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226
AMERICAN MIRROR: THE LIFE AND ART OF NORMAN ROCKWELL
SOLOMON, DEBORAH
Norman Rockwell, as much as Walt Disney or Ronald Reagan, provided America with a mirror of its
dreams and aspirations. As the star illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post for nearly half a century,
Rockwell portrayed a fantasy of civic togetherness, of American decency and good cheer. Or, as Deborah
Solomon writes in her authoritative new biography, he painted “a history of the American people that had
never happened.” Who was Norman Rockwell? Behind the folksy, pipe-smoking façade lay a surprisingly
complex figure—a lonely man all too conscious of his inadequacies. Solomon describes him as an
obsessive personality who wore his shoes too small, washed his paintings with Ivory Soap, and relied on
the redemptive power of storytelling to stave off depression. He wound up in treatment with Erik Erikson,
the influential psychotherapist. American Mirror draws on unpublished papers to explore the relationship
between Rockwell’s anguished creativity and his genius for reflecting American innocence. “The thrill of
his work,” writes Solomon, “is that he was able to use the commercial form of magazine illustration to
thrash out his private obsessions.”
ART/BIOGRAPHY 1ST PRINTING 50,000
FARRAR STRAUS & GIROUX
512 PAGES
9780374113094
$34.50 HC
NOVEMBER 2013
AMY, 27: AMY WINEHOUSE AND THE 27 CLUB
SOUNES, HOWARD
When singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse died tragically on July, 23, 2011, at the age of twenty-seven, she
joined the infamous 27 Club, whose members include Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim
Morrison, and Kurt Cobain. Howard Sounes, author of Fab and Down the Highway, conducted interviews
with more than 180 people, and his research yields new insights into the lives of the members of the 27
Club. Cutting through the record company PR and tabloid gossip to reveal the real Amy Winehouse, and
with unprecedented access to friends and family, including Amy’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, and her
last boyfriend, Reg Traviss, Sounes reveals striking factors in common among Winehouse and the other
artists who died so young. Amy, 27 will be published to coincide with the second anniversary of her death
and with the lead-up to the twentieth anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain.
BIOGRAPHY/POP CULTURE
PENGUIN
9780670066964
$32.00 HC
JULY 2013
1ST PRINTING 7500 IN CANADA
352 PAGES
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