George Orson Welles (1915-1985) is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. At just twenty-five years old, he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in his Academy-Award-winning debut film Citizen Kane (1941). His innovative and distinctive directorial style - nonlinear narratives, unusual camera angles, deep focus shots, and long takes - continues to be emulated by directors and cinematographers to this day. The brilliant yet provocative Welles won multiple Grammys, a Golden Globe, and the greatest honor the Directors Guild of America bestows: the D.W. Griffith Award. His final film, The Other Side of the Wind, was released in 2018, 33 years after his death. In Citizen Welles, author Frank Brady presents a comprehensive and complete picture of the artist and auteur. Painstakingly researched, Brady delves into Welles's creative achievements, from his critically acclaimed film Citizen Kane and his controversial radio broadcast The War of the Worlds (1938) to his pioneering stage productions of the classics of Shakespeare, Shaw, and Ionesco; and Welles' starring turn on Broadway in Shaw's Heartbreak House (for which he made the cover of Time). Brady also explores other notable films, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958), and Chimes at Midnight (1965). This all-encompassing work also details the personal side of Welles's life, including his romances with Rita Hayworth and Dolores Del Rio and the confounding tragedy of his final years. Presented is a captivating and compelling encapsulation of the revered and respected artist.

"Endgame "is acclaimed biographer Frank Brady's decades-in-the-making tracing of the meteoric ascent--and confounding "descent"--of enigmatic genius Bobby Fischer. Only Brady, who met Fischer when the prodigy was only 10 and shared with him some of his most dramatic triumphs, could have written this book, which has much to say about the nature of American celebrity and the distorting effects of fame. Drawing from Fischer family archives, recently released FBI files, and Bobby's own emails, this account is unique in that it limns Fischer's "entire" life--an odyssey that took the Brooklyn-raised chess champion from an impoverished childhood to the covers of "Time, Life "and "Newsweek "to recognition as "the most famous man in the world" to notorious recluse.
At first all one noticed was how gifted Fischer was. Possessing a 181 I.Q. and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby memorized""hundreds of chess books in several languages, and he was only 13 when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history. But his strange behavior started early. In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition.
It was merely a prelude to what was to come.
Arriving back in the United States to a hero's welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he went--a figure as exotic and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced. No player of a mere "board game" had ever ascended to such heights. Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 million--but Bobby demurred. Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature.
After years of poverty and a stint living on Los Angeles' Skid Row, Bobby remerged in 1992 to play Spassky in a multi-million dollar rematch--but the experience only "deepened "a paranoia that had formed years earlier when he came to believe that the Soviets wanted him dead for taking away "their" title. When the dust settled, Bobby was a wanted man--transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U.S. sanctions. Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, and wearing a long leather coat to ward off knife attacks, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugitive - one drawn increasingly to the bizarre. Mafiosi, Nazis, odd attempts to breed an heir who could perpetuate his chess-genius DNA--all are woven into his late-life tapestry.
And yet, as Brady shows, the most notable irony of Bobby Fischer's strange descent - which had reached full plummet by 2005 when he turned down yet "another "multi-million dollar payday--is that despite his incomprehensible behavior, there were many who remained fiercely loyal to him. Why that was so is at least partly the subject of this book--one that at last answers the question: "Who "was "Bobby Fischer?"

When Bobby Fischer died in January 2008, he left behind a confounding legacy. Everyone knew the basics of his life: he began as a brilliant youngster, then became the pride of American chess, then took a sharp turn, struggling with paranoia and mental illness. But nobody truly understood him. What motivated him from such a young age, and what was the source of his remarkable intellect? How could a man so ambivalent about money and fame be so driven to succeed? What drew this man of Jewish descent to fulminate against Jews, and how was it that a mind so famously disciplined could unravel so completely? From his meteoric rise, to an utterly dominant prime, to his eventual descent into madness, the book draws upon hundreds of newly discovered documents and recordings, and numerous firsthand interviews conducted with those who knew Fischer best, to paint, for the very first time, a complete picture of one of the most enigmatic icons. This is the definitive account of a fascinating man and an extraordinary life, one that at last reconciles Fischer's deeply contradictory legacy and answers the question: 'Who was Bobby Fischer?'

"Onassis, as he emerges from these pages, is superb...Onassis was a phenomenon in our time, combining money, power, intelligence, a zest for humanity, and, I suspect, a deep-seated humanity...Onassis was, above all, a man...Brady provides many insights into the attitudes of the man." The New York Times Book Review "Onassis was a hard-driving ambitious man who went after whatever he wanted and usually succeeded...He was a shrewd businessman who knew how to charm people, how to entertain them, how to sweep them off their feet and into his corner...Brady is to be commended for coming up with such a probing study." West Coast Review of Books "A life that so excels most fiction...For Onassis's lifestyle, Brady's is the better source." The Washington Post "For the people yearning to read about the feud with shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, the affair with diva Maria Callas, the marriage to Jackie Kennedy, the friendship with Winston Churchill, and the quarrel with Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier." Publishers Weekly "Glamorous ... more like a novel than a biography ... illuminates the paradoxes in Onassis' life." Newsday "A fast-moving biography of a robust, colorful life ... detailing the Greek's penchant for beautiful women ... An unblinking appraisal of a power-wielder and his vulnerabilities." Booklist "Brady concentrates on the women in Onassis' life, from the extraordinary Ingebord Dedichen who served as Onassis' early mentor ... to Jacqueline Kennedy." The New York Times "Laughing and conniving and handing out diamond necklaces, the man had something life-giving ..." Chicago Daily News

This is a major new selection of Samuel Johnson's best work, delightfully introduced by W. K. Wimsatt and scrupulously annotated by Frank Brady and Mr. Wimsatt.
Samuel Johnson, the only writer in English since the Renaissance to give his name to a literary period, was the center of English letters in his time. He was Dictionary Johnson, the lexicographer who had single-handedly settled the English language (it was hoped) on a firm basis; he was the author of a handful of fine poems, including two of the most remarkable satires of the century; he was a moralist whose "Rambler" and "Idler" essays, and novel-of-ideas "Rasselas," provided a searching view of men and matters. And in his final years he produced his greatest work, that extraordinary combination of biography and criticism which came to be known as the "Lives of the Poets."
This first extensive anthology of Johnson's writings to be published in many years emphasizes Johnson the writer. It responds to those aspects of Johnson's work of special interest to modern readers. It comprises a selection of Johnson's letters, all of his major poems (including "London"), "Rasselas," twenty-one "Rambler," nineteen "Idlers," the Prefaces to the "Dictionary" and to the edition of Shakespeare, and the following "Lives of the Poets: " Cowley, Milton, Swift, Pope, Savage, Collins, and Gray.
All these works are extensively annotated and printed complete. Mr. Wimsatt, one of the outstanding Johnsonians of this century, provides in his Introduction a clear, connected biographical account of Johnson, stressing his writings. An up-to-date bibliography is also included. Johnson's varied accomplishments--as poet, as moralist, asbiographer, as critic--are all amply represented.