The Times Art Book of the Year 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022 'Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon ... A biography that no Bacon fan - or indeed foe - can afford to overlook ... Mesmerising' THE TIMES 'A magnificent triumph ... I was captivated by every line' OBSERVER A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait - rich, complex, and subtle - of a commanding modern figure. Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women - women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room. Bacon worked no less hard or ambitiously as a painter, at first with little success. Throughout the 1930s and early '40s he suffered ongoing failures, growing isolated and often ill. His health issues throughout his life were far more significant than he revealed. Then came his astonishing breakthrough in 1944, with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. In the following decades, he emerged as one of the great iconoclasts and bon vivants of his time, a Wildean figure whom one friend called 'a terrific grandee.' Bacon was typically celebrated as a sexual adventurer who liked rough trade, but he never stopped longing for a serious committed relationship, however painful. He continued to make disturbing images of the strangeness within, but developed into a more varied artist than has been recognised, creating in particular an extraordinary series of self-portraits. He was an artist who believed in chance and paradox: the iconoclast eventually became an icon. This is a story, deeply researched and masterfully told, of a sickly boy who became one of the great figures of his time. The twentieth century does not know itself without Bacon.

A poignant story about hopes, dreams, and how far one man's talent takes him before he realizes it's about what you do-and how you do it. Frank Ryder is unstoppable on the baseball field-his pitches arrive faster than a batter can swing, giving his opponents no chance. He's being heralded as a game-changing pitcher. But within the maelstrom of press, adulation, and wild speculation, Frank is a man alone. Haunted by a tragic incident from years past, he yearns to be the best but cannot reconcile the guilt he carries with the man everyone believes him to be. Frank's path to redemption leads him on a journey back to where his life changed forever, to visit his family, his high school coach, and his brother. Through reconnection and reconciliation with those also deeply affected by the devastating event of Frank's youth, he finds peace and his place in the world both in and outside the game. The Fireballer is a lyrical, moving story of undeniable talent and the life-changing power of forgiveness and a subtly romantic ode to America's favorite pastime.

A poignant story about hopes, dreams, and how far one man's talent takes him before he realizes it's about what you do-and how you do it. Frank Ryder is unstoppable on the baseball field-his pitches arrive faster than a batter can swing, giving his opponents no chance. He's being heralded as a game-changing pitcher. But within the maelstrom of press, adulation, and wild speculation, Frank is a man alone. Haunted by a tragic incident from years past, he yearns to be the best but cannot reconcile the guilt he carries with the man everyone believes him to be. Frank's path to redemption leads him on a journey back to where his life changed forever, to visit his family, his high school coach, and his brother. Through reconnection and reconciliation with those also deeply affected by the devastating event of Frank's youth, he finds peace and his place in the world both in and outside the game. The Fireballer is a lyrical, moving story of undeniable talent and the life-changing power of forgiveness and a subtly romantic ode to America's favorite pastime.

Glimpse what went on behind the walls of EnglandA*s first Criminal Lunatic Asylum! Mark Stevens reveals what life was like for the criminally insane, over one hundred years ago. From fresh research into the Broadmoor archives, Mark has uncovered the lost lives of patients whose mental illnesses led them to become involved in crime. Discover the five women who went on to become mothers in Broadmoor, giving birth to new life when three of them had previously taken it. Find out how several Victorian immigrants ended their hopeful journeys to England in madness and disaster. And follow the nail-biting numerous escapes, actual and attempted, as the first doctors tried to assert control over the residents. As well as bringing the lives of forgotten inmates to light, this thrilling book reveals new perspectives on some of the hospitalA*s most famous Victorian patients: Edward Oxford, the bar boy who shot at Queen Victoria. Richard Dadd, the brilliant artist and murderer of his own father. William Chester Minor, veteran of the American Civil War who went on to play a key part in the first Oxford English Dictionary. Christiana Edmunds, A"The Chocolate Cream PoisonerA* and frustrated lover from Brighton.

Willem de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, a true "painter's painter" whose protean work continues to inspire many artists. In the thirties and forties, along with Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he became a key figure in the revolutionary American movement of abstract expressionism. Of all the painters in that group, he worked the longest and was the most prolific, creating powerful, startling images well into the 1980s.
The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture. Ten years in the making, and based on previously unseen letters and documents as well as on hundreds of interviews, this is a fresh, richly detailed, and masterful portrait. The young de Kooning overcame an unstable, impoverished, and often violent early family life to enter the Academie in Rotterdam, where he learned both classic art and guild techniques. Arriving in New York as a stowaway from Holland in 1926, he underwent a long struggle to become a painter and an American, developing a passionate friendship with his fellow immigrant Arshile Gorky, who was both a mentor and an inspiration. During the Depression, de Kooning emerged as a central figure in the bohemian world of downtown New York, surviving by doing commercial work and painting murals for the WPA. His first show at the Egan Gallery in 1948 was a revelation. Soon, the critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas Hess were championing his work, and de Kooning took his place as the charismatic leader of the New York school--just as American art began to dominate the international scene.
Dashingly handsome and treated like a movie star on the streets of downtown New York, de Kooning had a tumultuous marriage to Elaine de Kooning, herself a fascinating character of the period. At the height of his fame, he spent his days painting powerful abstractions and intense, disturbing pictures of the female figure--and his nights living on the edge, drinking, womanizing, and talking at the Cedar bar with such friends as Franz Kline and Frank O'Hara. By the 1960s, exhausted by the feverish art world, he retreated to the Springs on Long Island, where he painted an extraordinary series of lush pastorals. In the 1980s, as he slowly declined into what was almost certainly Alzheimer's, he created a vast body of haunting and ethereal late work.
This is an authoritative and brilliant exploration of the art, life, and world of an American master.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Learn to harness the programming power that comes standard with all unix and linux systems (including Apple's OSX). This guide encourages hands-on experimentation by including actual scripts that feature the korn shell (ksh), awk, and sed.

Marketing is always the primary force -- the catalyst, the driver, the tsunami -- for propelling the growth of a business. The problem is, the art and science of marketing is often poorly designed and terribly executed to the point that it just plain sucks. It fails to achieve the only legitimate goal for marketing: to drive a company's growth. In this Tenth Anniversary edition of Your Marketing Sucks, renowned CEO Mark Stevens guides the reader through the principles of successful, business-building marketing, expanding on and updating his global Best Seller with fresh new content focused on state of the art guidance for building a wired brand designed to thrive in the viral era. In this invaluable, time-tested book, the bedrock principles of extreme marketing are fused with the power of the Internet/social media to deliver exponential results. It is, in its totality, an idea whose time has come

"God broke into my world. My life was shaken and transformed instantly." These words began the journey of transformation that took Mark Stevens (known for his role as Nick Page in TV's Neighbours, and as a worship leader at Hillsong Church and Life Church Bradford) out of a life bound by drug and alcohol addiction and into a new adventure of ministry and leadership that has touched all corners of the globe. Mark shares candidly his testimony of the excitement and temptation of celebrity fame and lifestyle, the devastatingly destructive effects of addiction, and the overwhelming and transforming power of God's healing and presence. He goes on to share from the many experiences and challenges of worship ministry and church leadership over the past fifteen years. Strength for the Road is Mark Stevens' first book, written to awaken and stir up the worshipper in each of us, to rise up and embrace the journey ahead of us with faith and boldness. Each of our journeys are different, but the truth of God's word and His love remains eternal and everlasting, giving each of us the strength we need - and more - to walk the road God has laid out before us.

King Icahn is an unparalleled human drama. It is the story of a man who rose from humble beginnings to emerge as the most powerful, eccentric, galling, pugnacious and successful force in the business world. The Icahn drama is rife with contradictions, juxtapositions, paradoxes and epic power plays. All have led to a reshuffling of the business\financial landscape, to the electric fear on the part of CEOs when they hear the terrorizing words "Carl Icahn is on the phone" and to one of the world's greatest fortunes. King Icahn is the only book written about Icahn, completely independent but with full access to the man himself. It reveals the back story of the greatest financier/pit bull of his generation, his multi-billion dollar epiphany, his real motive for taking on the CEO elite as well as his loves, feuds, idiosyncrasies and intellectual brilliance. Reading this book is the equivalent of earning an MBA squared