Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
2,954
result(s) for
"France Biography."
Sort by:
Fearless and free
Funny, candid and unconventional: the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker tells her own story in this enchanting memoir. She took Paris by storm in the 1920s, dazzling audiences with her humour, beauty and effervescence on stage. Hemingway, Jean Cocteau and Picasso admired her; Shirley Bassey adored her. It was told she strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah who wore a diamond collar. Later, as one of the most recognisable women in the world, she became a spy for the French resistance, her celebrity working as her cover. She was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for military service. After the war she became increasingly interested in civil rights. In 1963 she spoke at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King. All this from a girl born in Missouri to a single Black woman and a white father she did not know. This book offers an insight into a beguiling figure of the 20th century.
BOOK
Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne
Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of
Champagne by Theodore Evergates traces the
remarkable life of Geoffroy of Villehardouin (c. 1148-c. 1217) from
his earliest years in Champagne through his last years in Greece
after the crusade.
The fourth son of a knight, Geoffroy became marshal of
Champagne, principal negotiator in organizing the Fourth Crusade,
chief of staff of the expedition to and conquest of Constantinople,
garrison commander of Constantinople and, in his late fifties,
field commander defending the Latin settlement in the Byzantine
empire against invading Bulgarian armies and revolting Greek
cities. Known for his diplomatic skills and rectitude, he served as
the chief military advisor to Count Thibaut III of Champagne and
later to Emperor Henry of Constantinople.
Geoffroy is remarkable as well for dictating the earliest war
memoir in medieval Europe, which is also the earliest prose
narrative in Old French. Addressed to a home audience in Champagne,
he described what he did, what he saw, and what he heard during his
eight years on crusade and especially during the fraught period
after the conquest of Constantinople. His memoir, The Book of
the Conquest of Constantinople , furnishes a commander's
retrospective account of the main events and inner workings of the
crusade-the innumerable meetings and speeches, the conduct (not
always commendable) of the barons, and the persistent discontent
within the army-as well as a celebration of his own deeds as a
diplomat and a military commander.
eBook
Locating Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (1930--2002) had an enormous influence on social and
cultural thought in the second half of the 20th century, leaving a mark on fields as
diverse as sociology, anthropology, critical theory, education, literary criticism,
art history, and media studies. From his childhood in a rural French village, to his
fieldwork in Algeria, to his ascension to the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de
France, Bourdieu's life followed a trajectory both complex and contradictory. In
this original and eloquent study, Deborah Reed-Danahay offers fresh insights on
Bourdieu's work by drawing on the perspectives of ethnography and autobiography.
Using Bourdieu's own reflections upon his life and career and considering the
totality of his research and writing, this book locates Bourdieu within his French
milieu and within the current state of discussion of Europe and its colonial legacy.
Locating Bourdieu revisits major themes and concepts such as structure and practice,
taste and distinction, habitus, social field, symbolic capital, and symbolic
violence, adding new perspectives and discovering implications of Bourdieu's work
for understanding emotion, social space, and personal narrative. The result is a
work of impressive scholarship and intellectual creativity that will appeal to
scholars, students, and non-specialists alike. New Anthropologies
of Europe -- Daphne Berdahl, Matti Bunzl, and Michael Herzfeld, editors
eBook
Derrida's Marrano Passover : exile, survival, betrayal, and the metaphysics of non-identity
\"The first book devoted to Derrida's Marranism - his paradoxical 'non-Jewish Jewishness' - connecting it to the Derridean themes of exile, survival, betrayal and autobiography\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Life Behind the Mask
'You had to decide to let yourself be turned upside down, you had to accept to see the idea you had forged about yourself progressively shatter.' In the summer of 1969, at 19 years old, Didier Mouturat gave up on college, shattering his parents' hopes that he follow a safe and conventional course. Fresh from the wild Parisian student revolt of 1968, with its street battles and slogans, he set out to find a life that would be truly alive, deciding to be a classical actor. When he met Cyrille Dives, however, the universe of masks quietly turned his world upside down. This book describes Mouturat's apprenticeship to a unique theater artist. In the 1970s and early 80s, Dives created a theater of masks, a Western parallel to Japanese Noh. Dives was a true bohemian artist, a sculptor of masks, a painter and theatrical director. Cyrille Dives was also a spiritual master. Mouturat's apprenticeship encompassed everything from walking in a way that brings a mask to life to cultivating a beginner's mind. Slowly and subtly, the theater apprenticeship became an encounter with the deeper truth of his own being. 'I am speaking of an intimate, progressive discovery that we are not masters of our own being -- that it is only the result of a system of reactions that tyrannize us.' Mouturat becomes Dives's right-hand man, helping establish a theater and a school of masks. That work is evident here in enchanting illustrations, as well as words. Yet as translated by the scholar and author Roger Lipsey, Mouturat also offers a pithy chronicle of a search for meaning and inner being.
eBook
The life and afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria
The fascinating history of Isabeau of Bavaria is a tale of two queens. During her lifetime, Isabeau, the long-suffering wife of mad King Charles VI of France, was respected and revered. After her death, she was reviled as an incompetent regent, depraved adulteress, and betrayer of the throne. Asserting that there is no historical support for this posthumous reputation, Tracy Adams returns Isabeau to her rightful place in history. Adulteress and traitor—two charges long leveled against the queen—are the first subjects of Adam’s reinterpretation of medieval French history. Scholars have concluded that the myths of Isabeau’s scandalous past are just that: rumors that evolved after her death in the context of a political power struggle. Unfortunately, this has not prevented the lies from finding their way into respected studies on the period. Adams’s own work serves as a corrective, rehabilitating the reputation of the good queen and exploring the larger topic of memory and the creation of myth. Adams next challenges the general perception that the queen lacked political acumen. With her husband incapacitated by insanity, Isabeau was forced to rule a country ripped apart by feuding, power-hungry factions. Adams argues that Isabeau handled her role astutely in such a contentious environment, preserving the monarchy from the incursions of the king’s powerful male relatives. Taking issue with history’s harsh treatment of a woman who ruled under difficult circumstances, Adams convincingly recasts Isabeau as a respected and competent queen.
eBook
Monet : the restless vision
Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature, and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring devastating bereavements, he pushed the frontier of painting inward, to evoke memory and the passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms - the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.
Book
Tocqueville
Many American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat--as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself. Yet, as Lucien Jaume argues in this acclaimed intellectual biography,Democracy in Americais best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. \"America,\" Jaume says, \"was merely a pretext for studying modern society and the woes of France.\" For Tocqueville, in short, America was a mirror for France, a way for Tocqueville to write indirectly about his own society, to engage French thinkers and debates, and to come to terms with France's aristocratic legacy.
By taking seriously the idea that Tocqueville's French context is essential for understandingDemocracy in America, Jaume provides a powerful and surprising new interpretation of Tocqueville's book as well as a fresh intellectual and psychological portrait of the author. Situating Tocqueville in the context of the crisis of authority in postrevolutionary France, Jaume shows that Tocqueville was an ambivalent promoter of democracy, a man who tried to reconcile himself to the coming wave, but who was also nostalgic for the aristocratic world in which he was rooted--and who believed that it would be necessary to preserve aristocratic values in order to protect liberty under democracy. Indeed, Jaume argues that one of Tocqueville's most important and original ideas was to recognize that democracy posed the threat of a new and hidden form of despotism.
eBook