Illuminated Life

The secret life of the sensational woman behind the Morgan masterpieces, who lit up New York society. What would you give up to achieve your dream? When J. P. Morgan hired Belle da Costa Greene in 1905 to organize his rare book and manuscript collection, she had only her personality and a few years of experience to recommend her. Ten years later, she had shaped the famous Pierpont Morgan Library collection and was a proto-celebrity in New York and the art world, renowned for her self-made expertise, her acerbic wit, and her flirtatious relationships. Born to a family of free people of color, Greene changed her name and invented a Portuguese grandmother to enter white society. In her new world, she dined both at the tables of the highest society and with bohemian artists and activists. She also engaged in a decades-long affair with art critic Bernard Berenson. Greene is pure fascination—the buyer of illuminated manuscripts who attracted others to her like moths to a flame.

Maud Lewis (1903-1970) was recognized and revered in her own lifetime. She offered her endearing images to the passing world through her roadside sign, Paintings for Sale, and was rewarded by the enthusiastic response she received from both the community and tourists as well as from art collectors. The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis is an invitation to share once again with the world the perceptions of this celebrated Nova Scotia folk artist in prose, photographs, and reproductions of her works.

The poetry of The Illuminated Life reflects upon the nature of the sacred and the secular, holiness and wholeness. The poems are at one personal and univeral, mythic and meditative, and bear witness to a spiritual essence hidden within the quotidien.

In this little dictionary of monastic wisdom, Joan Chittister offers an A-Z of how to 'be in the workd, but not of the world.' In her inimitable style, she eschews the quick fix in favor of a solid spiritual direction that has stood the test of time. Each chapter is devoted to a letter that illuminates a spiritual quality to be cultivated, from Awareness to Zeal, Community to Interiority, Enlightenment to Yearning--and many more. Every illumination opens with a story from the desert mystics, then seques into a practical application of that value to our tumultuous times.

The Illuminated Life of Christ brings together the words of the Gospels and the art of the great masters in a beautiful jewel of a book that is printed with a silk cover, a flexible binding, a ribbon marker, and produced in the style of a unique, illuminated keepsake. Eighty passages from the Bible and 120 works of art printed in five colors, including simulated gold ink, recall the life of Jesus paired with Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper, Venziano's Walking on Water, Van der Weyden's Annunciation, Raphael's Madonna and Child, Gerard van Honthorst's Adoration of the Shepherds, and more.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Jonathan Safran Foer's debut—"a funny, moving...deeply felt novel about the dangers of confronting the past and the redemption that comes with laughing at it, even when that seems all but impossible." (Time) With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man—also named Jonathan Safran Foer—sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past. As their adventure unfolds, Jonathan imagines the history of his grandfather’s village, conjuring a magical fable of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. As his search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality collides with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power. “Imagine a novel as verbally cunning as A Clockwork Orange, as harrowing as The Painted Bird, as exuberant and twee as Candide, and you have Everything Is Illuminated . . . Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened—seared in the fire of something new.” — Washington Post “A rambunctious tour de force of inventive and intelligent storytelling . . . Foer can place his reader’s hand on the heart of human experience, the transcendent beauty of human connections. Read, you can feel the life beating.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

"Too important to be ignored....A fascinating look at America's obsession with race, pride, and privilege."—Essence When Alice Jones, a former nanny, married Leonard Rhinelander in 1924, she became the first black woman to be listed in the Social Register as a member of one of New York's wealthiest families. Once news of the marriage became public, a scandal of race, class, and sex gripped the nation—and forced the couple into an annulment trial. "A compelling read."—Boston Globe "This is a great story....Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone tell it very well."—Chicago Tribune

Borrowing the best examples from her own journals, and the works of others, Hinchman leads the reader from simple jottings and scratched likenesses to fully illuminated gems of philosophy, and shows how a lasting record of experience and a road map for self-discovery can be created. 116 illustrations, 16 in color. Gift-boxed.