Chasing Picasso

No one remembers the daytime heist at the Saint Louis Art Museum. A rare Picasso arrived at the museum cloaked in mystery in 1934, then disappeared without a trace in 1973. Today, the painting could be worth millions, that is, if it could be recovered. Join the author as she shares the backstory of the stolen Picasso and how it became the least-told story of art theft from a highly regarded art museum. Someone might have it without knowing it was lifted from a big city collection fifty years ago. Recognizing the painting could be the first step in getting it home.

When Gianni Bozzacchi accepted an assignment as a photographer on the set of The Comedians (1967), he didn't know that his life was about to change forever. His ability to capture the beauty of candid moments drew the attention of the film's star, Elizabeth Taylor, and prompted her to hire him as her personal photographer. Not only did he go on to enjoy a jet-set life as her friend and confidant -- preserving unguarded moments between the violet-eyed beauty and Richard Burton as they traveled the world -- but Bozzacchi also became an internationally renowned photographer and shot some of the biggest celebrities of the 1960s and 1970s. In My Life in Focus, Bozzacchi traces his journey from humble beginnings to the sphere of the rich and famous. As a child, he cultivated his skills by working with his father -- a photographer for the Italian government. Following in his parent's footsteps was not something Bozzacchi had foreseen for his future; but his passion for taking pictures and his ability to put his subjects at ease enabled him to capture stunning images of some of the greatest stars of the twentieth century, including Audrey Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Raquel Welch, Mia Farrow, Clint Eastwood, and the royal family of Monaco. Beautifully illustrated with many of the photographer's most iconic images, this lively memoir reveals private moments in the Taylor-Burton love story and provides an invaluable behind-the-scenes look at the business of filmmaking and the perils of celebrity.

The last man standing....Mania taking my psyche to another danger zone....Human foibles rising to the surface/Surreal demons speaking out loud

The third volume of Richardson’s magisterial Life of Picasso, a groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. Here is Picasso at the height of his powers in Rome and Naples, producing the sets and costumes with Cocteau for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and visiting Pompei where the antique statuary fuel his obsession with classicism; in Paris, creating some of his most important sculpture and painting as part of a group that included Braque, Apollinaire, Miró, and Breton; spending summers in the South of France in the company of Gerald and Sara Murphy, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. These are the years of his marriage to the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova—the mother of his only legitimate child, Paulo—and of his passionate affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was, as well, his model and muse.

The most frequently used words in English are highly ambiguous; for example, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary lists 94 meanings for the word "run" as a verb alone. Yet people rarely notice this ambiguity. Solving this puzzle has commanded the efforts of cognitive scientists for many years. The solution most often identified is "context": we use the context of utterance to determine the proper meanings of words and sentences. The problem then becomes specifying the nature of context and how it interacts with the rest of an understanding system. The difficulty becomes especially apparent in the attempt to write a computer program to understand natural language. Lexical ambiguity resolution (LAR), then, is one of the central problems in natural language and computational semantics research. A collection of the best research on LAR available, this volume offers eighteen original papers by leading scientists. Part I, Computer Models, describes nine attempts to discover the processes necessary for disambiguation by implementing programs to do the job. Part II, Empirical Studies, goes into the laboratory setting to examine the nature of the human disambiguation mechanism and the structure of ambiguity itself. A primary goal of this volume is to propose a cognitive science perspective arising out of the conjunction of work and approaches from neuropsychology, psycholinguistics, and artificial intelligence--thereby encouraging a closer cooperation and collaboration among these fields. Lexical Ambiguity Resolution is a valuable and accessible source book for students and cognitive scientists in AI, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, or theoretical linguistics.

One of The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2018 “An engrossing read…a historically and psychologically rich account of the young Picasso and his coteries in Barcelona and Paris” (The Washington Post) and how he achieved his breakthrough and revolutionized modern art through his masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. In 1900, eighteen-year-old Pablo Picasso journeyed from Barcelona to Paris, the glittering capital of the art world. For the next several years he endured poverty and neglect before emerging as the leader of a bohemian band of painters, sculptors, and poets. Here he met his first true love and enjoyed his first taste of fame. Decades later Picasso would look back on these years as the happiest of his long life. Recognition came first from the avant-garde, then from daring collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein. In 1907, Picasso began the vast, disturbing masterpiece known as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Inspired by the painting of Paul Cézanne and the inventions of African and tribal sculpture, Picasso created a work that captured the disorienting experience of modernity itself. The painting proved so shocking that even his friends assumed he’d gone mad, but over the months and years it exerted an ever greater fascination on the most advanced painters and sculptors, ultimately laying the foundation for the most innovative century in the history of art. In Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World, Miles J. Unger “combines the personal story of Picasso’s early years in Paris—his friendships, his romances, his great ambition, his fears—with the larger story of modernism and the avant-garde” (The Christian Science Monitor). This is the story of an artistic genius with a singular creative gift. It is “riveting…This engrossing book chronicles with precision and enthusiasm a painting with lasting impact in today’s art world” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), all of it played out against the backdrop of the world’s most captivating city.

Jamie and Kendall Broderick are excited to read about a missing masterpiece. A museum in France was robbed 30 years ago. Suddenly the painting has turned up, and the owner is seeking the reward. But is he the thief? Can the Brodericks help find out before the reward money is paid? See if you can solve this 15-minute mystery before the Brodericks do. Similar to the old Encyclopedia Brown series, kids get to test their wits and powers of observation against our detectives. These books help kids learn the vital skills of logic and attention to detail in a fun, easy way. Ages 8 and up. Educational Versions include exercises designed to meet Common Core standards. LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices to read, from classic stories, to mysteries, to books of knowledge. Many books also work well as hi-lo readers. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.

CHASING SHADOWS tells the story of a young man who pays a heavy price for pursuing his own dream. When he announces that he intends to be a poet instead of a doctor, his working class family thinks he’s gone crazy. They send him to psychiatrists who shoot electricity though his brain, warn him that he’ll never hold a job, and confide that he will suffer from nervous breakdowns all his life. After a stint in a state mental hospital, he spends the ‘60's on the mean streets of New York City, not as a fair-weather hippie with a room of his own in Scarsdale whenever he tires of the hard life, but as a fugitive from everyone, and everything, he once loved.