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The New Paris: The People, Places & Ideas Fueling a Movement
Par Lindsey Tramuta. 2017
“[Tramuta] draws back the curtain on the city’s hipper, more happening side—as obsessed with coffee, creativity, and brunch as Brooklyn…
or Berlin.” —My Little ParisThe city long-adored for its medieval beauty, old-timey brasseries, and corner cafés has even more to offer today. In the last few years, a flood of new ideas and creative locals has infused a once-static, traditional city with a new open-minded sensibility and energy. Journalist Lindsey Tramuta offers detailed insight into the rapidly evolving worlds of food, wine, pastry, coffee, beer, fashion, and design in the delightful city of Paris. Tramuta puts the spotlight on the new trends and people that are making France’s capital a more whimsical, creative, vibrant, and curious place to explore than its classical reputation might suggest. With hundreds of striking photographs that capture this fresh, animated spirit—and a curated directory of Tramuta’s favorite places to eat, drink, stay, and shop—The New Paris shows us the storied City of Light as never before.“The author’s vibrant and precise command of English frames this lively collection of insights about cultural change and stories regarding multiple chefs and merchants.” —Forbes“As the culinary scene in Paris evolves, a new palate of flavors and styles of eating have emerged, redefining what is ‘French cuisine.’ The New Paris documents these changes through the lens of bakers, coffee roasters, ice cream makers, chefs, and even food truck owners. A thoughtful, and delicious, look at how Paris continues to delight and excite the palates of visitors and locals.” —David Lebovitz, author of My Paris KitchenF*ck, That's Delicious: An Annotated Guide to Eating Well
Par Action Bronson, Rachel Wharton. 2017
The rapper, chef, TV star, and author of Stoned Beyond Belief offers up a love letter to food inspired by…
his childhood, family, tours, and travels.This ain’t no cookbook. This ain’t no memoir. This is Action Bronson’s devotional, a book about the overwhelming power of delicious—no, f*cking amazing—food. Bronson is this era’s Homer, and F*ck, That’s Delicious is a modern-day Odyssey, replete with orgiastic recipes, world travel, siren songs, and weed. Illustrated, packed with images, and unlike any book in the entire galaxy, Bronson’s F*ck, That’s Delicious includes forty-plus recipes inspired by his childhood, family, tours, and travels. Journey from bagels with cheese that represent familial love to the sex and Big Macs of upstate New York fat camp and ultimately to the world’s most coveted five-star temples of gastronomy. And: the tacos in LA. The best Dominican chimis. Jamaican jerk. Hand-rolled pasta from Mario. Secrets to good eating from Massimo. Meyhem Lauren’s Chicken Patty Potpie. And more! more! more!New York Times BestsellerWinner of the IACP Cookbook Design Award“This magnificent tome is filled with both the recognizable and the perplexing. And, best of all, I can make it at home and so can you. . . . This is a book that is at once a testament to a wild palate, to a man with a gastronomic vision, to a hip-hop artist of the top of the top category, and a student of life with legendary curiosity.” —Mario Batali, from the foreword“Through his career on VICELAND, Bronson has become one of the Internet’s most entertaining food personalities—and his book delivers just as much loud enthusiasm for eating fucking delicious things as his show by the same name.” —GQ magazineTexas in 1837: An Anonymous, Contemporary Narrative
Par Andrew Forest Muir. 1958
The earliest known eyewitness account of the first year of the Republic of Texas. Written anonymously in 1838–39 by…
a &“Citizen of Ohio,&” Texas in 1837 is the earliest known account of the first year of the Texas republic. Providing information nowhere else available, the still-unknown author describes a land rich in potential but at the time &“a more suitable arena for those who have everything to make and nothing to lose than [for] the man of capital or family.&” The author arrived at Galveston Island on March 22, 1837, before the city of Galveston was founded, and spent the next six months in the republic. His travels took him to Houston, then little more than a camp made up of brush shelters and jerry-built houses, and as far west as San Antonio. He observed and was generally unimpressed by governmental and social structures just beginning to take shape. He attended the first anniversary celebration of the Battle of San Jacinto and has left a memorable account of Texas&’ first Independence Day. His inquiring mind and objective, acute observations of early Texas give us a way of returning to the past, and revisiting landmarks that have vanished forever.Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong
Par Gary Giddins. 1988
Gary Giddins has been called "the best jazz writer in America today" (Esquire). Louis Armstrong has been called the most…
influential jazz musician of the century. Together this auspicious pairing has resulted in Satchmo, one of the most vivid and fascinating portraits ever drawn of perhaps the greatest figure in the history of American music. Available now at a new price, this text-only edition is the authoritative introduction to Armstrong's life and art for the curious newcomer, and offers fresh insight even for the serious student of Pops.Desierto: Memories of the Future
Par Charles Bowden. 2018
The acclaimed author of Blue Desert explores life on the arid borderlands of southern Arizona in this “compelling and wonderfully…
poetic” essay collection (Ron Hansen, New York Times Book Review).In Desierto, Charles Bowden brings his signature eye for vivid detail and penetrating insight to the Sonoran Desert. Travelling across this unforgiving terrain, he explores struggling desert villages, bitter Indian feuds, and a rich history that transcends borders. He profiles notorious predators from mountain lions to drug lords and land barons. Through it all, Bowden offers prescient visions of a future in which the region’s age-old dramas replay themselves long into the future.“In these powerful epic tales of the Sonora Desert, Bowden peoples the harsh land on both sides of the US-Mexican border with saints and sinners, but his enduring hero is the desert itself.” —Kirkus ReviewsA Spy in the House of Loud: New York Songs and Stories (American Music Series)
Par Chris Stamey. 2018
Popular music was in a creative upheaval in the late 1970s. As the singer-songwriter and producer Chris Stamey remembers, “the…
old guard had become bloated, cartoonish, and widely co-opted by a search for maximum corporate profits, and we wanted none of it.” In A Spy in the House of Loud, he takes us back to the auteur explosion happening in New York clubs such as the Bowery’s CBGB as Television, Talking Heads, R.E.M., and other innovative bands were rewriting the rules. Just twenty-two years old and newly arrived from North Carolina, Stamey immersed himself in the action, playing a year with Alex Chilton before forming the dB’s and recording the albums Stands for deciBels and Repercussion, which still have an enthusiastic following. A Spy in the House of Loud vividly captures the energy that drove the music scene as arena rock gave way to punk and other new streams of electric music. Stamey tells engrossing backstories about creating in the recording studio, describing both the inspiration and the harmonic decisions behind many of his compositions, as well as providing insights into other people’s music and the process of songwriting. Photos, mixer-channel and track assignment notes, and other inside-the-studio materials illustrate the stories. Revealing another side of the CBGB era, which has been stereotyped as punk rock, safety pins, and provocation, A Spy in the House of Loud portrays a southern artist’s coming-of-age in New York’s frontier abandon as he searches for new ways to break the rules and make some noise.Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield's Life in the Blues
Par David Dann. 2019
A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of 2019, this biography of blues-rock legend Mike Bloomfield &“draws you in the way…
a novel does&” (The Wall Street Journal). Named one of the world&’s great blues-rock guitarists by Rolling Stone, Mike Bloomfield remains beloved by fans forty years after his untimely death. Taking readers backstage, onstage, and into the recording studio with this legendary virtuoso, David Dann tells the riveting stories behind Bloomfield&’s work in the seminal Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the mesmerizing Electric Flag, as well as on the Super Session album with Al Kooper and Stephen Stills, Bob Dylan&’s Highway 61 Revisited, and soundtrack work with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. Drawing from meticulous research, including more than seventy interviews with the musician&’s friends, relatives, and band members, music historian David Dann brings to life Bloomfield&’s worlds, from his struggles to fit in on Chicago&’s wealthy North Shore with his Jewish family to the gritty taverns and raucous nightclubs where this self-taught guitarist helped transform the sound of contemporary blues and rock music. With scenes that are as electrifying as Bloomfield&’s solos, this is the story of a life lived at full volume. &“Feels like one of the last great untold classic-rock tales, right up through Bloomfield&’s mysterious passing.&” ―Rolling Stone &“Reveals the depths of Bloomfield's musical passions, genius and personal despair . . . Guitar King establishes his pivotal role in American music history.&” ―Pittsburgh Post-GazetteGuitar: An American Life
Par Tim Brookes. 2005
From humble folk instrument to American icon, the story of the guitar is told in this “exceptionally well-written” memoir by…
the NPR commentator (Guitar Player). In this blend of personal memoir and cultural history, National Public Radio commentator Tim Brookes narrates the long and winding history of the guitar in the United States as he recounts his own quest to build the perfect instrument. Pairing up with a master artisan from the Green Mountains of Vermont, Brookes learns how a perfect piece of cherry wood is hued, dovetailed, and worked on with saws, rasps, and files. He also discovers how the guitar first arrived in America with the conquistadors before being taken up by an extraordinary variety of hands: miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents’ wives. In time, the guitar became America’s vehicle of self-expression. Nearly every immigrant group has appropriated it to tell their story. “Part history, part love song, Guitar strikes just the right chords.” —Andrew Abrahams, PeoplePortraits in Jazz: 80 Profiles Of Jazz Legends, Renegades And Revolutionaries
Par Howard Reich. 2014
Howard Reich has reported on jazz for the Chicago Tribune for almost four decades, and in this time he has…
met musicians both celebrated and obscure. From his exclusive interviews with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald, to profiles of the early masters like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday, this book illustrates Reich's deep understanding of the performances, recordings, and cultural legacies of these jazz masters.This book, comprising Reich's award-winning Chicago Tribune articles, shows readers his unmatched critical insight and unrivaled access to the diverse range of jazz musicians the world over, including the little-known artists who, while never in the national spotlight, were nonetheless instrumental to the evolution of jazz. Divided thematically, Portraits in Jazz is a journey from the time of jazz music's originators, great singers, and early masters through to its courageous standouts, game changers, and regional influencers from Chicago to Cuba and across the globe.Reich, himself a piano performance major at Northwestern University, says in the introduction that studying theory and history are essential to understanding jazz's inner-workings. But these portraits weren't created as academic theses or history-book lessons. They are on-the-spot, in the heat of the moment questions of its greatest practitioners, articles and essays in the here and now, taking readers one step closer to the meaning of sound.Dolly Parton: In Her Own Words (In Their Own Words)
Par Suzanne Sonnier. 2020
A collection of quotations from one of America’s most beloved cultural icons.Curated from Dolly Parton’s numerous public statements—interviews, speeches, social…
media posts, and more—this is a comprehensive picture of her legacy as a musician, businesswoman, and philanthropist. Since her career began in the Nashville music scene of the 1960s, Parton has become revered for her work as a singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter, selling over one hundred million records and being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. And beyond her musical achievements, she co-owns the Dollywood Company and is renowned for the philanthropic work of her Dollywood Foundation.This collection is a look into the inner workings of the woman known for penning such hits as “I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” and “9 to 5.” Now, for the first time, you can find Parton’s most inspirational, thought-provoking quotes in one place, providing an intimate and direct look into the mind of this legendary woman.Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland (Music, Nature, Place Ser.)
Par Árni Heimir Ingólfsson. 2019
A study of the influential Icelandic composer’s career and his work.In Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, Árni…
Heimir Ingólfsson provides a striking account of the dramatic career of Iceland’s iconic composer. Leifs (1899–1968) was the first Icelander to devote himself fully to composition at a time when a local music scene was only beginning to take form. He was a fervent nationalist in his art, fashioning an idiosyncratic and uncompromising “Icelandic” sound from traditions of vernacular music with the aim to legitimize Iceland as an independent, culturally empowered nation.In addition to exploring Leifs’s career, Ingólfsson provides detailed descriptions of Leifs’s major works and their cultural contexts. Leifs’s music was inspired by the Icelandic landscape and includes auditory depictions of volcanos, geysers, and waterfalls. The raw quality of his orchestral music is frequently enhanced by an expansive percussion section, including anvils, stones, sirens, bells, ships’ chains, shotguns, and cannons.Largely neglected in his own lifetime, Leifs’s music has been rediscovered in recent years and hailed as a singular and deeply original contribution to twentieth-century music. Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland enriches our understanding and appreciation of Leifs and his music by exploring the political, literary and environmental contexts that influenced his work.“Composers of fearsome originality seldom have an easy path in the world. Jón Leifs, who translated the landscapes and legends of Iceland into sound, comes vividly to life in this brilliant, panoramic biography, his myriad personal and political conflicts delineated with clarity and candor. A major twentieth-century figure at last receives his due.” —Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker and author of The Rest Is Noise“Jón Leifs was the first major Icelandic composer and it is insane that most of his pieces were not performed or recorded until recently. His works were almost just a myth to us Icelanders and therefore this book is so magnificently important. . . . This book is incredibly well written and Árni Heimir’s analysis of the music is deeply satisfying. I listened to each work as it was being discussed, which turned the experience from black and white to color! An extraordinary achievement!” —Björk, singer/songwriterBlues for Cannibals: The Notes from Underground
Par Charles Bowden. 2018
The author of Murder City and Down by the River reflects on the destructive nature of American culture.Cultivated from the…
fierce ideas seeded in Blood Orchid, Blues for Cannibals is an elegiac reflection on death, pain, and a wavering confidence in humanity&’s own abilities for self-preservation. After years of reporting on border violence, sex crimes, and the devastation of the land, Bowden struggles to make sense of the many ways in which we destroy ourselves and whether there is any way to survive. Here he confronts a murderer facing execution, sex offenders of the most heinous crimes, a suicidal artist, a prisoner obsessed with painting portraits of presidents, and other people and places that constitute our worst impulses and our worst truths. Painful, heartbreaking, and forewarning, Bowden at once tears us apart and yearns for us to find ourselves back together again.&“A thrillingly good writer whose grandness of vision is only heightened by the bleak originality of his voice.&” —Ron Hansen, The New York Times Book Review &“A major literary work of profound social consciousness . . . [Bowden] writes with the intensity of Joan Didion, the voracious hunger of Henry Miller, the feral intelligence and irony of Hunter Thompson, and the wit and outrage of Edward Abbey . . . This is gutsy, soulful, pyrotechnic, significant. And transformative writing.&” —Donna Seaman, Chicago Tribune &“A vivid, lyrical journey through the American Southwest . . . [but] this book is no travelogue. Rather, it is a visceral exploration of a much darker landscape, that of the human psyche.&” —Debra Ginsberg, The San Diego Union-Tribune&“A book of absolutely furious beauty . . . At the height of [Bowden&’s] rapturous indignation, with majestic lamentations stretching out almost to the snapping point, he sounds like Walt Whitman in a very bad mood . . . Sweet bloody Jerusalem, when he&’s cooking, who can touch him?&” —David Kipen, San Francisco ChronicleJohn Prine: In Spite of Himself (American Music Series)
Par Eddie Huffman. 2022
&“An excellent new biography&” of the influential songwriter that showcases his renowned humor and musical genius (The Telegraph). With…
a range that spans the lyrical, heartfelt songs &“Angel from Montgomery,&” &“Sam Stone,&” and &“Paradise&” to the classic country music parody &“You Never Even Called Me by My Name,&” John Prine is a songwriter&’s songwriter. Across five decades, he&’s created critically acclaimed albums—John Prine (one of Rolling Stone&’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time), Bruised Orange, The Missing Years—and earned two Grammy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association, and induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His songs have been covered by scores of artists, from Johnny Cash and Miranda Lambert to Bette Midler and 10,000 Maniacs, and influenced everyone from Roger McGuinn to Kacey Musgraves. Hailed in his early years as the &“new Dylan,&” Prine still counts Bob Dylan among his most enthusiastic fans. In John Prine, Eddie Huffman traces the long arc of Prine&’s musical career, beginning with his early, seemingly effortless successes, which led paradoxically not to stardom but to a rich and varied career writing songs that other people have made famous. He recounts the stories, many of them humorous, behind Prine&’s best-known songs and discusses all of Prine&’s albums as he explores the brilliant records and the ill-advised side trips, the underappreciated gems and the hard-earned comebacks that led Prine to found his own successful record label, Oh Boy Records. This thorough, entertaining treatment gives John Prine his due as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation.Rediscovering the Great Plains: Journeys by Dog, Canoe, and Horse (Creating the North American Landscape)
Par Norman Scott Henderson. 2002
An &“engrossing&” memoir of traveling Canada's Qu&’Appelle River Valley via horse, canoe, and Native American dogsled (Calgary Herald). The…
North American Plains are one of the world&’s great landscapes—but today, the most intimate experience most of us are likely to have of the great grasslands is from behind the window of a car or train. It was not always so. In the earliest days, Plains Indians traveled on foot across the vastness, with only the fierce, wolflike Plains dogs as companions. Later, with the arrival of Europeans, horses and canoes appeared on the Plains. In this book, Norman Henderson, a leading scholar of the world&’s great temperate grasslands, revives these traditional modes of travel, journeying along 200 miles of Canada&’s Qu&’Appelle River valley by dog and travois (the wooden rack pulled by dogs and horses used by Native Americans to transport goods), then by canoe, and finally by horse and travois. Henderson interweaves his own adventures with the exploits of earlier Plains travelers, like Lewis and Clark, Francisco Coronado, La Vérendrye, and Alexander Henry. Lesser-known experiences of the fur traders and others who struggled to cross this strange and forbidding landscape also illuminate the story, while Henderson&’s often humorous description of his attempts to find and train old Plains breeds of dogs and horses highlight the difficulties involved in recreating archaic travel methods. He also draws on the history of the world&’s other great temperate grasslands: the South American pampas and the Eurasian steppes. Recalling the work of Ian Frazier and Jonathan Raban, Henderson&’s account offers a deeper understanding of the natural and human history of the North American Plains. &“A captivating &‘biography of a landscape,&’ its good humor blended with impressive scholarship, including snappy thumbnail histories of canoes, horses, dogs, barbed wire and those pesky blood-sucking mosquitoes.&” —Publishers Weekly&“Full of humor and humility . . . Since Benson started Asleep at the Wheel as a working-class country band, it&’s one helluva…
ride worth telling.&” —The Austin Chronicle A six-foot-seven-inch Jewish hippie from Philadelphia starts a Western swing band in 1970. It sounds like a joke but—more than forty years, twenty-five albums, and nine Grammy Awards later—Asleep at the Wheel is still drawing crowds around the world. The roster of musicians who&’ve shared a stage with the Wheel is a who&’s who of American popular music—Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, George Strait, Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett, and so many more. And the bandleader who&’s brought them all together is the hippie that claimed Bob Wills&’s boots: Ray Benson. In this hugely entertaining memoir, Benson looks back over his life and wild ride with Asleep at the Wheel from the band&’s beginning in Paw Paw, West Virginia, through its many years as a Texas institution. He vividly recalls all the inevitable ups and downs and changes in personnel and describes the making of classic albums such as Willie and the Wheel and Tribute to the Music of Bob Willsand the Texas Playboys. The ultimate music industry insider, Benson explains better than anyone else how the Wheel got rock hipsters and die-hard country fans to love groovy new-old Western swing. Decades later, they still do. &“Ray Benson is something—creative, fun, entertaining—you&’ll love this book!&” —Dolly Parton &“I&’ve known Ray Benson for over forty years and never could figure out how he does all he does while asleep at the wheel! This book, however, tells how it all went down!&” —Willie NelsonPaper paradise: do what you want to do
Par Glenn Wheatley. 2022
A roller coaster ride through the sex, drugs and rock and roll of the '60s and '70s to the high-flying…
business world of the '80s and into the '90s and beyond - with someone who lives it all right up to today. It is a book about ambition, hunger, desperation, success and the fruits thereof. Oh yes, it is also about failure and fighting back.Charting the extraordinary life and times of Glenn Wheatley, from working class boy to rock star of the 1960s and 1970s as a member of one of Australia's most successful early bands, the Masters Apprentices, now immortalised in the ARIA Hall of Fame. In their heyday, the Masters drew bigger crowds than the Beatles in Australia. In the 1980s he soared from rock star to star manager of the Little River Band and Whispering Jack, John Farnham. He also pioneered the FM Radio industry with the first FM radio station to go to air in Australia, EON FM in Melbourne. He then went on to build the foundation of what is now the Triple M radio network. It is a narrative littered with casualties and is an actual account of a self-protective society that has its own Kings and Queens, its own iconography, its own language. After a meteoric rise in the fast lane, and an equally spectacular fall, he is back on top and determined to stay there. Glenn is the ultimate rock and roll survivor.Jolliet and Marquette: A New History of the 1673 Expedition
Par Mark Walczynski. 2023
Often viewed in isolation, the Jolliet and Marquette expedition in fact took place against a sprawling backdrop that encompassed everything…
from ancient Native American cities to French colonial machinations. Mark Walczynski draws on a wealth of original research to place the explorers and their journey within seventeenth-century North America. His account takes readers among the region’s diverse Native American peoples and into a vanished natural world of treacherous waterways and native flora and fauna. Walczynski also charts the little-known exploits of the French-Canadian officials, explorers, traders, soldiers, and missionaries who created the political and religious environment that formed Jolliet and Marquette and shaped European colonization of the heartland. A multifaceted voyage into the past, Jolliet and Marquette expands and updates the oft-told story of a pivotal event in American history.Wherever the Sound Takes You: Heroics and Heartbreak in Music Making
Par David Rowell. 2019
David Rowell is a professional journalist and an impassioned amateur musician. He’s spent decades behind a drum kit, pondering the…
musical relationship between equipment and emotion. In Wherever the Sound Takes You, he explores the essence of music’s meaning with a vast spectrum of players, trying to understand their connection to their chosen instrument, what they’ve put themselves through for their music, and what they feel when they play. This wide-ranging and openhearted book blossoms outward from there. Rowell visits clubs, concert halls, street corners, and open mics, traveling from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to a death metal festival in Maryland, with stops along the way in the Swiss Alps and Appalachia. His keen reportorial eye treats us to in-depth portraits of musicians from platinum-selling legend Peter Frampton to a devout Christian who spends his days alone in a storage unit bashing away on one of the largest drum sets in the world. Rowell illuminates the feelings that both spur music’s creation and emerge from its performance, as well as the physical instruments that enables their expression. With an uncommon sensitivity and grace, he charts the pleasure and pain of musicians consumed with what they do—as all of us listen in.The Travels of Mendes Pinto
Par Fernão Mendes Pinto. 1989
This text, ostensibly the autobiography of Portugese explorer Fernão Mendes Pinto, came second only to Marco Polo's work in exciting…
Europe's imagination of the Orient. Chronicling adventures from Ethiopia to Japan, Travels covers twenty years of Mendes Pinto's odyssey as a soldier, a merchant, a diplomat, a slave, a pirate, and a missionary, and continues to overwhelm questions about its source with the sheer enjoyment of its narrative. "[T]here is plenty here for the modern reader. . . . The vivid descriptions of swashbuckling military campaigns and exotic locations make this a great adventure story. . . . Mendes Pinto may have been a sensitive eyewitness, or a great liar, or a brilliant satirist, but he was certainly more than a simple storyteller."—Stuart Schwartz, The New York TimesFour Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten
Par Linda Hutcheon, Michael Hutcheon. 2015
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, pieces that reveal unique responses to the challenges of growing older. Verdi s"Falstaff," his only comedic success, combated Richard Wagner s influence by introducing young Italian composers to a new model of national music. Strauss, on the other hand, struggling with personal and political problems in Nazi Germany, composed the self-reflexive"Capriccio," a life review of opera and his own legacy. Though it exhausted him physically and emotionally, Messiaen at the age of seventy-five finishedhis only opera, "Saint Francois d Assise," which marked the pinnacle of his career. Britten, meanwhile, suffering from heart problems, refused surgery until he had completed his masterpiece, "Death in Venice. " For all four composers, age, far from sapping their creative power, provided impetus for some of their best accomplishments. With its deft treatment of these composers final years and works, "Four Last Songs" provides a valuable look at the challenges and opportunities that present themselves as artists grow older. "