Biografische schets van de Nederlandse auteur (1946- ).

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020 in Nonfiction

A resonant biography of America’s most celebrated novelist of the Great Depression.

The first full-length biography of the Nobel laureate to appear in a quarter century, Mad at the World illuminates what has made the work of John Steinbeck an enduring part of the literary canon: his capacity for empathy. Pulitzer Prize finalist William Souder explores Steinbeck’s long apprenticeship as a writer struggling through the depths of the Great Depression, and his rise to greatness with masterpieces such as The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Angered by the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants who were starving even as they toiled to harvest California’s limitless bounty, fascinated by the guileless decency of the downtrodden denizens of Cannery Row, and appalled by the country’s refusal to recognize the humanity common to all of its citizens, Steinbeck took a stand against social injustice—paradoxically given his inherent misanthropy—setting him apart from the writers of the so-called "lost generation."

A man by turns quick-tempered, compassionate, and ultimately brilliant, Steinbeck could be a difficult person to like. Obsessed with privacy, he was mistrustful of people. Next to writing, his favorite things were drinking and womanizing and getting married, which he did three times. And while he claimed indifference about success, his mid-career books and movie deals made him a lot of money—which passed through his hands as quickly as it came in. And yet Steinbeck also took aim at the corrosiveness of power, the perils of income inequality, and the urgency of ecological collapse, all of which drive public debate to this day.

Steinbeck remains our great social realist novelist, the writer who gave the dispossessed and the disenfranchised a voice in American life and letters. Eloquent, nuanced, and deeply researched, Mad at the World captures the full measure of the man and his work.

Born in a small town in northern California in 1902, Steinbeck refused from the outset to fit himself to any mold, digging ditches and washing dishes while intermittently attending Stanford University. Failing to take a degree, he struggled for more than a decade to establish himself as a writer, always putting his work first. Eventually he enjoyed an extraordinary period of creativity during which he summoned a powerful vision of the Depression. Books such as Of Mice and Men, The Long Valley, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath became battle cries that aroused international indignation and brought Steinbeck a world audience. Jay Parini explores Steinbeck's love-hate relationship with Hollywood and Broadway, his career as a war correspondent, his difficult first and second marriages, and his often tempestuous associations with numerous celebrities, among them Joseph Campbell, Charlie Chaplin, Lyndon Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. Drawing on interviews with dozens of people who knew Steinbeck intimately - including his beloved third wife, Elaine - and on published and unpublished letters, diaries, and manuscripts, John Steinbeck is both an important reassessment and a masterful portrait of one of the greatest American novelists.

Een interview met de Nederlandse schrijver (1944- ), enkele opstellen van zijn hand, een beknopte biografie en een bibliografie over 1984.

Wie in de eerste helft van de twintigste eeuw een manuscript in zijn bureaula had liggen, wendde zich tot Jan Greshoff (1888-1971). Meer nog dan als schrijver, stond Greshoff bekend om zijn talent als literaire promotor. Niemand kon zo spontaan aansporen en gul bewonderen als hij. Het leverde hem de trouwe vriendschap op van literaire grootheden als E. du Perron en Menno ter Braak en maakte hem tot idool van talloze jongeren. Het was Greshoff aan wie Elsschot 'Kaas' opdroeg, aan wie een jonge Annie M.G. Schmidt in de bange meidagen van 1940 een prangende, bewonderende brief schreef en die het debuut van Hans Lodeizen de wereld in hielp. Greshoffs biografie vormt een pakkende mentaliteitsgeschiedenis van de turbulente metamorfose die Nederland in de twintigste eeuw onderging, waarbij alle waarden binnenstebuiten werden gekeerd. Het levensverhaal van deze literaire spilfiguur voert de lezer langs morele dilemma's, die tot op de dag van vandaag herkenbaar zijn. Waarheen leidt de moderne vooruitgangsgedachte ons? Is de democratie wel de ideale staatsvorm? En de hamvraag: wat doe je als je je eigen lat hoog legt, terwijl je de indruk hebt dat steeds minder mensen om je heen dat nog doen?

Leven en werk tot 1860 van de Nederlandse schrijver Multatuli (pseud. van Eduard Douwes Dekker 1820-1887).

Biografie van de Vlaamse letterkundige (1898-1989) op basis van analyse van diens werk.

When Adolf Hitler went to war in 1914, he was just 25 years old. It was a time he would later call the 'most stupendous experience of my life'.

That war ended with Hitler in a hospital bed, temporarily blinded by mustard gas. The world that he opened his newly healed eyes on was new and it was terrible: Germany had been defeated, the Kaiser had fled and the army had been resolutely humbled.

Hitler never accepted these facts. Out of his fury rose a white-hot hatred, an unquenchable thirst for revenge against the 'criminals' who had signed the armistice, against the socialists who he accused of stabbing the army in the back and, most violently, against the Jews, a direct threat to the master race of his imagination, on whose shoulders he would pile all of Germany's woes.

But this was not all about the war; the seeds of that hatred lay in Hitler’s youth.

By peeling back the layers of Hitler's childhood, his war record and his early political career, Paul Ham's Young Hitler: The Making of the Führer seeks the man behind the myth. How did the defining years of Hitler’s life affect his rise to power?

More broadly, Paul Ham seeks to answer the question: Was Hitler a freak accident? Or was he an extreme example of a recurring type of demagogue, who will do and say anything to seize power; who thrives on chaos; and who personifies, in his words and in his actions, the darkest prejudices of humankind?

In the fifty years since his suicide amid the ruins of Berlin, Adolf Hitler has been the subject of more biographies than any comparable figure of our time, and at the center of a crucial historical debate over the nature of evil and moral responsibility in the twentieth century. In this brilliant and original book, the historian John Lukacs climbs above the fray to produce a definitive "history of a history: the history of the evolution of our understanding of Hitler's life and our debates about its meaning."

Like an expert attorney, Lukacs puts the biographies on trial, identifying their strengths, weaknesses, and hidden agendas. And through their intersecting and conflicting accounts, he addresses the enduring enigmas surrounding the demiurge of the Third Reich. Was Hitler a revolutionary or a reactionary? How successful was he as a statesman and a strategist? What was his primary motive for the extermination of the Jews? The Hitler of History answers these questions as fully as any modern work can hope to, with an intellectual boldness that makes it absolutely essential to any understanding of the post-Hitler world.

Exploration of the personality and life of Hitler`s Chief of the SS

Na de oorlog hebben tallozen zich gebogen over het verschijnsel Adolf Hitler. Het is inmiddels een cliche dat de omvangrijke literatuur over Hitler niet meer is te overzien. Op internet zijn tientallen miljoenen verwijzingen naar hem te vinden. Maar één facet van het leven van Adolf Hitler is aan de aandacht van de meeste van zijn biografen ontsnapt: zijn ambities als beeldend kunstenaar. Geen museum waagt zich aan een tentoonstelling van zijn schilderijen, aquarellen, tekeningen, decorontwerpen en architectonische schetsen, een catalogus van deze werken is nimmer opgesteld. Toch hebben zijn kunstzinnige aspiraties en niet zijn politieke de eerste dertig jaar van het leven van de Fuhrer beheerst. Hitlers biografen maken wel gewag van zijn kunstenaarschap, maar zoeken daarin voornamelijk naar voorafspiegelingen van de latere dictator en misdadiger. Lambert Giebels concentreerde zich juist op de ontwikkeling van Hitler als beeldend kunstenaar, om vervolgens na te gaan of diens eerste dertig levensjaren herkenningspunten bieden voor later.

Levensbeschrijving van de journalist en sociaal-democratische politicus, een van de oprichters en leiders van de SDAP.

Een prachtig portret van Nederlands grootste komiek

Despite his colourful claims, Diego Rivera was not actually raised by a magical nurse who let him roam the forest. After studying in Mexico, he became a key figure in the heyday of Montparnasse. This book follows him through the free love of Paris and into World War I.

Het leven van Franciscus van Assisië (1180-1226) naar eigentijdse bronnen verhaald met een poging zijn persoon te plaatsen in zijn tijd.

From one of the greatest rock guitarists of our era comes a memoir that redefines sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll

He was born in England but reared in L.A., surrounded by the leading artists of the day amidst the vibrant hotbed of music and culture that was the early seventies. Slash spent his adolescence on the streets of Hollywood, discovering drugs, drinking, rock music, and girls, all while achieving notable status as a BMX rider. But everything changed in his world the day he first held the beat-up one-string guitar his grandmother had discarded in a closet.

The instrument became his voice and it triggered a lifelong passion that made everything else irrelevant. As soon as he could string chords and a solo together, Slash wanted to be in a band and sought out friends with similar interests. His closest friend, Steven Adler, proved to be a conspirator for the long haul. As hairmetal bands exploded onto the L.A. scene and topped the charts, Slash sought his niche and a band that suited his raw and gritty sensibility.

He found salvation in the form of four young men of equal mind: Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler, and Duff McKagan. Together they became Guns N' Roses, one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands of all time. Dirty, volatile, and as authentic as the streets that weaned them, they fought their way to the top with groundbreaking albums such as the iconic Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II.

Here, for the first time ever, Slash tells the tale that has yet to be told from the inside: how the band came together, how they wrote the music that defined an era, how they survived insane, never-ending tours, how they survived themselves, and, ultimately, how it all fell apart. This is a window onto the world of the notoriously private guitarist and a seat on the roller-coaster ride that was one of history's greatest rock 'n' roll machines, always on the edge of self-destruction, even at the pinnacle of its success. This is a candid recollection and reflection of Slash's friendships past and present, from easygoing Izzy to ever-steady Duff to wild-child Steven and complicated Axl.

It is also an intensely personal account of struggle and triumph: as Guns N' Roses journeyed to the top, Slash battled his demons, escaping the overwhelming reality with women, heroin, coke, crack, vodka, and whatever else came along.

He survived it all: lawsuits, rehab, riots, notoriety, debauchery, and destruction, and ultimately found his creative evolution. From Slash's Snakepit to his current band, the massively successful Velvet Revolver, Slash found an even keel by sticking to his guns.

Slash is everything the man, the myth, the legend, inspires: it's funny, honest, inspiring, jaw-dropping . . . and, in a word, excessive.

Levensbeschrijving van de echtgenote van de in 2008 gekozen Amerikaanse president.