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Van Day Truex was born in Kansas, the artistically inclined son of a stern and intolerant shop manager. After the seemingly obligatory stint living with a sympathetic and worldly aunt in Wisconsin, he escaped to New York City and design school (quite against his parents' wishes), turning in a stellar performance at the institution that would become Parsons School of Design and immediately earning the notoriously hard-won approval of none other than Frank Alvah Parsons. Several hundred society introductions, garden parties, and black-and-white balls later, Truex found himself at the center of the international elite, one of the social register's most sought-after interior designers--not to mention one of the most prized dinner guests in New York and on the Riviera.
As an enormously popular instructor at Parsons, and the school's president from 1942 to 1952, Truex influenced American interior design far beyond the rarefied circles of his friends and clients--Brooke Astor, Lady Mendl, Grace Bingham, and the like. And as director of design at Tiffany & Co. from 1955 to 1962, arguably the store's heyday, Truex indeed had a hand in defining upper-class taste--he called it "design judgment"--or at least what went into the place settings on the dining tables of the very wealthy. Many of the designs Truex commissioned and developed for Tiffany's are still sold today as classics of the brand: the all-over wild strawberry china pattern, for example.
Adam Lewis's illustrated biography is not particularly vivid, and details of Truex's work and design philosophy are scant compared to the exhaustive (and exhausting) descriptions of the charming, urbane decorator's endless social engagements. One must remember, though, that Lewis is writing about the man whose preferred color came to be known as "Truex beige." Perhaps the designer himself would have approved of the stilted style of Lewis's prose, but for those not instantly enchanted by minor high-society and interior-design intrigue, the book's studied humorlessness will make for dull reading. --Liana Fredley
Book Description
Van Day Truex is widely regarded as the father of twentieth-century American design. Under his leadership, Parsons School of Design became the foremost school for interior design and fashion in the United States and he influenced generations of students entering these fields. But his greatest legacy—beautifully chronicled in Van Day Truex—is his long reign as design director at Tiffany & Co., which he transformed into a model for unprecedented style and grace. Interior designers, architects, fashion devotees, and furniture designers will treasure this first-ever portrait of Truex. This magnificent volume—illustrated throughout with color and black-and-white photographs—is a glorious tribute to one of America's foremost designers and a fascinating biography of the man Brooke Astor called "one of the most charming men I ever knew."
Customer Reviews:
Completes a significant gap in American design history.......2001-12-10
Lewis has obviously unearthed a treasure trove of very important material in the form of Truex' scrapbooks bringing to light an amazing tapestry of relationships bridging the worlds of fashion, product design, interior design, design education, and various cultural elites. It's refreshing to read a biography that is illustrated with the subject's own snapshots, original works, and previously published material that has been long unavailable. Parsons School of Design itself celebrated a centennial not long ago giving Truex no more than a few lines in its retelling of its story--the author has filled in a gaping hole in American design history for Parsons as well as Tiffany and Co.
Contrary to another reader review, I am relieved not to be subjected to the "spice" that is strewn over so many other biographies. Lewis gives us as much personal information as is appropriate to the subject. This will be a requisite acquisition for many libraries, circulating and otherwise, I think.
Is That All There Is?.......2001-11-14
Lewis is to be commended for his valiant attempt at constructing a biography about one of the 20th century's most invisible design talents. Truex had a minor influence on a certain coterie of designers and products that never reached very far beyond 57th and Fifth. His circle was rich, cultured and insular, therefore preventing him from gaining a kind of commercial notoriety that some of his peers were able to. Yet we still reap the fruits of his efforts to this day, with some of most lovely flatware,china and objets Tiffany's has to offer. What is most curious about Truex as a subject, is that perhaps he should have been a chapter in another book. He just wasn't that compelling (except for his fastidious neatness and controlled eating habits). Not to minimize the amount of work it must have been for Lewis to assemble all of this vaguely interesting material. I just wanted to know a little bit more about his personal life. Just a tiny bit more gossip might have been like a dash of paprika!
Book Description
If science has the equivalent of a Bloomsbury group, it is the five men born at the turn of the twentieth century in Budapest: Theodore von Karman, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller. From Hungary to Germany to the United States, they remained friends and continued to work together and influence each other throughout their lives. As a result, their work was integral to some of the most important scientific and political developments of the twentieth century. They were an extraordinary group of talents: Wigner won a Nobel Prize in theoretical physics; Szilard was the first to see that a chain reaction based on neutrons was possible, initiated the Manhattan Project, but left physics to try to restrict nuclear arms; von Neumann could solve difficult problems in his head and developed the modern computer for more complex problems; von Karman became the first director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, providing the scientific basis for the U.S. Air Force; and Teller was the father of the hydrogen bomb, whose name is now synonymous with the controversial "Star Wars" initiative of the 1980s. Each was fiercely opinionated, politically active, and fought against all forms of totalitarianism. Istvan Hargittai, as a young Hungarian physical chemist, was able to get to know some of these great men in their later years, and the depth of information and human interest in The Martians of Science is the result of his personal relationships with the subjects, their families, and their contemporaries.
Customer Reviews:
Education, Immigration, Political Influence, & The Bomb.......2007-09-24
The above for me was the trust of the book with the historical perspective of early 1900 thru early 1980. As we start, we see what a great education can do as the five (5) did receive early intensive training in their outstanding "gymnasiums" of Hungary. Even though the education was so very good and produced many great students, these five still stood out to the point as if they were from Mars as the title depicts. As their academic reputations started to grow and the difficulties of the 1st war, they all had some experience of working or immigrating away from Hungary. As the 2nd war approached, all could see the writing on the wall and it was easier to immigrate a second time of which the US was the lucky recipient.
Upon arrival to the US, it did not take too long as they started to display their political influence since they saw or knew what was going on in Europe and that war was coming and felt that the US needed to wake up and be prepared. This persistance took time but paid off as all were involved in some way with the development of the 1st atomic bomb both technically and politically. This continued so for some time for all of their career, since after the war, the cold war commenced and new problems were present with the atomic age upon us.
The interactions and side points make for a very good historical and political persective if your interested in the above.
A unique look at a unique topic.......2007-02-12
As the daughter of the book's author, I bring an unusual perspective to this piece, one that will give you some background on how this book came about and why you will be in for a treat when reading it.
My father knew two of the five Martians discussed in this volume (Wigner and Teller) and had expressed a great interest in the work and lives of all five (Szilard, von Neumann, von Karman in addition to the above two) throughout his life. Curiously, however, despite having written numerous books about scientists, he never intended to write a book about these five until Oxford University Press approached him about it. When he finally took up this project, he threw himself into it with zest. When the book was near completion, he met with almost all of the surviving children of the Martians, not to change anything but to get an additional impression of their personalities. A byproduct of the book was a play he wrote about Teller, which surprised even me despite being used to his occasional unusual ideas.
Looking back, the Martians were always on my father's mind, and he cherished his long-lasting personal acquaintance with Eugene P. Wigner. (Even as a child, I remember seeing the picture of the two of them taken upon their encounter at the University of Texas at Austin in 1969.) The family legend had it that we might be distant relatives, but there was never any hard evidence for that. My father started correspondence with Wigner when he was still a student, well before I was born. Actually, Wigner wrote him first after my father had published an article in a Hungarian literary magazine soon after Wigner's Nobel Prize. My father's acquaintance with Teller came much later, when he and my mother visited the Tellers in their home in Stanford in 1996.
Having read The Martians of Science, I feel as if I had become personally acquainted with all five of the people discussed in the volume. It is fascinating to see that such incredible people emerge from just one country to contribute so much to science and to the defense of the United States. It is sad that they were forced out of Hungary, where even today - while their achievements are being recognized - the reasons of their departures are often covered up. This book puts these things into proper perspective.
For an engaging, detailed, and passionate account of the lives of five incredibly important figures (regarding both science and history), I highly recommend this book.
Highly recommended.......2007-01-16
What a great gem for those of us interested in 20th century history and the history of science.
The Jewish-Hungarian Martians represented a well-defined group from turn-of-the-century Budapest who became top scientists in Germany of the 1920s, and made decisive contributions to the defense of the Free World from the menace of totalitarian powers during World War II and the Cold War. The book succeeds admirably in presenting their complex characters and their single-minded determination to achieve their stated goals on the background of the turbulent twentieth century.
This is a book that was hard to put down. I have also returned to it from time to time.
An interesting, informative and important book.......2007-01-14
This is a very interesting and informative book that I heartily recommend. I was inspired to buy it after reading a review of it in Nature magazine where the reviewer ended on the following helpful note: "This is an important story that needs to be told, and Hargittai tells it well", an assessment with which I concur.
The book is about the lives of five Hungarian Jewish scientists whose work changed the world, not just the world of science, but the world of politics as well due to the circumstances and period in which they lived and thrived.
The author does a very thorough job tracing the history of these important men. We are shown the uniqueness and diversity of the five Martians (Theodore von Karman, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner) in addition to considering what bound them together. It is interesting to follow their parallel lives throughout exciting periods of the 20th century. Hargittai conveys the flavor of turn-of-the-century Budapest that yielded not only important scientists but also famous and important contributors to other realms of life (e.g. composers such as Bartok).
The author does a very good job of communicating how circumstances and situations evolved. For example, we see a change from the peaceful coexistence and cooperation of Jews and the rest of Hungary's population to a horribly anti-Semitic society. We are also told about transitions such as how the Martians turned from dedicated students into top players in world science; how the initially Ivory-tower scientists became the most practical contributors to the American military might; how esoteric physics became a source of lethal weaponry within a mere few years; and how quiet immigrants became esteemed citizens with a strong political voice.
In addition to telling us about events that happened, an intriguing feature of the book is that Hargittai tries to imagine what might have become of the Martians had they stayed in Hungary or had they lived in the Soviet Union rather than in the United States.
Overall, this is an extremely engaging and informative read. I agree with the Nature reviewer's assessment that this book needed to be written and Hargittai did an excellent job doing so. You will both enjoy this reading and learn a lot from it.
Hungarian Physicists.......2007-01-11
This book gives a good peek into the life of some of the most brilliant scientists that Hungary has produced. One criticism for the book is that the language is sometimes terse and there is some incoherence in the story telling. All the same I would recommend it to anybody interested in the history of physics.
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Biographical Dictionary of Central And Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century
Manufacturer: M.E. Sharpe
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ASIN: 0765610272 |
Book Description
This first of the ultimately three-volume Who's Who in Islamic Studies presents the scholarly world at long last with its own biographical encyclopaedia. Taking as a starting point the inventory of authors from the renowned Index Islamicus, the author, Wolfgang Behn (Berlin), has systematically collected numerous data on the lives and works of the tens of thousands of authors listed in the Index Islamicus from 1665 to 1980.
This Biographical Companion will be an indispensable reference tool for the serious student and scholar of Islamic Studies. It enables the user to quickly gain knowledge on the life, work, and professional background of almost every major and minor author, and thus to place each author in his/her proper perspective.
A tremendous achievement and a true must for every library.
Book Description
From Elizabeth Dole to Mary Kay, from Fanny Crosby to Annie Dillard, here is a century of women who made a difference. Great family reading.
Customer Reviews:
Amazing & Powerful Women.......2004-09-30
Helen Kooiman Hosier gave me the beautiful gift of enabling me to get to know and understand the hearts and genius of 100 Christian heroines
Every person on the planet over 12 would benefit from reading this book. Imagine learning the stories of women whose names you have heard, but don't know where they came from, how they got to make a difference in our world, and why they made the choices they made.
I was amazed at the deep faith of women heroines I never knew were Christians.
Here is one example of a name that I have heard all my life: Florence Nightengale. One patient in a hospital said this of Florence Nightengale's impact on him as she made her nightly rounds with her lamp to light her way: "What a comfort it was to see her pass even. She would speak to one, and nod and smile to as many more; but she could not do it all, you know. We lay there by hundreds; but, we could kiss her shadow as it fell and lay our heads on the pillow again content."
What an inspiring book!.......2001-10-03
This collection of brief biographies of 100 women from different walks of life, living in different places, periods and cultures, who each served God in her own unique way is incredibly inspiring and motivational. My 8 year old daughter, who insisted that I read parts of this book to her, actually said this was a "cool" book. My only disappointment is that Oprah Winfrey, who is one of the most high profile God loving women in recent times, was not included.
A new felt thought for women.......2000-06-13
One of the few books that I read that gave me an incredible feeling at the end. You know, when you finish the book, close it, and sit still for about 30 minutes in a world of wonder. I never knew that women invented so many important tools that play a major role in our lives. I especially enjoyed reading about Mother Teresa whom I came to know as a totally incredible person. Her good deeds, kindness, and wisdom are great examples to follow and live by. Thank-you Helen Kooiman Hosier for a wonderful and inspirational book. My only regret was that I bought this book at a nearby bookstore and paid almost twice as much as I would have compared to Amazon.com.
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Against The Odds: Scholars Who Challenged Racism In The Twentieth Century
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 155849474X |
Book Description
Over the course of the past century the struggle against racism took many forms, from petitions and lawsuits to sit-ins and marches. This book records the testimony of eleven scholar-activists who challenged prevailing racial beliefs and practices while engaging in resistance and reform. Included in this group are nine African Americans (Kenneth B. Clark, John Henrik Clarke, St. Clair Drake, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Hope Franklin, John Glover Jackson, Hylan Lewis, Frank Snowden Jr., and Robert C. Weaver); one Sri Lankan who lives and works in Britain (A. Sivanandan); and one white American (Herbert Aptheker).
Most of these men began their careers before World War II, in a time when biological conceptions of race dominated public policy and severely limited the opportunities available to people of color. By struggling with these impediments in their personal and professional lives, each in his own way helped redefine race as the social and cultural construct it has always been.
To highlight both the similarities and the differences in their experiences, the editors asked each of the subjects the same set of general questions about formative influences, major obstacles, and principal accomplishments. These were followed by more narrowly focused queries about specific writings. Most of the responses were recorded on tape as interviews; several were submitted as written reminiscences; and one, the essay on Du Bois, as the shared recollection of two associates who had worked closely with him for many years.
The result is a singular collection of autobiographical accounts that not only testify to the personal courage of these individuals in overcoming the ravages of racism but also document their contributions to the establishment of a vital antiracist tradition in American thought and culture.
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The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories: Cambridge Lawrence Edition (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
D. H. Lawrence
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
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Binding: Paperback
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Lawrence, D.H.
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The Plumed Serpent
ASIN: 0140188061 |
Book Description
The thirteen short stories in this volume were written between 1924 and 1928, and are set in Europe and America. Eleven were collected in The Woman Who Rode Away (1928), though â€~The Man Who Loved Islands’ appeared in the American edition only and the other two in The Lovely Lady (1933). An unpublished fragment â€~A Pure Witch’ is also included here. The stories reflect Lawrence’s experiences in New Mexico, Mexico, Italy, Germany and England in the post-war period. Many were considerably revised by Lawrence after he first wrote them; some were completely rewritten and subsequently published in different versions. The editors give composition histories and discuss publication difficulties, including Compton Mackenzie’s objections to â€~The Man Who Loved Islands’. Appendices record manuscript revisions for three stories and give complete, unpublished early versions of four. Explanatory notes elucidate literary allusions and give topographical and biographical information.
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Women of Valor: Stories of Great Jewish Women Who Helped Shape the Twentieth Century
Sheila F. Segal
Manufacturer: Behrman House Publishing
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Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed The World
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The Quotable Jewish Woman: Wisdom, Inspiration and Humor from the Mind and Heart
ASIN: 0874416124 |
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