ANNA: Biography, by Amy Odell The protagonist cries in the first pages of “Anna,” a semi-authoritative biography of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. It’s November 9, 2016, the morning after his old friend Donald J. Trump’s election to the presidency, and Wintour speaks at a hastily arranged all-staff meeting. During the review against Women’s Everyday Wear …
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If a picture was still worth a thousand words, we’d know enough by now. Vivian MaierAfter her death at the age of 83 in 2009, the so-called photographer nanny, whose vast wealth of images was discovered piecemeal and literally unprocessed, as the iPhone expanded. Long before we all carried those little waffles of pleasure and …
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PICASSO’S LIFE Minotaur Years, 1933-1943By John Richardson in collaboration with Ross Finocchio and Delphine Huisinga “Picasso” is a name meaning “greatness”. Only “Einstein”, short for “genius,” can rival him. John Richardson’s three previous volumes, “The Life of Picasso,” published between 1991 and 2007 and now followed by a fourth, are based on Picasso’s undisputed assumption …
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THE SCIENTISTEO Wilson: A Life in Natureby Richard Rhodes The scientist and naturalist EO Wilson has always reminded me of Alexander von Humboldt, the great 19th-century German scholar and explorer: both are great synthesizers, obsessed with empirical observation and detailed fieldwork. They have the ability to focus on the tiniest detail (a fire ant’s tiny …
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WG Sebald is probably the most respected German writer of the second half of the 20th century. It is very difficult to categorize his best-known books like “Immigrants”, “The Rings of Saturn”, “Austerlitz” published here between 1997 and 2001. Carole Angier, author of a new biography, “Speak, Silence: In Search of WG Sebald,” likes to …
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