Author: James Gardner
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466879033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
Buenos Aires, Argentina, recognized for its European-style architecture and lively theater scene, is a truly special place. The second-largest city in South America, it has been the home of such renowned cultural and historical figures as Jorge Luis Borges and Astor Piazzola, Che Guevara and Eva Peron. Like every truly great city, New York, London and Prague; Buenos Aires is its own universe, with its own center of gravity, its own scents and flavors, its own architectural signature-in short, its own way of being. From San Telmo's oak-paneled restaurants and brightly tiled apothecaries from 1900, and the phantasmagoric Beaux Arts palaces along Avenida Alvear and Plaza San Martin, to the parks of Palermo and the bustling bars and cafes along Corrientes and LaValle, Buenos Aires is steeped in exotic culture and history. In Buenos Aires, Art and culture critic James Gardner offers a colorful biography of the "Paris of the South," from its origins and time as a colonial city, through its Golden age, the rise of Peron, and the Falklands War, to the present day. With entertaining asides about art, architecture, literature, food and dance, as well as local customs and colorful personalities, this is a rich and unique historical narrative of Buenos Aires.
Author: James Gardner
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1137279885
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
A colorful and entertaining account of Buenos Aires—one of the most beautiful and culturally rich cities in the world, and a major tourist destination.
Author: Jason Wilson
Publisher: Interlink Books
ISBN: 9781566563475
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
The most European of South American cities, Buenos Aires evokes exile and nostalgia. A nineteenth-century replica of Paris or Madrid set adrift in an alien continent, its identity is neither of the Old World nor the New. The Argentine capital's rootlessness has famously found expression in the melancholy of tango and, more recently, in a vogue for psychoanalysis even more widespread than New York's. Jason Wilson explores this contradictory and culturally rich city by tracing its development from remote ranching settlement to modern metropolis. Taking landmarks, both well-known and hidden, as starting points for a journey of discovery, he looks at the events, people and writing that have shaped modern Buenos Aires and its cultural life. • The city of Borges and Cortazar: the European literary tradition, magical realism and fantasy, the construction of an Argentine voice, writers local and foreign •The city of tango: the music of longing and despair, a meeting-point of machismo and sensuality, lowlife culture of the port •The city of passions: the cult of Evita Peron, the life-and-death matter of soccer, the totalitarian political legacy.
Author: James Gardner
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802148794
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
The centuries-long history of the Louvre, from humble fortress to Royal palace to the world’s greatest art museum—with photos and building maps. Some ten million people from all over the world flock to the Louvre each year to enjoy its incomparable art collection. Yet few of them are aware of the remarkable history of the site and buildings themselves—a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly chronicles in this authoritative history. More than seven thousand years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown. Centuries later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there, just outside the walls of a nascent Paris. Intended to protect the capital against English soldiers stationed in Normandy, the fortress became a royal residence under Charles V two centuries later, and then the monarchy’s principal residence under the great Renaissance king François I. In 1682, when Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles, the Louvre languished until the French Revolution when, during the Reign of Terror in 1793, it first opened its doors to display the nation’s treasures. Ever since—through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to the present—the Louvre has been a witness to French history, and expanded to become home to a legendary art collection that includes the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Includes sixteen pages of full-color photos illustrating the history of the Louvre, a full-color map detailing its evolution from fortress to museum, and black-and-white images throughout the narrative.
Author: Miranda France
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 1780225784
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
A funny and poignant account of life in Buenos Aires, by a young prize-winning writer. In 1993 Miranda France moved to South America, drawn to Buenos Aires as the intellectual hub of the continent, with its wealth of writers and its romantic, passionate and tragic history. She found that is was all these things, but it was also a terrible place to live. The inhabitants of Buenos Aires are famously unhappy. All over South America they are known for their arrogance, their fixation of Europe and their moodiness. Very soon, Miranda France encounters' bronca' - the simmering and barely controllable rage that is a staple feature of life in the Argentinian capital. She finds that 'bronca' has deep roots: the violence and racism of the first European settlers; the dictatorships, especially in the 1970s when so many 'disappeared'; even Evita Peron, for there was no rage to rival Evita's.
Author: Joseph A. Page
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150408313X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 780
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Book Description
This biography recounting the Argentinean president’s rise, fall, and remarkable return to power is “a formidable achievement” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Latin America has produced no more remarkable or enduring political figure than Juan Perón. Born to modest circumstances in 1895 and trained in the military, he rose to power during a period of political uncertainty in Argentina. A shrewd opportunist who understood the needs and aspirations of the country’s workers, Perón rode their votes to the presidency and then increased their share of the nation’s wealth. But he also destroyed the independence of their unions and suppressed dissent. Ousted in a coup in 1955, Perón wandered about Latin America and finally settled in Spain, where he masterminded an astonishing political comeback that climaxed in his reelection as president in 1973. Joseph A. Page’s engrossing biography is based upon interviews, never-before-inspected Argentine and US government documents, and exhaustive research. It spans Perón’s formative years; his arrest and dramatic rescue by the descamisados in 1945; his relationship with the now mythic Evita; the violence and mysterious murders that punctuated his career; his tragic legacy, personified by his third wife, Isabel, who assumed the presidency after his death under the influence of a Rasputin-like astrologer; and the continuing appeal of Perónism in Argentina. In addition, Page’s study of Argentine-American relations is particularly penetrating—especially in its description of the struggle between Perón and US ambassador Spruille Braden. “It would probably take a novel stamped with the surrealistic genius of a Gabriel García Márquez to render all the madness, perverse magic and tragedy of Juan Domingo Perón and his Argentina. But Joseph A. Page has come up with the next best option. . . . A clearly written, definitive study.” —The New York Times Book Review
Author: Andrew Graham-Yooll
Publisher: Eland Publishing
ISBN: 9781906011703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This title is a celebration of Argentina, which chronicles the rise and fall of the British colony in the '20s and '30s through the imaginative biography of one of its charismatic representatives - a hard-drinking, womanising Scotsman, who cut his way through the bars and brothels of the city whilst trading with farmers up-country.
Author: Maria Gainza
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1948226170
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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Book Description
"In this delightful autofiction―the first book by Gainza, an Argentine art critic, to appear in English―a woman delivers pithy assessments of world–class painters along with glimpses of her life, braiding the two into an illuminating whole." ―The New York Times Book Review, Notable Book of the Year and Editors' Choice The narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her. In these pages, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo’s bodies. The mystery of Rothko’s refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator’s husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Géricault’s workshop; Gustave Courbet’s devilish seascapes incite viewers “to have sex, or to eat an apple”; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau’s honor . . . All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator’s life in Buenos Aires―her family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments. The effect is of a character refracted by environment, composed by the canvases she studies. Seductive and capricious, Optic Nerve marks the English–language debut of a major Argentinian writer. It is a book that captures, like no other, the mysterious connections between a work of art and the person who perceives it.
Author: Willis Barnstone
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068638
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
Combining spirited and philosophical conversations, biographical anecdotes, citations from poetry, and literary analysis, this is a poignant portrait of Jorge Luis Borges in his later years. It presents the poet-storyteller as a figure of paradox and contradictions.
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Publisher: Dutton Adult
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : de
Pages : 176
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Book Description
