Mapplethorpe

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Barbara Leaming

At last, the definitive biography of Katharine Hepburn - the story she herself has never told. Hollywood has produced many stars, but no one compares to Katharine Hepburn. She is the last of the great ones: a celebrated actress, a brilliant personality, an original. In more than sixty years of public life, countless men have fallen in love with her, women have admired her, and yet only a handful have ever known the real Kate. What drove Katharine Hepburn? Why was she so loved? How could such a fiercely independent woman have given up her life to one man - Spencer Tracy - to the point of curling up on the floor outside his hotel room while he drank himself into unconsciousness behind a locked door? Barbara Leaming has discovered thousands of never-before-seen documents that finally illuminate the mystery of this enigmatic, fascinating woman. Growing up in a family shadowed by suicide and madness, young Kate was unaware of her family's tragic history until the day - she was thirteen - she discovered her brother hanging dead in an attic. His death - and the heritage that might have explained it - was never talked of again, leaving Kate with unresolved questions that have haunted her ever since. It is a love story - though not the one you would expect. It is also a family story that brings alive three generations of fearless women, personal and political crusaders who shaped the history of women in our century.

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Bill Whiting

"The true story of the life and untimely death of ... young artist named Daniel Arthur Allen. When one of Dan's mysterious, jewel-like paintings was discovered in the vault of a major museum nearly four decades after his death, artist Bill Whiting began to write about his life with Danny in Rochester, New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the sexual revolution, drugs, gay liberation, and antiwar protests made everyday life anything but predictable"--Back cover.

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Alastair Gordon

"Early one day in the summer of 1993, the famously prolific architect Norman Jaffe went for a swim at the beach in Bridgehampton, New York, leaving his clothes in a neat little pile on the sand, as he did almost every morning. But this particular morning, he never returned. With his disappearance, he left behind many unanswered questions - not only about the cause of his death, but about the nature of his architectural legacy." "Romantic Modernist: The Life and Work of Norman Jaffe, Architect is the first book to explore Jaffe's body of work and the inner struggle that shaped his life. A magnetic, free-spirited individual, he approached his work with a sense of passion that was all but unrivaled in the world of architecture. Over the course of his career, he established himself as an innovator in solar and urban design, but he is best known for his strikingly sculptural houses in the Hamptons, from small hideaways to sprawling estates, to which he brought an almost mystical vision: with the perfect balance of light and shadow and the right proportions and materials, he was convinced, houses could provide what he described as "dreamlike, romantic journeys" that offered an opportunity for self-discovery." "Through interviews with Jaffe's closest friends and associates, as well as exhaustive archival research, critic Alastair Gordon traces Jaffe's career trajectory from his early years on the West Coast through his increasingly celebrated life in New York and his premature, unexplained death. Hundreds of original drawings and color photographs illustrate Jaffe's story, offering a rare look at this charismatic figure whose life was as interesting as the work he produced."--Jacket.

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Paul Ferris

"Dylan Thomas's life and work have made him a legendary figure since he died, amid alcohol and debts, in New York at the age of thirty-nine. At the heart of his achievement are a few dozen poems and stories which, together with the romantic comedy Under Milk Wood, haunt the imagination and give his writing a broader appeal than he could have envisaged. Beyond his writing is the chequered figure of the poet himself: often comic, at times in despair, always self-obsessed, in the end defeated by his own nature." "Paul Ferris's classic biography has been recognised as the standard life since it first appeared in 1977. He has now drawn on fresh material to revise the book. In particular, he looks again at Thomas's marriage to the fiery Caitlin, and finds in it the seeds of a fatal dependence."--BOOK JACKET.