"I don't believe in God, but I miss him." So begins this book, which is a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the writer Jules Renard. Barnes also draws poignant portraits of the last days of his parents, recalled with great detail, affection and exasperation. Other examples he takes up include writers, "most...

The little-known story of Leonard Cohen's concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War, including never-before-seen selections from an unfinished manuscript by Cohen and rare photographs. In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen -- thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end -- traveled from his home on the Greek island of Hydra to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the...

A best seller when first published in Germany in 2003, Jens Malte Fischer's Gustav Mahler has been lauded by scholars as a landmark work. He draws on important primary resources - some unavailable to previous biographers- and sets in narrative context the extensive correspondence between Mahler and his wife, Alma; Alma Mahler's diaries; and the memoirs of Natalie Bauer-Lechner, a viola player and close friend of Mahler, whose private journals provide...

Set in the 1920s, two decades after the first series ends, the plot follows the courtship of two teenage Forsyte cousins: Fleur and Jon. Fleur, the daughter of Soames and Annette, and Jon, the son of Irene and Jolyon, meet by chance as youngsters; now Irene's son has fallen in love with the daughter of Soames, the man she despises above all others. Fleur and Jon haven't a clue that Soames and Irene were once married, all they know is that the family...

The dramatic story of a legendary American composer focusing on his private life through the use of fresh sources. From the Publisher: George Gershwin lived with purpose and gusto, but with melancholy as well, for he was unable to make a place for himself-no family of his own and no real home in music. He and his siblings received little love from their mother and no direction from their father. Older brother and lyricist Ira managed to create a...

"Short autobiography about author's processes of researching, interviewing, and writing his books"-- "From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson: an unprecedented gathering of vivid, candid, deeply revealing recollections about his experiences researching and writing his acclaimed books. For the first time in book form, Robert Caro gives us a glimpse into his own life and work in these evocatively...

Looks at Jesus through the many portraits the Gospels provide. The course examines not only the familiar canonical Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John from the New Testament, but also many other apocryphal narratives and literary works that have also contributed to our perceptions of Jesus, Mary, and Christianity. All of these works are encompassed by the word "Gospel."