Here are 15 books that Chance and Circumstance fans have personally recommended if you like
Chance and Circumstance.
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I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to write over 30 books and over 1000 articles. Not even my late beloved mother would have wanted to slog through all of them! Now, thanks to Teachers College Press, I have published my overview book. In addition to collecting the “essays” on Mind that I consider most important, I have also added autobiographical material and “legends,” which provide context for the wide spectrum of themes and pieces. The chance to reflect on a life of research has stimulated me to identify the works that had the greatest influence on my thinking and writing about the range and depth of human cognition.
This remarkable book, by one of the major anthropologists of the 20th century, intertwines two enterprises; it is both a fascinating account of his ethnographic work in Brazil in the 1930s and a penetrating reflection on what it’s like for a Parisian educated scholar to understand and convey what he later termed “the Savage Mind.”
Artfully written, this book exemplifies the best of social science and literary artistry—and serves as a model for all who want to write evocatively about their calling.
A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology
This watershed work records Claude Lévi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss found the societies he was seeking among the Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, and Tupi-Kawahib. More than merely recounting his time in their midst, Tristes Tropiques places the cultural practices of these peoples in a global context and extrapolates a fascinating theory of culture that has given the book an importance far beyond the fields of anthropology and continental philosophy.…
I started my career as a graduate student studying the Victorian period, a great age for autobiography. And although autobiography is no longer taught much in English departments, I guess I retain my passion for the genre. The greatest, of course, is Rousseau’s Confessions.
Mekas was a Lithuanian émigré who became an impresario of experimental cinema. He lived a long and eventful life, and this eccentric book is a fascinating account of it.
A Dance with Fred Astaire is an extraordinary collection of anecdotes and rare ephemera featuring a dizzying cast of cultural icons both underground and mainstream, both obscure and celebrated. Memories and diary entries, conversations and insights into his work sit alongside collages of beautifully reproduced postcards, newspaper cuttings, film negatives, lists, posters and photographs, envelopes and letters, book covers, telegrams, cartoons and doodles. Mekas has kept and archived the artifacts of his life as a cultural touchstone down to the minutiae, all of which is brought together here in the form of a unique and fascinating scrapbook of a life…
I started my career as a graduate student studying the Victorian period, a great age for autobiography. And although autobiography is no longer taught much in English departments, I guess I retain my passion for the genre. The greatest, of course, is Rousseau’s Confessions.
Despite the cheesy title, this is a revealing window on the world of postwar publishing. Seaver “discovered” Samuel Beckett as a graduate student in Paris after the war, and he eventually became an editor at Beckett’s American publisher, Grove, during its heyday under Barney Rosset.
Richard Seaver came to Paris in 1950 seeking Hemingway's moveable feast. Paris had become a different city, traumatized by World War II, yet the red wine still flowed, the cafes bustled, and the Parisian women found American men exotic and heroic. There was an Irishman in Paris writing plays and novels unlike anything anyone had ever read - but hardly anyone was reading them. There were others, too, doing equivalently groundbreaking work for equivalently small audiences. So when his friends launched a literary magazine, "Merlin", Seaver knew this was his calling: to bring the work of the likes of Samuel…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I started my career as a graduate student studying the Victorian period, a great age for autobiography. And although autobiography is no longer taught much in English departments, I guess I retain my passion for the genre. The greatest, of course, is Rousseau’s Confessions.
OK, Warhol probably did not write a single word of this book, and OK, you should believe nothing in it (or that Warhol ever said). But Pat Hackett channels Warhol’s voice and attitude uncannily, and the stories, however dubious the provenance, are funny and insightful about the art world of the nineteen sixties.
Anecdotal, funny, frank, POPism is Warhol's personal view of the Pop phenomenon in New York in the 1960s.
A cultural storm swept through the 1960s—Pop Art, Bob Dylan, psychedelia, underground movies—and at its center sat a bemused young artist with silver hair: Andy Warhol. Andy knew everybody (from the cultural commissioner of New York to drug-driven drag queens) and everybody knew Andy.
His studio, the Factory, was the place: where he created the large canvases of soup cans and Pop icons that defined Pop Art, where one could listen to the Velvet Underground and rub elbows with Edie Sedgwick and…
I’ve always had a passion for cinema, especially gritty British
productions of the 1940s and 50s. The voices of Kathleen Harrison,
Robert Beatty, Kenneth More, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Warner, and Susan Shaw
can be heard nightly radiating from my TV. I’m also a huge fan of radio,
in particular classic BBC shows. As a biographer, I’m known for shining
a light on personalities of yesteryear – those we might recognize by
name and face but know little about. My recent books include
biographies on Erich Honecker (OK, he wasn’t a movie star), Jack Hawkins,
and David Tomlinson (they were).
I adored Fred Astaire so much that during a trip to Los Angeles, I made a special little pilgrimage to the RKO studios on the corner of Melrose Ave and Gower Street to see where he shot those famous 1930s movies, Top Hat, Follow the Fleet, and Flying Down to Rio.
From his debut in vaudeville as a kid to his remarkable career as the star of many of the most popular Hollywood musicals ever captured on celluloid, Fred tells his own compelling story.
One of the foremost entertainers of the twentieth century—singer, actor, choreographer, and, of course, the most dazzling "hoofer" in the history of motion pictures—Fred Astaire was the epitome of charm, grace, and suave sophistication, with a style all his own and a complete disregard for the laws of gravity. Steps in Time is Astaire's story in his own words, a memoir as beguiling, exuberant, and enthralling as the great artist himself, the man ballet legends George Balanchine and Rudolf Nureyev cited as, hands down, the century's greatest dancer.
From his debut in vaudeville at age six through his remarkable career…
My only granddaughter and her love and fascination with unicorns is the reason why I dedicated Mysty the Mystical Unicorn to her! I hope that Mysty inspires children everywhere to focus on their imagination, creativity and to always believe in themselves! My desire to write a children’s picture book started at a very young age, reading is a passion of mine that my own children inherited and now my grandchildren too! My wish is that all children will love Mysty and enjoy her adventures as well as the five books that I have recommended. Always keep on believing in magic, miracles, and yourselves!
This is a beautiful story about the friendship and bonds between sisters, not just ordinary sisters, but Princess sisters Naomi and Miranda. They were very close but like all siblings, sometimes, they did not get along so Princess Naomi left their castle where she came upon a beautiful little unicorn that had fallen asleep among the red poppies (known for putting unicorns to sleep). She managed to wake the unicorn and they started out to find the unicorn’s baby that was missing. After her fun-filled adventure, she realized she was no longer angry with her sister and could not wait to share her story with Princess Miranda! The bond between family is strong and a wonderful thing.
Princess Naomi Helps a Unicorn is a 2021 Mom's Choice Gold Award Recipient.
Interactive movement wrapped up in a charming story of sibling angst, anger management, compassion, and triumph. Grown-ups sit; kiddos move and practice dance fundamentals.
Fed up with her annoying sister, Naomi storms out of the castle, only to discover a unicorn in need of help. With a sense of purpose, she quickly forgets her anger.
Ballerina Konora is featured on each page as optional movement guide for kids who want to get up and dance.
Adventures in the Radio Trade documents a life in radio, largely at Canada's public broadcaster. It's for people who love CBC Radio, those interested in the history of Canadian Broadcasting, and those who want to hear about close encounters with numerous luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, J. Michael Straczynski, Stuart…
P. I. Tchaikovsky is a world-famous composer but few people know anything about him. Much of his life was hidden by the Soviet Union due to his homosexuality. As information finally came to light, the mystery of his death in 1893 became an obsession for me. The truth of it lies beyond the rumors of suicide or cholera, as particular circumstances exposed in my novel clearly show. I am a ballet historian and the writing of Fatewas an eight-year endeavor. Readers of Fate can now be the proverbial fly on the wall while Tchaikovsky lives his life and creates his major works.
For an intriguing, first-hand account of the art and life of the greatest ballerina of our time, don't miss this grand read. Natalia Makarova, the prima ballerina of them all gives this thrilling autobiography life as she describes not only her roles at the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg and at American Ballet Theatre in New York City, but also her daring escape from KGB agents in London where she defected. Glorious photography crowns this amazing achievement. On a personal note, my life changed after seeing her dance—first in a video of Giselle and then later in person at the Metropolitan Opera House.
It occurred to me that if someone wanted to design a method of introduction for people who don’t actually want to date, then they’d design online dating as we know it today! One can't help feeling that many people using dating sites have no intention of forming a relationship (for a host of personal reasons). And that’s what makes it ripe for failure, and for fiction. Anyone who’s ever looked for the right connection (IRL or online), or tried to make an existing connection work, will recognise something in the story collection.
In this immersive memoir, Kassabova observes that people who’re drawn to the difficult dance of tango are usually complex and thin-skinned and thus, when relationships form between tango partners and, inevitably, end the suffering is excruciating because… complex and thin-skinned. Steeped in the history of tango and its music, the contemporary element comes from the Kassabova’s freelance life; accepting travel writing assignments at short notice, stepping off a plane into another city’s tango scene. Her relationship with dancing evolves over a decade and several continents, similarly her connections with tango aficionados encountered around the globe. There’s more than one heartbreak, described in lucid, compelling prose but the end is heart-healing because, as an Ecuadorian friend tells her, "The universal woman makes her own way."
Kapka Kassabova first set foot in a tango studio ten years ago and, from that moment, she was hooked. With the beat of tango driving her on and the music filling her head, she's danced across the world, from Auckland to Edinburgh, from Berlin to Buenos Aires, putting in hours of practice for fleeting moments of dance-floor ecstasy, suffering blisters and heart-break along the way. Here, in sparkling, spring-heeled prose, Kapka takes us inside the esoteric world of tango to tell the story of the dance, from its Afro roots to its sequined stars and back. Twelve Minutes of Love…
Having spent seven years researching and writing about Prince (and another year updating the book), I spoke to as many people who worked and lived with him as I could. While my book is rich with information gleaned from interviews, alongside my own analysis, there were a few people who didn’t talk to me. Of the above, I did talk to Dez Dickerson, but the others were holding off (presumably because their own books were in the works). All the books below work as perfect compliments to mine and are all must-haves for any Prince fan’s purple library.
Prince was different things to different people and one of the things you’ll discover through these books is that they work as a mosaic showing different sides of him. Only two people will ever know what it was like to be married to Prince, and Mayte is one of them.
In The Most Beautiful, a title inspired by the hit song Prince wrote about their legendary love story, Mayte Garcia for the first time shares the deeply personal story of their relationship and offers a singular perspective on the music icon and their world together: from their unconventional meeting backstage at a concert (and the long-distance romance that followed), to their fairy-tale wedding (and their groundbreaking artistic partnership), to the devastating losses that ultimately dissolved their romantic relationship for good. Throughout it all, they shared a bond more intimate than any other in Prince's life. No one else can tell…
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of…
I have been writing and illustrating books for fifteen years, and I am passionate about the art of making picture books. I love music and dance too. While making this list, I was amazed by how different visual artists that I admire—and who have very different styles—were able to capture movement, rhythm, and energy. I was also fascinated by how the different authors crafted their stories and yet all of them managed to celebrate Black culture and resilience.
Christian Robinson is one of my favorite illustrators. His images are very free and childlike while also being incredibly poignant and strongly designed. His artwork pairs beautifully with Hruby Powell’s exuberant text.
The book recounts Josephine Baker’s extraordinary life, from growing up poor in Missouri to becoming a beloved dancer and star in Paris. Both text and images denounce with wit and force the cruel segregation that Black people, including Josephine, experienced in the United States for a large part of the twentieth century.
An emotionally powerful biography told in verse of a dancer, singer, comedienne, and enduring figure - Josephine Baker - from her birth in the slums, her fantastic success, and her fight against racial prejudice.
