Box Office Poison: the story of Hollywood in a century of failures, Tim Robey

From great follies to misunderstood masterpieces, from disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, the work of Tim Robey Box office poison tells an alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable failures.

Freaks, Land of the Pharaohs, Dune, Speed ​​2, Catwoman, Cats: What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite – or lack of appetite – and the circumstances that led to such box office disasters? Far from the canon, here is the definitive take on these unfortunate but essential failures of celluloid.

The Children of Athena: Greek Writers and Thinkers in the Age of Rome, 150 BC – 400 ADCharles Freeman

In 146 BC, Greece yielded to the military might of the Roman Republic; Some sixty years later, when Athens and other Greek city-states rebelled against Rome, the general Lucius Cornelius Sulla destroyed the city of Socrates and Plato, destroying the famous Academy where Aristotle had studied.

However, the traditions of Greek cultural life would continue to flourish – across the eastern Mediterranean world and beyond – during the centuries of Roman rule that followed, in the lives and work of a distinguished range of philosophers , rhetoricians, historians, doctors, scientists, geographers and theologians.

Charles Freeman’s accounts of such luminaries as the polymath physician Galen, the soldier-botanist Dioscorides, the Alexandrian geographer and astronomer Ptolemy, and the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus are interwoven with “interludes” that counterpoint and contextualize a sequence of unjustly neglected lives and richly influential.

Raised by a Serial Killer: Discovering the Truth About My Father April Balascio

One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching the Internet, as she did every night, for unsolved murders in the towns where her family grew up, when she stumbled upon the latest investigations into the unsolved case of the ” Murders in the heart.” Suddenly, buried memories of her father’s dark history awoke and she knew she had to act. She picked up the phone to call a detective and the rest is an infamous true crime story.

In his unflinching memoir, Balascio reveals the astonishing story of a life of manipulation, unexplained upheaval and silent fear. Part of her had always known what her father was capable of, but the truth of how she came to these revelations is as fascinating as it is terrifying.

Every Valley: The Story of Handel’s Messiah, Charles King

London-Dublin, 1741-42.

An actress mired in scandal considers fleeing an abusive husband.
A penniless captain sets out to save the town’s abandoned children.
A Muslim African and former colonial captive becomes a celebrity.
A grieving political dissident seeks freedom from his torment.
And a great composer of kings – George Frideric Handel – now ill and struggling to hold the public’s attention, faces a decision that will ensure his place in history.

Evoking a pivotal moment in the birth of modernity, an era of fear, conspiracy and uprising, and featuring some of the most unusual and brilliant personalities of the 18th century, Each valley is a cinematic and moving account of hope in darkness and the entangled lives that shaped a masterpiece.

Wintering: the power of rest and retreat in difficult timesKatherine May

Wintering is a meditation on the fallow periods of life, the times when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to navigate these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life.

A moving personal narrative intertwined with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers lessons about the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination comes from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormouse hibernation, CS Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing the Arctic seas.

What is dark in me: the revolutionary life of paradise lostOrlando Reade

Drawing on his own experiences teaching literature in prison, Orlando Reade focuses on twelve unexpected readers of Milton – from Malcolm X to Virginia Woolf, from Hannah Arendt to Thomas Jefferson – whose lives and works have shaped our world. It shows the many different, surprising and often contradictory ways in which Milton’s poem has been read across centuries and continents.

What is dark in me is the story of how a literary work born from the ashes of a failed revolution became an indelible part of the modern imagination. Reade guides us through the epic, exploring how Milton came to write his dark and dazzling poetry, and offering a new account of his radical and ever-changing legacy.

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