Books by Tony Bennett
Just Getting Started
“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business, the best exponent of a song. He excites me when I watch him. . . . He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.” — Frank Sinatra
“As breezy and meaningful as one of his trademark songs as readers learn about the man by the company he kept and the heroes he worships. Bennett’s ethereal still lifes and landscape paintings adorn this simple yet profound and gracious homage.”— Booklist
Tony Bennett was one of our most vibrant musicians ever to grace the stage. In his previous book, Life Is a Gift, Tony reflected on the lessons he had learned over the years. In Just Getting Started, he pays homage to the remarkable people who inspired those lessons.
In his warm and inviting voice, Tony talks about who and what have enriched his own life, including Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cole Porter, Amy Winehouse, Fred Astaire, Lady Gaga, members of his family, significant places, and more. Just Getting Started chronicles the relationship Tony enjoyed with each one of these legends, entertainers, humanitarians, and loved ones, and reveals how the lessons and values they imparted have invaluably shaped his life.
As enchanting and unforgettable as his music, Just Getting Started is a beautiful compilation of reflections every Bennett fan will treasure, and a perfect introduction for those just getting to know this remarkable star and humanitarian.
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Life Is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett
by Tony Bennett
One of the most well-known and beloved vocalists of our time, Tony Bennett is an American icon. Now, in this rich and beautiful memoir, the legendary Grammy and Emmy Award–winning singer takes us behind the scenes of his multi-platinum career. Revealing, insightful, and always moving, Life Is a Gift tells the stories of Bennett’s experiences in the music industry, what he learned, and who he met along the way, including Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, and Duke Ellington, as well as Amy Winehouse, John Mayer, and Lady Gaga. A "master class in life," this revealing retrospective offers an intimate look at Tony Bennett's journey, from growing up during the Great Depression to carving a career in popular music that has spanned more than six decades as his popularity among all generations continues to grow.
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Tony Bennett in the Studio: A Life of Art & Music
by Mitch Albom, Robert Sullivan, Tony Bennett, Mario Cuomo
Every one of Tony’s millions of devoted fans will treasure this definitive volume.Tony Bennett, the world’s most beloved living legend, has a talent that’s simply timeless. He’s the smooth and subtle singer of the classic American songbook, the recipient of countless Grammy® awards and nominations, an Emmy Award®, and a Kennedy Center Honoree. The Library of Congress bestowed a Living Legend Award on him in 2000, the National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master in January of 2006, and he just received Billboard magazine’s prestigious Century Award for his outstanding contributions to music. Contemporary singers such as Bono, Sting, Diana Krall, John Legend, and the Dixie Chicks idolize him. Recently, Bennett turned 80 and he has celebrated this milestone with the same joie de vivre with which he celebrates life in general; he’s at the height of his popularity, thanks to the bestselling album Duets and a brilliantly conceived TV special directed by Rob Marshall, director of the Academy Award®-winning Chicago. When performing as Tony Bennett, he connects to people everywhere through the magic of his music. What many of his admirers may not know, however, is that Bennett, under the name of Anthony Benedetto, is also a successful painter whose works hang in major museums and galleries, including the Smithsonian.
In this beautiful new book, richly illustrated with his own artwork, Tony takes the time to reflect on his career, and the inspiration that continues to infuse both his music and his art. Along with journalist Robert Sullivan, he explores recurring themes in his life, including jazz, individualism, the creative zone, love, truth and beauty, chiaroscuro (the balance of light and shadow, both in painting and life), and the lifelong adventure that has taken him around the world and back again. His own personal memorabilia will be on display, along with album covers and notes. And for everyone who loves Bennett’s gorgeous voice and elegant song stylings: an exclusive CD featuring his favorite tunes, including some rare choices.
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Culture / Power / History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory
by Michel Foucault, Tony Bennett, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Stuart Hall, Pierre Bourdieu, Donna Haraway, Linda Alcoff, Sally Alexandeer, Dick Hebdige, Ramond Williams
The intellectual radicalism of the 1960s spawned a new set of questions about the role and nature of "the political" in social life, questions that have since revolutionized nearly every field of thought, from literary criticism through anthropology to the philosophy of science. Michel Foucault in particular made us aware that whatever our functionally defined "roles" in society, we are constantly negotiating questions of authority and the control of the definitions of reality. Such insights have led theorists to challenge concepts that have long formed the very underpinnings of their disciplines. By exploring some of the most debated of these concepts--"culture," "power," and "history"--this reader offers an enriching perspective on social theory in the contemporary moment.
Organized around these three concepts, Culture/ Power/History brings together both classic and new essays that address Foucault's "new economy of power relations" in a number of different, contestatory directions. Representing innovative work from various disciplines and sites of study, from taxidermy to Madonna, the book seeks to affirm the creative possibilities available in a time marked by growing uncertainty about established disciplinary forms of knowledge and by the increasing fluidity of the boundaries between them. The book is introduced by a major synthetic essay by the editors, which calls attention to the most significant issues enlivening theoretical discourse today. The editors seek not only to encourage scholars to reflect anew on the course of social theory, but also to orient newcomers to this area of inquiry.
The essays are contributed by Linda Alcoff ("Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism"), Sally Alexander ("Women, Class, and Sexual Differences in the 1830s and 1840s"), Tony Bennett ("The Exhibitionary Complex"), Pierre Bourdieu ("Structures, Habitus, Power"), Nicholas B. Dirks ("Ritual and Resistance"), Geoff Eley ("Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures"), Michel Foucault (Two Lectures), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ("Authority, [White] Power and the [Black] Critic"), Stephen Greenblatt ("The Circulation of Social Energy"), Ranajit Guha ("The Prose of Counter-Insurgency"), Stuart Hall ("Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms"), Susan Harding ("The Born-Again Telescandals"), Donna Haraway ("Teddy Bear Patriarchy"), Dick Hebdige ("After the Masses"), Susan McClary ("Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshly"), Sherry B. Ortner ("Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties"), Marshall Sahlins ("Cosmologies of Capitalism"), Elizabeth G. Traube ("Secrets of Success in Postmodern Society"), Raymond Williams (selections from Marxism and Literature), and Judith Williamson ("Family, Education, Photography").
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Formalism and Marxism (New Accents)
by Tony Bennett
Russian Formalism and Marxist criticism had a seismic impact on twentieth-century literary theory and the shockwaves are still felt today. First published in 1979, Tony Bennett's Formalism and Marxism created its own reverberations by offering a ground-breaking new interpretation of the Formalists' achievements and demanding a new way forward in Marxist criticism.
The author first introduces and reviews the work of the Russian Formalists, a group of theorists who made an extraordinarily vital contribution to literary criticism in the decade followig the October Revolution of 1917. Placing the work of key figures in context and addressing such issues as aesthetics, linguistics and the category of literature, literary form and function and literary evolution, Bennett argues that the Formalists' concerns provided the basis for a radically historical approach to the study of literature. Bennett then turns to the situation of Marxist criticism ad sketches the risks it has run in becoming overly entangled with the concerns of traditional aesthetics. He forcefully argues that through a serious and sympathetic reassessment of the Formalists and their historical approach, Marxist critics might find their way back on to the terrain of politics, where they and theri work belong.
Addressing such crucial questions as 'What is literature?' or 'How should it be studied and to what end?', Formalism and Marxism explores ideas which should be considered by any student or reader of literature and provides a particular challenge to those interested in Marxist criticism. Now with a new afterword, this classic text still offers the best available starting point for those new to the field, as well as representing a crucial intervention in twentieth-century literary theory.
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