Showing results by publisher "Audible studios" in Authors

Michael Reynolds recreates the milieu that forged one of America's greatest and most influential writers. He reveals the fraught foundations of Hemingway's persona: his father's self-destructive battle with depression and his mother's fierce independence and spiritualism. He brings Hemingway through World War I, where he was frustrated by being too far away from the action and glory, despite his being wounded and nursed to health by Agnes Von Kurowsky - the older woman with whom he fell terribly in love.

“A rare triumph” (The New York Times Book Review), this powerful memoir about the divergent paths taken by two brothers is a classic work from one of the greatest figures in American literature: a reflection on John Edgar Wideman’s family and his brother’s incarceration—a classic that is as relevant now as when originally published in 1984.

¿Cómo Juan Carlos I, un rey con una fuerza icónica única en Europa, con un país a sus pies, con ciertos políticos cómplices, con dinero y con las mujeres más guapas del mundo, pudo jugárselo todo? En su carrera hacia el abismo fue dejando atrás familia, amigos, prestigio, honorabilidad… ¿Fue por una mujer? ¿Por amor al dinero? ¿Por inconsciencia o por arrogancia?

A passionate advocate for preserving wilderness and fighting the bureaucratic and business forces that would destroy it, Edward Abbey (1927-1989) wrote fierce, polemical books such as Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang that continue to inspire environmental activists.

Apricot Irving grew up as a missionary’s daughter in Haiti. Her father was an agronomist, a man who hiked alone into the deforested hills to preach the gospel of trees. Her mother and sisters spent their days in the confines of the hospital compound they called home. As a child, this felt like paradise to Irving; as a teenager, it became a prison. Outside of the walls of the missionary enclave, Haiti was a tumult of bugle-call bus horns and bicycles that jangled over hard-packed dirt, road blocks and burning tires triggered by political upheaval....

"Over the last few years I've started writing a number of stories that, for various reasons, I never finished writing..." So begins Special Problems, the comic tale of Christie Hodges, a writer who can't seem to finish a story. The problem isn't that Hodges has nothing to write about - there's her recent divorce, her paralyzed foot, trouble with her daughter and job - it's that once she starts writing, she can't stop. One problem leads to another, and another.

Novelists, poets and playwrights live double lives, sharing the real world with everyone else while spending a good deal of time in a universe of their own making. When they fall out with each other, they are able to kindle feuds and antagonisms as passionate and public as workers in any trade. Richard Bradford’s highly entertaining audiobook looks at some of the closest and most complex relationships in literary history, examining their dramatic effects on literature itself.

American author John Horne Burns (1916 - 1953) led a brief and controversial life, and as a writer, transformed many of his darkest experiences into literature. Burns was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Andover and Harvard, and went on to teach English at the Loomis School, a boarding school for boys in Windsor, Connecticut. During World War II he was stationed in Africa and Italy and worked mainly in military intelligence. His first novel, The Gallery (1947), based on his wartime experiences, was critically acclaimed and one of the first to unflinchingly depict gay life in the military.

When Reynolds Price died in January 2011, he left behind one final piece of writing - two hundred candid, heartrending, and marvelously written manuscript pages about a critical period in his young adulthood. Picking up where his previous memoir, Ardent Spirits, left off, the work documents a brief time from 1961 to 1965, perhaps the most leisurely of Price's life, but also one of enormous challenge and growth. Price gave it the title Midstream. Approaching thirty, Price writes, is to face the notion that, "This is it. I'm now the person I'm likely to be…from here to the end."

When Aeronwy was six, her parents Dylan and Caitlin Thomas moved to the Boat House at the edge of the small Welsh village of Laugharne. Through a child’s eye she recalls the chaos and joy of living with Dylan Thomas while the poet was at the height of his creative powers, composing 'Under Milk Wood'. Through a series of beautifully evocative episodes, village and family life are explored.

Becoming Shakespeare begins with his death in 1616 and relates the fascinating story of his unlikely transformation from provincial playwright to universal Bard. Unlike later literary giants, Shakespeare created no stir when he died. Though he'd once had a string of hit plays, he had been retired in the country for six years, and only his family, friends, and business partners seemed to care that he was gone.

El 12 de febrero de 1910 aparece en el Daily Mirror la fotografía de la visita del emperador de Etiopía y otros altos dignatarios al acorazado Dreadnought. Esta visita diplomática es, sin embargo, una broma organizada para burlarse de la Armada inglesa. Y, broma dentro de la broma, uno de los falsos etíopes ni siquiera es un hombre: la primera por la izquierda, de hecho, no es otra que Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) disfrazada.

"Recuerdo la mañana en que conocí a Octavio Paz. Fue el 11 de marzo de 1976, en el Panteón Jardín, cuando un grupo de amigos despedíamos al gran ensayista Daniel Cosío Villegas [...] Me acerqué a él para proponerle la publicación en su revista Plural de un ensayo mío sobre el ilustre liberal recién desaparecido. Días después, mi nombre apareció junto al suyo, pero nunca sospeché que ese vínculo sería permanente."

Schopenhauer escribió El arte de tener razón (o Dialéctica erística) para sistematizar «las astucias, ardides y bajezas» que empleamos cuando discutimos con la única finalidad de hacer prevalecer nuestras ideas. En la época en que Hegel señalaba la dialéctica como el único camino para alcanzar la culminación del Espíritu, Schopenhauer, su irreductible antagonista, la entendía como el florete a blandir en el particular combate de esgrima que es cualquier discusión.

Stefan Zweig, reconocido como uno de los mayores biógrafos de todos los tiempos, examina con su habitual perspicacia y sutileza la vida y obra de tres grandes escritores, y queda fascinado por la lucidez de Tolstói, la imparcialidad de Casanova y la ambigüedad de Stendhal.

Convencido de que uno de los hombres más inteligentes de la Tierra guarda el secreto del sentido de la vida y la inmortalidad del alma, el periodista Ricardo F. Colmenero se hace pasar por traficante de hachís y jugador de ajedrez para recoger los restos inmortales del comunista, del voluntario del Vietcong, del directivo del Instituto de Crédito Oficial, del presidiario, de la cobaya de estupefacientes, del primer repudiado por políticamente incorrecto cuando aún no existía lo políticamente incorrecto.

Lorenza Mazzetti, regista, scrittrice, pittrice, personalità fra le più straordinarie e influenti del panorama culturale del Novecento, si racconta in un dialogo che ripercorre tutte le sfumature emotive di un'intera esistenza.

Marqués de Sade. Sexualidad, amor y tormento trata sobre el controvertido escritor, ensayista y filósofo francés cuya vida llena de depravación, escándalo y libertinaje lo llevó a ser encarcelado por décadas. Fue durante el encierro que escribió algunas de sus célebres y crudas obras en las que se adentra en la sexualidad, el amor, la perversión, la tortura y el tormento, mismas que representaban un claro desafío a la sociedad de su tiempo.

¿Tenemos algo que contar? Y, lo más importante, ¿sabemos cómo hacerlo? Decía Oscar Wilde que no existen más que dos reglas para escribir: tener algo que decir y decirlo. Probablemente sea así, pero quizá no sea lo mismo tener algo que expresar al mundo...

En este audiolibro, Alejandro Jodorowsky cuenta cómo conoció al maestro japonés Ejo Takata, que lo inició en la meditación, en el budismo zen y en la enseñanza que transmiten los koans. Sin embargo, la aplicación de estos conocimientos en la vida lo aprendió de un reducido grupo de mujeres ("magas") que nada tenían que ver con el budismo. Aunque era el propio Takata quien le mostraba la esencia del zen y de los koans, la experiencia de dichas enseñanzas sólo la aprendía a través de estas mujeres.