Showing results for "nature" in Art & Literature

What do you do when your world ends? At 28 years old, Krista Schlyer sold almost everything she owned and packed the rest of it in a station wagon bound for the American wild. Her two best friends joined her - one a grumpy, grieving introvert, the other a feisty dog - and together they sought out every national park, historic site, forest, and wilderness they could get to before their money ran out or their minds gave in.

In 2018, Claire Nelson made international headlines. She was in her 30s and was beginning to burn out - her hectic London life of work and social activity and striving to do more and do better in the big city was frenetic and stressful. Although she was surrounded by people all of the time, she felt increasingly lonely. When the anxiety she felt finally brought her to breaking point, Claire decided to take some time off and travelled to Joshua Tree Park in California to hike and clear her head. What happened next was something she could never have anticipated.

Born in Boston, Stephen Bodio wandered into Magdalena, New Mexico, in the 1970s while on his way to Montana and never left. He was accompanied by Betsy Huntington, who was twenty years his senior; the couple had been inseparable from the day they met. After stumbling upon a vintage home along the highway, they settled into a country life; it was the perfect way for the two of them to make their lives together in an out-of-the-way place.

Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible.

It is the most famous year in English poetry. Out of it came The Ancient Mariner and ‘Kubla Khan’, as well as Coleridge’s unmatched hymns to friendship and fatherhood, Wordsworth’s revolutionary verses in Lyrical Ballads and the greatness of ‘Tintern Abbey’, his paean to the unity of soul and cosmos, love and understanding.

The time is ripe to bring the life and work of Peter Matthiessen back into the spotlight – bestselling writer, jungle explorer, hallucinogen experimenter, Zen Buddhist. Lance Richardson is an energetic and intrepid reporter, compelling writer and exhaustive researcher. He has the trust of the Estate, complete access to Matthiessen’s archive and the family’s blessing. He also intends to recreate Matthiessen’s journey across the Himalaya as part of the writing of the book.

In 1722, Mark Catesby stepped ashore in Charles Town in the Carolina colony. Over the next four years, this young naturalist made history as he explored deep into America’s natural wonders, collecting and drawing plants and animals which had never been seen back in the Old World. Nine years later Catesby produced his magnificent and groundbreaking book, The Natural History of Carolina, the first-ever illustrated account of American flora and fauna.

John James Audubon's The Birds of America stands as an unparalleled achievement in American art. With that work, Audubon became one of the most adulated artists of his time, and America's first celebrity scientist. A self-made man incessantly striving to secure his place in American society, Audubon made himself into a skilled painter, a successful entrepreneur, and a prolific writer, whose words went well beyond birds and scientific description.

As he was composing what was to become his most enduring and popular book, E. B. White was obeying that oft-repeated maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats - White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. In The Story of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims shows how White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile-fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole."

In an effort to make sense of the deaths in quick succession of several loved ones, Kathleen Dean Moore turned to the comfort of the wild, making a series of solitary excursions into ancient forests, wild rivers, remote deserts, and windswept islands to learn what the environment could teach her in her time of pain. This audiobook is the record of her experiences.

The Art of Youth is a moving inquiry into the nature of artistic prodigies who did their major work at an early age. Renowned novelist Nicholas Delbanco gives us a triptych of indelible portraits: the American writer Stephen Crane, British artist Dora Carrington and the legendary composer George Gershwin. All three lived colorful, productive lives before dying early, at an average age of thirty-five. In this audiobook, Delbanco discovers what it is we mourn in authors who pass away so young, and muses on his own life - one marked by both early success and longevity.

Born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, John showed an early interest newspapers when, aged 11, he wrote the Grimthorpe Street Gazette: a one-page paper detailing the latest goings-on in his street. It was a short-lived enterprise, not least as he only had one copy of it (which he charged neighbours a penny to borrow and read). It was whilst working at the Yorkshire Post that he heard of a new opening at the BBC - a move that was to change his life forever....

Gli audiobook della serie "Leonardo: i volti del genio" ti guidano nel mondo di Leonardo da Vinci, mente visionaria che ha rivoluzionato le arti e le scienze nel Rinascimento, incuriosendo gli uomini di ogni tempo con le sue idee innovative e incredibilmente moderne. Scopri tutti i lati del genio poliedrico di Leonardo con questi audiobook curati da uno dei massimi esperti italiani di Leonardo, letti da una voce professionista.