoken in his time. Open the book and elbow your way into the Globe with the groundlings. You’ll be joining one of the most democratic audiences the theater has ever known—alewives, apprentices, shoemakers and nobles—in applauding the dazzling wordplay and swordplay brought to you by William Shakespeare.
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553270818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
From Joseph Papp, American’s foremost theater producer, and writer Elizabeth Kirkland: a captivating tour through the world of William Shakespeare. Discover the London of Shakespeare's time, a fascinating place to be—full of mayhem and magic, exploration and exploitation, courtiers and foreigners. Stroll through narrow, winding streets crowded with merchants and minstrels, hoist a pint in a rowdy alehouse, and hurry across the river to the open-air Globe Theater to see that latest play written by a young man named Will Shakespeare. Shakespeare Alive! spirits you back to the very years of that London—as everyday people might have experienced it. Find out how young people fell in love, how workers and artists made ends meet, what people found funny and what they feared most. Go on location with an Elizabethan theater company to learn how plays were produced, where Shakespeare’s plots came from and how he transformed them. Hear the music of Shakespeare’s language and words we still use today that were first spoken in his time. Open the book and elbow your way into the Globe with the groundlings. You’ll be joining one of the most democratic audiences the theater has ever known—alewives, apprentices, shoemakers and nobles—in applauding the dazzling wordplay and swordplay brought to you by William Shakespeare.
Great Producers
Author: Iris Dorbian
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1581157525
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Up close and personal with Broadway’s brightest lights of the past, present, and future. * Firsthand accounts, rare interviews, backstage anecdotes * Insider ideas from Disney, Jujamcyn, Mackintosh, Weissler, Papp, Merrick, Ziegfeld, more! Broadway’s most esteemed visionaries tell all—how they got started in the business, how they chose projects, how they raise money, why some of their shows were huge hits and others flopped, and much more. From Flo Ziegfeld and David Merrick, from Joseph Papp, from Cameron Mackintosh, from today’s up-and-coming new generation of producers—here are priceless words of wisdom. Readers will find insights on how to deal with investors, work in a team, troubleshoot, and learn from mistakes. Filled with entertaining backstage anecdotes, this book is a must-have primer for educators, students, and budding producers.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1581157525
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Up close and personal with Broadway’s brightest lights of the past, present, and future. * Firsthand accounts, rare interviews, backstage anecdotes * Insider ideas from Disney, Jujamcyn, Mackintosh, Weissler, Papp, Merrick, Ziegfeld, more! Broadway’s most esteemed visionaries tell all—how they got started in the business, how they chose projects, how they raise money, why some of their shows were huge hits and others flopped, and much more. From Flo Ziegfeld and David Merrick, from Joseph Papp, from Cameron Mackintosh, from today’s up-and-coming new generation of producers—here are priceless words of wisdom. Readers will find insights on how to deal with investors, work in a team, troubleshoot, and learn from mistakes. Filled with entertaining backstage anecdotes, this book is a must-have primer for educators, students, and budding producers.
Shakespeare in American Life
Author: Folger Shakespeare Library
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
"Published in conjunction with the exhibition Shakespeare in American Life presented at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, from 8 March through 18 August 2007, in celebration of the Library's 75th anniversary"-- back of title page.
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
"Published in conjunction with the exhibition Shakespeare in American Life presented at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, from 8 March through 18 August 2007, in celebration of the Library's 75th anniversary"-- back of title page.
The Past, Present, and Future of American Regional Theatre
Author: Jeffrey Ullom
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031719557
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031719557
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
Three Masters: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky
Author: Stefan Zweig
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
In these early 20th century literary essays, Stefan Zweig offers a Central European view of the writers he believed to be the “three greatest novelists” of the 19th century: Balzac, Dickens, and Dostoevsky. In Zweig’s view, Balzac set out to emulate his childhood hero Napoleon. Writing 20 hours a day, Balzac’s literary ambition was “tantamount to monomania in its persistence, its intensity, and its concentration.” His characters, each similarly driven by one desperate urge, were more vital to Balzac than people in his daily life. In Zweig’s reading, Dickens embodied Victorian England and its “bourgeois smugness”. His characters aspire to “A few hundred pounds a year, an amiable wife, a dozen children, a well-appointed table and succulent meats to entertain their friends with, a cottage not too far from London, the windows giving a view over the green countryside, a pretty little garden, and a modicum of happiness.” The ideal of middle-class respectability suffuses Dickens’ fiction. Dostoevsky drew on the struggles of his own life to illuminate the contradictions of the human soul. In Zweig’s view, his heroes had no desire to be citizens or ordinary human beings. While Balzac’s heroes “would gladly have subjugated the world, Dostoevsky’s heroes wished to transcend it.”
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
In these early 20th century literary essays, Stefan Zweig offers a Central European view of the writers he believed to be the “three greatest novelists” of the 19th century: Balzac, Dickens, and Dostoevsky. In Zweig’s view, Balzac set out to emulate his childhood hero Napoleon. Writing 20 hours a day, Balzac’s literary ambition was “tantamount to monomania in its persistence, its intensity, and its concentration.” His characters, each similarly driven by one desperate urge, were more vital to Balzac than people in his daily life. In Zweig’s reading, Dickens embodied Victorian England and its “bourgeois smugness”. His characters aspire to “A few hundred pounds a year, an amiable wife, a dozen children, a well-appointed table and succulent meats to entertain their friends with, a cottage not too far from London, the windows giving a view over the green countryside, a pretty little garden, and a modicum of happiness.” The ideal of middle-class respectability suffuses Dickens’ fiction. Dostoevsky drew on the struggles of his own life to illuminate the contradictions of the human soul. In Zweig’s view, his heroes had no desire to be citizens or ordinary human beings. While Balzac’s heroes “would gladly have subjugated the world, Dostoevsky’s heroes wished to transcend it.”
Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman
Author: Stefan Zweig
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 522
Book Description
Originally published in 1932 and for decades since one of Stefan Zweig’s most popular biographies, this “portrait of an average woman,” betrothed at fourteen, crowned queen at nineteen, and beheaded at thirty-seven, aimed “not to deify, but to humanize.” Supplementing library and archival research with psychological insight,Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman is a vivid narrative of France’s most famous queen, her relations with her mother Empress Maria Theresa, her husband Louis XVI, and her lover Swedish Count von Fersen, set against the backdrop of the French and Austrian courts of the ancien régime, the French Revolution and the Terror. “... the biography to end all biographies on Marie Antoinette ... [Zweig's book] possesses all the qualities of the excellent biography — directness, frankness, full exposition, picturesqueness, characterization, color and delectable readableness.” —The New York Times “Powerful, magnificent, poignant…” — The New Republic “A stupendous and superb piece of work.” — Chicago Daily Tribune
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 522
Book Description
Originally published in 1932 and for decades since one of Stefan Zweig’s most popular biographies, this “portrait of an average woman,” betrothed at fourteen, crowned queen at nineteen, and beheaded at thirty-seven, aimed “not to deify, but to humanize.” Supplementing library and archival research with psychological insight,Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman is a vivid narrative of France’s most famous queen, her relations with her mother Empress Maria Theresa, her husband Louis XVI, and her lover Swedish Count von Fersen, set against the backdrop of the French and Austrian courts of the ancien régime, the French Revolution and the Terror. “... the biography to end all biographies on Marie Antoinette ... [Zweig's book] possesses all the qualities of the excellent biography — directness, frankness, full exposition, picturesqueness, characterization, color and delectable readableness.” —The New York Times “Powerful, magnificent, poignant…” — The New Republic “A stupendous and superb piece of work.” — Chicago Daily Tribune
The Right to Heresy: Castellio Against Calvin
Author: Stefan Zweig
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Book Description
This Plunkett Lake Press eBook is produced by arrangement with Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Castellio is a book against zealots of every kind: against anything engendering “the destruction of this world’s divine manifoldness” and injuring the humane spirit. [...] Why could Castellio not maintain himself against Calvin? Stefan Zweig’s answers to these questions have permanent and tragic validity: it was because the masses pay tribute not only to the power of love, but also to that of hatred. Followers could always be found for political slogans that established “enmity and divisions, casting sinister flames of hatred against another religion, race or class.” [...] Those who sacrificed themselves for a future reconciliation of men, wrote Stefan Zweig in 1933, could not escape the fact that a torrent of fanaticism, “rising from the shoals of human instinct,” would burst all dams and inundate all. [...] Castellio, “a fly against an elephant,” rose in opposition to Calvin who had condemned Miguel Servet — better known as Servetus — a true fighter for spiritual freedom, to die at the stake. “To burn a man alive does not defend a doctrine, but kills a man,” said Castellio. It was an ever-recurring curse that ideologies degenerated into tyranny and brute force. Fanaticism, indifferent to the material from which it was ignited, wanted only to let the accumulated forces of hatred flame forth. And Zweig utters these words, six years before the outbreak of the Second World War: “At such apocalyptic turning points, when mass delusions determine universal destinies, the demon of war, bursting the chains of reason, hurls itself greedily and joyfully into the world.” [...] In describing a tragic contest — here that of conscience against force — Zweig is in his element. He illuminates the interesting figure of Servetus who had fought in his own fanatical-hysterical manner already as a youth. It is characteristic that Servetus was dubbed by his enemies “Jew,” “Turk,” and wicked “Spaniard.” [...] Zweig stressed the self-sacrificing way in which [Castellio] defended freedom of thought against Calvin, becoming the symbol of “Conscience against Force.” And he describes most touchingly the sorrow this genuine hero had to suffer. He shows, too, how free spirits may be endangered by the carelessness with which they choose their fellow-wanderers; whereas the one-sided totalitarians, protected by their rigidity, always hold a stone ready to fling at their enemies. (from Married to Stefan Zweigby Friderike Zweig) “One cannot but admire the ardent spirit with which Stefan Zweig has set out to annihilate the doctrines of exclusiveness and restriction in religion and in politics... the most spirited [book] and, in certain scholarly respects, the most important that Stefan Zweig has yet produced... From Stefan Zweig’s new book there emerges a new hero for a modern reading public: a true historic character rescued from near oblivion, and the first modern man who fought the good fight for humanity’s right to think its own thoughts and to say them. The battle has not yet been decided.” — Lloyd Eshleman,The New York Times, November 16, 1936
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Book Description
This Plunkett Lake Press eBook is produced by arrangement with Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Castellio is a book against zealots of every kind: against anything engendering “the destruction of this world’s divine manifoldness” and injuring the humane spirit. [...] Why could Castellio not maintain himself against Calvin? Stefan Zweig’s answers to these questions have permanent and tragic validity: it was because the masses pay tribute not only to the power of love, but also to that of hatred. Followers could always be found for political slogans that established “enmity and divisions, casting sinister flames of hatred against another religion, race or class.” [...] Those who sacrificed themselves for a future reconciliation of men, wrote Stefan Zweig in 1933, could not escape the fact that a torrent of fanaticism, “rising from the shoals of human instinct,” would burst all dams and inundate all. [...] Castellio, “a fly against an elephant,” rose in opposition to Calvin who had condemned Miguel Servet — better known as Servetus — a true fighter for spiritual freedom, to die at the stake. “To burn a man alive does not defend a doctrine, but kills a man,” said Castellio. It was an ever-recurring curse that ideologies degenerated into tyranny and brute force. Fanaticism, indifferent to the material from which it was ignited, wanted only to let the accumulated forces of hatred flame forth. And Zweig utters these words, six years before the outbreak of the Second World War: “At such apocalyptic turning points, when mass delusions determine universal destinies, the demon of war, bursting the chains of reason, hurls itself greedily and joyfully into the world.” [...] In describing a tragic contest — here that of conscience against force — Zweig is in his element. He illuminates the interesting figure of Servetus who had fought in his own fanatical-hysterical manner already as a youth. It is characteristic that Servetus was dubbed by his enemies “Jew,” “Turk,” and wicked “Spaniard.” [...] Zweig stressed the self-sacrificing way in which [Castellio] defended freedom of thought against Calvin, becoming the symbol of “Conscience against Force.” And he describes most touchingly the sorrow this genuine hero had to suffer. He shows, too, how free spirits may be endangered by the carelessness with which they choose their fellow-wanderers; whereas the one-sided totalitarians, protected by their rigidity, always hold a stone ready to fling at their enemies. (from Married to Stefan Zweigby Friderike Zweig) “One cannot but admire the ardent spirit with which Stefan Zweig has set out to annihilate the doctrines of exclusiveness and restriction in religion and in politics... the most spirited [book] and, in certain scholarly respects, the most important that Stefan Zweig has yet produced... From Stefan Zweig’s new book there emerges a new hero for a modern reading public: a true historic character rescued from near oblivion, and the first modern man who fought the good fight for humanity’s right to think its own thoughts and to say them. The battle has not yet been decided.” — Lloyd Eshleman,The New York Times, November 16, 1936
Amerigo: A Comedy of Errors in History
Author: Stefan Zweig
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 105
Book Description
Stefan Zweig's Amerigo: A Comedy of Errors in History is the Austrian writer's account of how America got its name. This short, late work describes how Amerigo Vespucci, “a man of medium caliber [who] had never been entrusted with a fleet” gave his name to the New World because “of a combination of circumstances — through error, accident, and misunderstanding.” Zweig was living in exile in Brazil when he wrote Amerigo, shortly before committing suicide in despair over Hitler's conquest of Europe. “The paradox that Columbus discovered America but failed to recognize it, while Vespucci did not discover it but was the first to recognize it as a new continent,” he wrote, illustrates how “history will not be reasoned with.”
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 105
Book Description
Stefan Zweig's Amerigo: A Comedy of Errors in History is the Austrian writer's account of how America got its name. This short, late work describes how Amerigo Vespucci, “a man of medium caliber [who] had never been entrusted with a fleet” gave his name to the New World because “of a combination of circumstances — through error, accident, and misunderstanding.” Zweig was living in exile in Brazil when he wrote Amerigo, shortly before committing suicide in despair over Hitler's conquest of Europe. “The paradox that Columbus discovered America but failed to recognize it, while Vespucci did not discover it but was the first to recognize it as a new continent,” he wrote, illustrates how “history will not be reasoned with.”