Showing results for "The Street" in Art & Literature

In 1612, Shakespeare gave evidence at the Court of Requests in Westminster - providing us with the only surviving record of his spoken words. The case seems routine - a dispute over an unpaid marriage-dowry - but it opens up an unexpected window into the dramatist's famously obscure life-story. Charles Nicholl applies a powerful biographical magnifying glass to this fascinating but neglected episode in Shakespeare's life.

Mr. Rushdie, the author of Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, reads from his newest novel, Shalimar the Clown.

Billy Collins, former United States poet laureate, and Garrison Keillor, host of A Prairie Home Companion, return to the Y to read favorite poems from their new anthologies 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Mr. Collins) and Good Poems for Hard Times (Mr. Keillor).

The Fleet Street Girls is the inspiring story of the female journalists who broke down barriers in the 1970s as women arrived on Fleet Street for the first time. Julie Welch was the first ever female football reporter. To achieve this role at the Observer, she had to battle the National Union of Journalists nearly calling a strike when she dared to write an article as a mere secretary; an entire room of men falling silent to listen to her give her first football report over the phone, before pronouncing it passable; and many other battles in-between.

Newspaperman tells the story of how an immigrant's shy son from Queens, New York, rose to the top of his industry, powered by little more than passion, brains, and hard work. Phillips began his career working as a copyboy for the New York Herald Tribune for 16 dollars a week... and ended it as publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of its parent corporation, Dow Jones & Company. The life story of Warren Phillips is the story of the American newspaper business.

The editor of Newsweek International since 2001, Fareed Zakaria oversees the magazine's eight editions in Asia, Latin America, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. His column, on subjects ranging from terrorism, national security and America's role in the world to the global economy and the rise of China and India, appears in Newsweek, Newsweek International and The Washington Post.

I Was Looking for a Street tells the story of the author's childhood and adolescence as an orphan, as he moves from railroad yards to hobo tent cities, to soup kitchens and deserts around Los Angeles and across the United States. The ensuing tale is at once a picaresque adventure through Depression-era America and a portrait of the writer as a young man of seemingly little promise but great spirit.

In the underground tunnels below Grand Central Terminal, Lee Stringer - homeless and drug-addicted for 11 years - found a pencil to run through his crack pipe. One day he used it to write. Soon writing became a habit that won out over drugs, and before long Stringer had created one of the most powerful urban memoirs of our time. With humane wisdom and a biting wit, Stringer chronicles the unraveling of his seemingly secure existence as a marketing executive and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York.

Antwone Quenton Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment his single mother gave birth to him in prison. As a foster child, he suffered more than a dozen years of emotional abandonment and physical abuse, until he escaped and forged a life on the streets. And just as his life was about to hit rock bottom, Antwone enlisted in the U.S. Navy, a decision that would ultimately save him. There, he became a man and discovered a loving family he never had.

Dorothy Butler Gilliam, whose 50-year-career as a journalist put her in the forefront of the fight for social justice, offers a comprehensive view of racial relations and the media in the US.

Noted author, playwright, and director David Mamet reads from his manuscript version of Faustus, later published in 2004. His plays include Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow; his screenplays include The Verdict and Wag the Dog.

Alice McDermott "is a genius of quiet observation", said the Los Angeles Times. "One of our finest novelists." McDermott's books include Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and After This.

In 2008, Cynthia Ozick published a new collection of stories, Dictation, and won both the PEN/Malumud Award and PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement. This program is one of a series of afternoon talks, hosted by Roger Rosenblatt, which features intimate discussions with writers about their work, their passions and the books on their night tables.

Addict, thief, pimp, pusher, player—and most notably, groundbreaking writer. Donald Goines was all of these. As a kid, Donald Goines was the product of a middle-class family. After high school, he joined the Air Force—and discovered the heroin that would rule the remainder of his life. On the streets, he turned to writing when he was straight enough to keep at it. He used the language of the streets and he wrote of its people. Goines's success was immediate and exciting. But eventually those same streets claimed him.

Introduced, annotated and edited by Dickens scholar Michael Norris, here we have insightful, vivid, first-person accounts of Charles Dickens by the people who knew him best, including sons Henry Fielding Dickens and Charles Dickens Jr., daughters Mamie and Kate Dickens, colleague and authorized biographer John Forster, and others. Taken together, these writings provide a stunning portrait of Dickens as a living breathing man: friend, father, collaborator and citizen.

New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik and sociologist Malcolm Gladwell revisit their debates about healthcare, education, media, and a variety of other subjects. The event, introduced by Daniel Sullivan, general consul of Canada, and Simon Center director Henry Timms is followed by an extensive Q&A.

At the dawn of the 1980s, there was one serious name in horror and exploitation film criticism: Bill Landis. While other magazines were concerned with behind-the-scenes information, tributes, and SFX tutorials, Landis' Sleazoid Express was one part film journal and one part anthropological study, seriously critiquing the grindhouse movies that played the theaters of 42nd Street while also documenting the dying subculture that had grown up around them.

Bob Schieffer, the Emmy Award-winning anchor and moderator of Face the Nation, has been covering the news for more than 45 years. He is the author of This Just In and Bob Schieffer's America, which speaks to current events and the range of American experience today. A CBS News correspondent since 1969, Schieffer has covered all four major Washington beats: the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Capitol Hill.

Barbara Walters talks with New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich about her long-awaited memoir, Audition. Walters was the first woman to co-host a network news program. An ABC News correspondent, she is also the host of The Barbara Walters Specials and the creator, co-host and co-executive producer of ABC's The View. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Today's high-flying, high-rolling conglomarateurs and corporate raiders are a tame lot compared to their immediate predecessors. The most notorious of these is Robert Vesco, the Kingfish himself, who in 1973 fled the United States accused of looting $250 million from Investors Overseas Services. Now, in this riveting account, noted author Arthur Herzog tells the astounding story of this high school dropout from Detroit, who parlayed cunning, ambition, a brilliant mind, and above all, other people's gullibility and money into a vast financial empire.