Meryle Secrest, Author . Knopf $30 (480p) ISBN 978-0-375-40164-0
"Whiskers on kittens and warm woolen mittens," sings Maria to a lighthearted melody in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, but this sentimental, carefree imagery was hardly the stuff of which composer Rodgers's life was...
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Meryle Secrest, Author . Knopf $35 (544p) ISBN 978-0-375-41042-0
No one played the high-stakes game of buying and selling Old Masters better than Joseph Duveen, later Lord Duveen of Millbank, who dominated the world art market during the 1920s and '30s. Using the Duveen Brothers' archives, recently made...
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Meryle Secrest, Author . Knopf $25.95 (242p) ISBN 978-0-307-26483-1
To explain the homicidal title first: it’s an axiom coined by Justin Kaplan, the distinguished biographer of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, and it refers to one of the main hazards we practitioners of the genre face. I instantly recognized its...
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Meryle Secrest, Author Alfred A. Knopf $30 (471p) ISBN 978-0-679-40731-7
Because this study, by a biographer better known for her books on art figures (Frank Lloyd Wright, Bernard Berenson, Salvador Dali) is the second major one of Bernstein this year, comparisons with the first, by British TV producer Humphrey Burton (No
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Meryle Secrest, Author Alfred A. Knopf $30 (448p) ISBN 978-0-679-44817-4
Secrest interviewed composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim extensively for this full-scale biography, resulting in a portrait as subtle and sophisticated as its subject. Son of a wealthy New York City dress designer and manufacturer of German-Jewish...
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Meryle Secrest, Author Dutton Books $22.5 (307p) ISBN 978-0-525-24459-2
Dali bore a close physical resemblance to a brother who died in childhood; his parents' constant comparison of their two sons instilled in him feelings of worthlessness. To win the attention of grownups, he pulled stunts like leaping off a roof and...
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Meryle Secrest, Author Alfred A. Knopf $30 (634p) ISBN 978-0-394-56436-4
In this superb, subtle, demythologizing biography of Wright (1869-1959), we meet a shrewd yet gullible architect who fostered a view of himself as a misunderstood, embattled genius, a narcissist who unconsciously courted catastrophe while blaming...
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Meryle Secrest, Knopf, $35 (400p) ISBN 978-0-307-26368-1
Secrest, respected biographer of art world personalities (Being Bernard Berenson), musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, and others, sets out in this volume to resurrect the reputation of the modernist painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920). Long the...
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Meryle Secrest. Knopf, $35 (400p) ISBN 978-0-307-70159-6
“This book had its start when I began to wonder why nobody dressed up any more, even for evenings out,” writes Secrest. Although she never answers her question, this consummate biographer (Leonard Bernstein: A Life) does take readers on a breathless,
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Secrest, Author, Meryle Secrest, Author Fromm International $11.95 (310p) ISBN 978-0-88064-056-5
When he died in 1983, Clark left behind a legacy of writings on art, the most memorable of which are his study of Rembrandt, his Landscape into Art, The Nude and the TV-related bestseller Civilisation. Secrest here provides a ""full-scale, sensitive
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Meryle Secrest. Knopf, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-0-451-49365-1
Biographer Secrest (Elsa Schiaparelli) reveals a little-known slice of computer history in her fascinating account of the Italian typewriter company Olivetti, which created the first desktop computer. The company’s story largely centers on its three
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