Providing a frank and overall account of the history of the Wagner festival, a critical analysis of its performers, productions, and enthusiasts establishes its remarkable beginnings, controversial associations, and surprising successes.
Hitler's aims and motivations have been reassessed to examine his perverse obsessions and show how his artistry destroyed any sense of individuality and linked the German people with his own drives. Topics covered include Wagner's operas and the German Autobahn system.
Son of the famous Thomas Mann, homosexual, drug-addicted, and forced to flee from his fatherland, the gifted writer Klaus Mann’s comparatively short life was as artistically productive as it was devastatingly dislocated. Best-known today as the author of Mephisto , the literary enfant terrible of the Weimar era produced seven novels, a dozen plays, four biographies, and three autobiographies—among them the first works in Germany to tackle gay issues—amidst a prodigious artistic output. He was among the first to take up his pen against the Nazis, as a reward for which he was blacklisted and denounced as a dangerous half-Jew, his books burnt in public squares around Germany, and his citizenship revoked. Having served with the U.S. military in Italy, he was nevertheless undone by anti-Communist fanatics in Cold War-era America and Germany, dying in France (though not, as all other books contend, by his own hand) at age forty-two.Powerful, revealing, and compulsively readable, this first English-language biography of Klaus Mann charts the effects of reactionary politics on art and literature and tells the moving story of a supreme talent destroyed by personal circumstance and the seismic events of the twentieth century.
Focusing on the Italian political landscape over the past forty years, this book explores the intricate workings of political parties and governing institutions. It delves into the interplay between Italy's economic, social, and political spheres, revealing how a system marked by challenges and crises continues to thrive. The analysis highlights Italy's resilience and success, often surpassing that of its seemingly more stable neighbors.