THE LIVES AND LOVES OF DAISY AND VIOLET HILTON follows the poignant life story of twin sisters who were literally joined at the hip, set against the tumultuous backdrop of America during the first half of the 20th century. Daisy and Violet and an unforgettable cast of show-business characters come alive on the pages of this carefully researched and sensitively written biography.Reviews"Jensen'¬?s book is a testament to the fickleness of the entertainment world."-Tampa Bay Tribune"It is an affecting story, gently and honestly told without frills, without sensation. In Jensen'¬?s hands, the twins are always human, individuals, never freaks joined at the hips as the world saw them after their birth in 1908. . . Here, their story is pure."-Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

From the Trade Paperback edition.

THE RENOWNED JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGIST AND AUTHOR OF 'TRANSFORMATION' AND 'OWNING YOUR OWN SHADOW' BRINGS THE HIDDEN GIFT OF ECSTASY BACK INTO OUR LIVES.

Robert A. Johnson has taken tens of thousands of readers on spiritual and psychological journeys towards inner transformation. In 'Ecstasy', he reconnects with the powerful and life-changing ecstatic element that lies dormant – but long-repressed – within us.

Ecstasy was once considered a divine gift, Johnson tells us, one that could lift mortals out of ordinary reality and into higher world. But because Western culture has systematically repressed this ecstatic human impulse, we are unable to truly experience its transformative power.

Johnson penetrates the surface of modern life to reveal the ancient dynamics of our humanity, pointing out practical means for achieving a healthy expression of our true inner selves. Through dreams, rituals, and celebrations, he shows us how to return to these original life-giving principles and restore inner harmony.

Robert A. Johnson is the best-selling author of 'He, She, We, Inner Work, ' and 'Femininity Lost and Regained. '

Book by Jones, Marc Edmund

The human body has long been central to Western art, and in order to represent the body in all its manifestations many artists have studied anatomy: dissecting the dead to better depict the living. The Quick and the Dead focuses on a range of artists, among them Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Albrecht Drer, William Hogarth, George Stubbs, Thodore Gricault, Kiki Smith, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Cindy Sherman to show the great richness and complexity that can result when art and science intersect. The drawings, prints, photographs, and objects in this book span five centuries and mark numerous cultural shifts, yet their imagery is as powerful today as when it was created. Bodily representation has shadowed Western art since the High Renaissance, particularly in the form of atlases of anatomical prints, detailed drawings, and wax cadavers used for teaching purposes. Studying anatomy was deemed so essential that it was part of the instruction program in the earliest Italian academies. Now contemporary artists interested in cultural constuctions of the body are reinvigorating the subject, with the fragmentation of human form being a prime concern. Since 1858, Gray's Anatomy has served to legitimize notions of "serious" science unchallenged by the frivolity of art. But in recent years a kind of rapprochement between medical history and cultural theory has occurred, and new medical technologies have become a wellspring for artists as well as for doctors. As The Quick and the Dead makes clear, the human bodysymbolic and intimate, material and sacredis a vital cultural resource and a site where various social constituencies find relevant meaning.

During the late Middle Ages, the dukes of Burgundy––the wealthiest and most powerful aristocrats in northern Europe––commissioned sculptors of great renown to decorate their magnificent court in Dijon. Working in a studio presided over by Claus Sluter, these sculptors created monuments for the ducal family that rivaled contemporary Italian works.

 

This stunning book provides an in-depth study of the twin summits of the achievement of these artists––sculptures from the tombs of Philip the Bold (1342–1404) and his son, John the Fearless (1371–1419). These extraordinary marble and alabaster tombs serve as platforms for the ducal figures, who rest atop fully carved arcades. Within the spaces of the arcades, the artists carved individual monks in procession. Just over two feet high, each monk is a miniature embodiment of late medieval devotion. Shown in various states of mourning, they move in perpetual procession beneath the marble bodies of their rulers.

 

Accompanying the first major traveling exhibition of these recently restored sculptures, The Mourners illuminates the artistic sophistication and craftsmanship of these works.

This work provides a social history of death from the earliest times to Diana, Princess of Wales. As we discard the 20th century taboo about death, this book charts the story of the way in which our forebears coped with a fundamental aspects of their daily lives. The book reveals how attitudes, practices and beliefs about death have undergone constant change: how, why and at what ages people died; plagues and violence; wills and deathbeds; funerals and memorials; beliefs and bereavement. This wide-ranging analysis of death in England is illustrated throughout with photographs and images, their diversity reflecting and breadth of issues and periods covered.

Surrealism in its late phase often abandoned neutral exhibition spaces in favor of environments that embodied subjective ideologies. These exhibitions offered startled viewers an early version of installation art before the form existed as such. In Displaying the Marvelous, Lewis Kachur explores this development by analyzing three elaborate Surrealist installations created between 1938 and 1942. The first two, the "Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme" (1938) and the "Dream of Venus" at the New York World's Fair (1939), dealt with the fetishization of the female body. The third, "First Papers of Surrealism" (1942), focused not on the figure but on the entire expanse of the exhibition space, thus contributing to the development of nonfigurative art in New York. Kachur presents a full visual and verbal reconstruction of each of the exhibitions, evoking the sequence that the contemporary viewer would have encountered.The book considers Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali, two artists who are not usually compared, within a common framework. Duchamp specialized in frustrating the spectator, using his ironic wit to call into question the definition of the work of art. Dali was a master at disorienting the senses by establishing and then undermining everyday spatial and object properties. The Surrealist challenge, as voiced by Andre Breton, was to evoke the marvelous. Duchamp and Dali extended that challenge to the physical and commercial realm of the exhibition installation.

“Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber's next target. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument. . . . As difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in [Kaczynski’s writing]. I started showing friends the Kaczynski quote from Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines; I would hand them Kurzweil's book, let them read the quote, and then watch their reaction as they discovered who had written it.” — Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, in “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired magazine

Theodore J. Kaczynski has been convicted for illegally transporting, mailing, and using bombs, resulting in the deaths of three people. He is now serving a life sentence in the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

The ideas and views expressed by Kaczynski before and after his capture raise crucial issues concerning the evolution and future of our society. For the first time, the reader will have access to an uncensored personal account of his anti-technology philosophy, which goes far beyond Unabomber pop culture mythology.

Feral House does not support or justify Kaczynski's crimes, nor does the author receive royalties or compensation for this book. It is this publisher’s mission, as well as a foundation of the First Amendment, to allow the reader the ability to discern the value of any document.

David Skrbina, who wrote the introduction, teaches philosophy at the University of Michigan, Dearborn.