Quiet Chaos

Although Gustav Mahler was a famous conductor in Vienna and New York, the music that he wrote was condemned during his lifetime and for many years after his death in 1911. “Pages of dreary emptiness,” sniffed a leading American conductor. Yet today, almost one hundred years later, Mahler has displaced Beethoven as a box-office draw and exerts a unique influence on both popular music and film scores.
 
Mahler’s coming-of-age began with such 1960s phenomena as Leonard Bernstein’s boxed set of his symphonies and Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice, which used Mahler’s music in its sound track. But that was just the first in a series of waves that established Mahler not just as a great composer but also as an oracle with a personal message for every listener. There are now almost two thousand recordings of his music, which has become an irresistible launchpad for young maestros such as Gustavo Dudamel.
 
Why Mahler? Why does his music affect us in the way it does?
 
Norman Lebrecht, one of the world’s most widely read cultural commentators, has been wrestling obsessively with Mahler for half his life. Pacing out his every footstep from birthplace to grave, scrutinizing his manuscripts, talking to those who knew him, Lebrecht constructs a compelling new portrait of Mahler as a man who lived determinedly outside his own times. Mahler was—along with Picasso, Einstein, Freud, Kafka, and Joyce—a maker of our modern world.
 
“Mahler dealt with issues I could recognize,” writes Lebrecht, “with racism, workplace  chaos, social conflict, relationship breakdown, alienation, depression, and the limitations of medical knowledge.” Why Mahler? is a book that shows how music can change our lives.

Germany’s master of wit and irony now for the first time in English.

Hinrich takes his existence at face value. His wife, on the other hand, has always been more interested in the after-life. Or so it seemed. When she dies of a stroke, Hinrich goes through her papers, only to discover a totally different perspective on their marriage. Thus commences, a dazzling intellectual game of shifting realities.
 

Why Peirene chose to publish this book:
“This novella deals with the weighty subjects of marriage and death, in an impressively light manner. Shifting realities evolve with a beautiful sense of irony and wit. It is a tone that allows us to reflect –without judgment – on misunderstandings, contradictory perceptions and the transience of life.” Meike Ziervogel

"Inventive and deeply affecting, this remarkable fiction lingers in the mind long after the last page has been turned."  The Independent.

"This is a tale of a marriage gone awry and the potential loneliness of cohabitation ... but Matthias Politycki leavens his grim tale with playful teasing of his reader's expectations." TLS.

"A teasing, testing story that makes you want to revisit and seek out those fascinating fragments you might just have missed." Lancashire Evening Post.

" Alois Dwenger, writing from the front in May of 1942, complained that people forgot "the actions of simple soldiers?.I believe that true heroism lies in bearing this dreadful everyday life." In exploring the reality of the Landser, the average German soldier in World War II, through letters, diaries, memoirs, and oral histories, Stephen G. Fritz provides the definitive account of the everyday war of the German front soldier. The personal documents of these soldiers, most from the Russian front, where the majority of German infantrymen saw service, paint a richly textured portrait of the Landser that illustrates the complexity and paradox of his daily life. Although clinging to a self-image as a decent fellow, the German soldier nonetheless committed terrible crimes in the name of National Socialism. When the war was finally over, and his country lay in ruins, the Landser faced a bitter truth: all his exertions and sacrifices had been in the name of a deplorable regime that had committed unprecedented crimes. With chapters on training, images of combat, living conditions, combat stress, the personal sensations of war, the bonds of comradeship, and ideology and motivation, Fritz offers a sense of immediacy and intimacy, revealing war through the eyes of these self-styled "little men." A fascinating look at the day-to-day life of German soldiers, this is a book not about war but about men. It will be vitally important for anyone interested in World War II, German history, or the experiences of common soldiers throughout the world.

• Istanbul chapters
• Understanding Turkey
• Istanbul maps

Istanbul's abundance of important historic buildings and exciting new art galleries and museums provides visitors with more than enough to see during the day, but it's at night that the place swings into high-velocity, mega-stylish action.
This guide is the result of research by dedicated authors and local experts who immersed themselves in Istanbul, finding unique experiences, and sharing practical and honest advice, so you come away informed and amazed. This guide includes up-to-date re views of the best places to stay, eat, sights, cultural information, maps, transport tips and a few best kept secrets - all the essentials to get to the heart of Istanbul.

Coverage includes:

• Understanding Turkey: Turkey Today, History, Architecture, Turkish Table, Arts, People, Turkish Environment
• Itineraries, History, Walking Tour, Sights, Activities, Ferry Trips, Courses, Tours, Festivals & Events, Sleeping, Eating, Drinking, Entertainment, Shopping, Sultanahmet, Grand Bazaar, Beyoglu and Princes' Islands.

Lonely Planet's Turkey guide is researched and written by: James Bainbridge, Tom Spurling, Jean-Bernard Carillet, Steve Fallon, Brandon Presser, Virginia Maxwell, Brett Atkinson

In this ebook, you'll get the same candid reviews and insider tips that you'll find in all Frommer's guides. Plus, we’ve added planning and background information as well as our signature "Best of" features.

Search for more Frommer’s ShortCuts. Mix and match the exact destinations you need for your trip, and create your own Frommer’s ShortCuts collection.

In this true-life thriller, Kati Marton, an accomplished journalist, exposes the cruel mechanics of the Communist Terror State, using the secret police files on her journalist parents as well as dozens of interviews that reveal how her family was spied on and betrayed by friends and colleagues, and even their children's babysitter. In this moving and brave memoir, Marton searches for and finds her parents, and love.

Marton relates her eyewitness account of her mother's and father's arrests in Cold War Budapest and the terrible separation that followed. She describes the pain her parents endured in prison -- isolated from each other and their children. She reveals the secret war between Washington and Moscow, in which Marton and her family were pawns in a much larger game.

By the acclaimed author of The Great Escape, Enemies of the People is a tour de force, an important work of history as it was lived, a narrative of multiple betrayals on both sides of the Cold War that ends with triumph and a new beginning in America.