A well-researched skeleton key with which to unlock some of Dalí’s many mysteries.
A bright, accessible biography that connects the dots between Salvador Dalí’s surrealist masterpieces and their visual references.
“The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret,” Dalí once said, as if to tempt writers like Brown and Isbouts to attempt to crack his enigmatic body of work. Here, the authors aim to divine the “root of Dalí’s enduring popularity,” proposing that the artist’s appreciation of baroque and old master paintings has solidified his timelessness. Dalí developed a construct called the “paranoiac-critical method,” a term he used to describe his exploration of the “hidden visuals” of his subconscious. The authors address dormant erotic themes that haunt the artist’s paintings, but they also frame classical visual motifs as being similarly embedded in the artist’s mind. Just as a contorted, fleshy figure may signify the artist’s sexual hang-ups, two figures from an 1850s Jean-François Millet painting reappear throughout Dalí’s oeuvre like a recurring obsession. He understood that in order to excel as a surrealist, he would need to master the real. “While all of his contemporaries moved forward into the mists of an uncertain abstract future,” write the authors, “Dalí remained wedded to realism, to the palette and technique of the Old Masters as well as 19th-century academic artists.” Though his “allegiance to the realism of the Old Masters” is often obvious, the authors develop each connection with an informed depth that renders their subject as a deeply academic painter interested in more than just melting clocks, flying tigers, and burning giraffes. Two essays by Brown at the end of the biography offer wild new interpretations of Dalí paintings, as the author superimposes Dalí iconic motifs onto masterpieces by da Vinci, Michelangelo, and others. These claims are captivating but convoluted and feel incongruous with the rest of the book. Perhaps the authors work better as a pair.
A well-researched skeleton key with which to unlock some of Dalí’s many mysteries.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-948062-66-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Apollo Publishers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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