As he entered his seventies, the great Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo despaired that his productive years were past. Anguished by the death of friends and discouraged by the loss of commissions to younger artists, this supreme painter and sculptor began carving his own tomb. It was at this unlikely moment that fate intervened to task Michelangelo with the most ambitious and daunting project of his long creative life. 'Michelangelo, God's...

John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life traces the powerful, life-affirming story of the former Beatle's remarkable comeback after five years of self-imposed retirement. Lennon's final pivotal year would climax in several moments of creative triumph as he rediscovered his artistic self in dramatic fashion. With the bravura release of the Double Fantasy album with wife Yoko Ono, he was poised and ready for an even brighter future only to be wrenched...

"A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon"--

Aging and creativity can seem a particularly fraught relationship for artists, who often face age-related difficulties as their audience's expectations are at a peak. In Four Last Songs, Linda and Michael Hutcheon explore this issue via the late works of some of the world's greatest composers. Giuseppe Verdi (1813—1901), Richard Strauss (1864—1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908—92), and Benjamin Britten (1913—76) all wrote operas late in life,...

A captivating and definitive account of the final days of Van Gogh's life and the incredible story of what followed. 0Divided into three parts, the book first examines the eventful days from the artists' departure from the asylum in Saint-Remy and arrival in Auvers until the shooting which brought his life to an end. During this time Van Gogh completed 70 paintings in 70 days.0The second part delves deeper into the story of the artist's death, which...

"A riveting new account of Theodore Roosevelt's impassioned crusade for military preparedness as America fitfully stumbles into World War I, spectacularly punctuated by his unique tongue-lashings of the vacillating Woodrow Wilson, his rousing advocacy of a masculine, pro-Allied "Americanism," a death-defying compulsion for personal front-line combat, a tentative rapprochement with GOP power brokers--and perhaps even another presidential campaign"--...

Re-imagines the final days of five major American writers, in a collection of short works written in the subtly nuanced language style of each.

Traces the final two years of the iconic star's life, offering insight into the true nature of her relationship with JFK, her actual paternity, her brutal incarceration at a mental asylum, and her sexual exploitation by mobsters.

Shortly after losing all of his wealth in a terrible 1884 swindle, Ulysses S. Grant learned he had terminal throat and mouth cancer. Destitute and dying, Grant began to write his memoirs to save his family from permanent financial ruin. As Grant continued his work, suffering increasing pain, the American public became aware of this race between Grant's writing and his fatal illness. Twenty years after his respectful and magnanimous demeanor toward...