New Releases by David Brown

Modest Musorgsky was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century Russian music. Now, in this new volume in the Master Musicians series, David Brown gives us the first life-and-works study of Musorgsky to appear in English for over a half century. Indeed, this is the largest such study of Musorgsky to have appeared outside Russia. Brown shows how Musorgsky, though essentially an amateur with no systematic training in composition, emerged in his first opera, Boris Godunov, as a supreme musical dramatist. Indeed, in this opera, and in certain of his piano pieces in Pictures at an Exhibition, Musorgsky produced some of the most startlingly novel music of the whole nineteenth century. He was also one of the most original of all song composers, with a prodigious gift for uncovering the emotional content of a text. As Brown illuminates Musorgsky''s work, he also paints a detailed portrait of the composer''s life. He describes how, unlike the systematic and disciplined Tchaikovsky, Musorgsky was a fitful composer. When the inspiration was upon him, he could apply himself with superhuman intensity, as he did when composing the initial version of Boris Godunov. Sadly, Musorgsky deteriorated in his final years, suffering periods of inner turmoil, when his alcoholism would be out of control. Finally, unemployed and all but destitute, he died at age forty-two. His failure to complete his two remaining operas, Khovanshchina and Sorochintsy Fair, Brown concludes, is one of music''s greatest tragedies. Written by one of the leading authorities on nineteenth-century Russian composers, Musorgsky is the finest available biography of this giant of Russian music.

In God and Mystery in Words David Brown uses the way in which poetry and drama have in the past opened people to the possibility of religious experience as a launch pad for advocating less wooden approaches to Christian worship today. So far from encouraging imagination and exploration, hymns and sermons now more commonly merely consolidate belief. Again, contemporary liturgy in both its music and its ceremonial fails to take seriously either current dramatic theory or the sociology of ritual. Yet this was not always so. Imagery and hymns mattered, liturgial msic encouraged a sense of drama, sermons required rhetoric. In a characteristically stimulatling and inspiringly expansive study, that ranges from ancient Greek drama to modern poetry, from the meaning of the Logos to the history of vestments, David Brown pleads for a much wider focus on the kind of factors that aid experience of God.

Winston Churchill famously claimed that the submarine war in the Atlantic was the only campaign of the Second World War that really frightened him. If the lifeline to north America had been cut, Britain would never have survived; there could have been no build-up of US and Commonwealth forces, no D-Day landings, and no victory in western Europe. Furthermore, the battle raged from the first day of the war until the final German surrender, making it the longest and arguably hardest-fought campaign of the whole war. The ships, technology and tactics employed by the Allies form the subject of this book. Beginning with the lessons apparently learned from the First World War, the author outlines inter-war developments in technology and training, and describes the later preparations for the second global conflict. When the war came the balance of advantage was to see-saw between U-boats and escorts, with new weapons and sensors introduced at a rapid rate. For the defending navies, the prime requirement was numbers, and the most pressing problem was to improve capability without sacrificing simplicity and speed of construction. The author analyses the resulting designs of sloops, frigates, corvettes and destroyer escorts and attempts to determine their relative effectiveness.

The issue of race has indelibly shaped the history of the United States. Nowhere has the drama of race relations been more powerfully staged than in the American South. This book charts the turbulent course of southern race relations from the colonial origins of the plantation system to the maturation of slavery in the nineteenth century, through the rise of a new racial order during the Civil War and Reconstruction, to the civil rights revolution of the twentieth century.While the history of race in the southern states has been shaped by a basic struggle between black and white, the authors show how other forces such as class and gender have complicated the colour line. They distinguish clearly between ideas about race, mostly written and disseminated by intellectuals and politicians, and their reception by ordinary southerners, both black and white. As a result, readers are presented with a broad, over-arching view of race in the American South throughout its chequered history.Key Features:*racial issues are the key area of interest for those who study the American South*race is the driving engine of Southern history*unique in its focus on race*broad coverage - origins of the plantation system to the situation in the South today

Hinton Rowan Helper (1829--1909) gained notoriety in nineteenth-century America as the author of The Impending Crisis of the South (1857), an antislavery polemic that provoked national public controversy and increased sectional tensions. In his intellectual and cultural biography of Helper -- the first to appear in more than forty years -- David Brown provides a fresh and nuanced portrait of this self-styled reformer, exploring anew Helper''s motivation for writing his inflammatory book. Brown places Helper in a perspective that shows how the society in which he lived influenced his thinking, beginning with Helper''s upbringing in North Carolina, his move to California at the height of the Californian gold rush, his developing hostility toward nonwhites within the United States, and his publication of The Impending Crisis of the South. Helper''s book paints a picture of a region dragged down by the institution of slavery and displays surprising concern for the fate of American slaves. It sold 140,000 copies, perhaps rivaled only by Uncle Tom''s Cabin in its impact. The author argues that Helper never wavered in his commitment to the South, though his book''s devastating critique made him an outcast there, playing a crucial role in the election of Lincoln and influencing the outbreak of war. As his career progressed after the war, Helper''s racial attitudes grew increasingly intolerant. He became involved in various grand pursuits, including a plan to link North and South America by rail, continually seeking a success that would match his earlier fame. But after a series of disappointments, he finally committed suicide. Brown reconsiders the life and career of one of the antebellum South''s most controversial and misunderstood figures. Helper was also one of the rare lower-class whites who recorded in detail his economic, political, and social views, thus affording a valuable window into the world of nonslaveholding white southerners on the eve of the Civil War. His critique of slavery provides an important challenge to dominant paradigms stressing consensus among southern whites, and his development into a racist illustrates the power and destructiveness of the prejudice that took hold of the South in the late nineteenth century, as well as the wider developments in American society at the time.

In this lively book, David Brown locates jazz music within the broad aesthetic, political, and theoretical upheavals of our time, asserting that modern architecture and urbanism in particular can be strongly influenced and defined by the ways that improvisation is facilitated in jazz. Improvised music consists of diverse properties that fail to register in the object-oriented understanding of composition. As a result, it is often dismissed as noise—an interfering signal. However, Brown asserts, such interference can bear meaning and stimulate change. Noise Orders identifies how architecture can respond to the inclusive dynamics of extemporaneous movements, variable conceptions of composition, multiple durations, and wide manipulation of resources found in jazz to enable outcomes that far exceed a design’s seeming potential. By exploring overlapping moments between modernism and the cultural dimensions of jazz, Noise Orders suggests that the discipline of improvisation continues to open and redefine architectural theory and practice, creating a world where designers contribute to emerging environments rather than make predetermined ones. Comparing modern and avant-garde artists and architects with individuals and groups in jazz—including Piet Mondrian and boogie-woogie, John Cage and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Le Corbusier and Louis Armstrong, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)—Brown examines how jazz can offer alternative design ideas and directions, be incorporated in contemporary architectural practices, and provide insight on how to develop dynamic metropolitan environments. Interdisciplinary in its approach, innovative in its methodology, and unexpected in its conclusions, Noise Orders argues for a deeper understanding of the infinite potential inherent in both music and architecture. David P. Brown is associate professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

David Brown argues for the importance of experience of God as mediated through place in all its variety. He explores the various ways in which such experiences once formed an essential element in making religion integral to human life, and argues for their reinstatement at the centre of theological discussions about the existence of God. In effect, the discussion continues the theme of Brown''s two much-praised earlier volumes, Tradition and Imagination and Discipleshipand Imagination, in its advocacy of the need for Christian theology to take much more seriously its relationship with the various wider cultures in which it has been set. In its challenge to conventional philosophy of religion, the book will be of interest to theologians and philosophers, and also to historiansof art and culture generally.

On 3 July 1940, soon after the collapse of the French front and France''s request for an armistice, a reluctant Royal Navy commander opened fire on the French Navy squadron at Mers-el-Kebir. Some 1,300 French sailors lost their lives.The late David Brown''s detailed account finally conveys an objective understanding of the course of events that led u

Ethnic tensions in Southeast Asia represent a clear threat to the future stability of the region. David Brown''s clear and systematic study outlines the patterns of ethnic politics in: * Burma * Singapore * Indonesia * Malaysia * Thailand The study considers the influence of the State on the formation of ethnic groups and investigates why some countries are more successful in ''managing'' their ethnic politics than others.

This book describes the bond valence model, a description of acid-base bonding which is becoming increasingly popular particularly in fields such as materials science and mineralogy where solid state inorganic chemistry is important. Recent improvements in crystal structure determination have allowed the model to become more quantitative. Unlike other models of inorganic chemical bonding, the bond valence model is simple, intuitive, and predictive, and can be used for analysing crystal structures and the conceptual modelling of local as well as extended structures. This is the first book to explore in depth the theoretical basis of the model and to show how it can be applied to synthetic and solution chemistry. It emphasizes the separate roles of the constraints of chemistry and of three-dimensional space by analysing the chemistry of solids. Many applications of the model in physics, materials science, chemistry, mineralogy, soil science, surface science, and molecular biology are reviewed. The final chapter describes how the bond valence model relates to and represents a simplification of other models of inorganic chemical bonding.

Eleven-year-old Addie and her father are a pair of swindlers who make their way around the Southern states during the Depression bilking people out of their hard-earned money.

Seldom has the world seen a man with the grace, style, and intellect of David Brown. Known in his lifetime as a journalist (The Saturday Evening Post, Harper''s, and Collier''s), a publisher (Cosmpolitan), an Academy Award winning film producer (Jaws, The Sting, The Verdict, Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy), a Broadway producer (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Sweet Smell of Success, A Few Good Men), an author, a one-time astrologer, and husband to long-time Cosmopolitan head Helen Gurley Brown. Throughout his remarkable life he was a friend, acquaintance, and confidant of the world''s most powerful, most famous, and most notorious. With his remarkably perfect memory, this raconteur extraordinaire shares in intimate detail his personal encounters and experiences with a cavalcade of world famous personalities - from Mafia chieftains to world leaders, the reclusive Howard Hughes, the super-rich J. Paul Getty, William Randolph Hearst, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy, Irving Berlin, Paul Newman, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Darryl Zanuck, David, O. Selznick, John O''Hara, Carl Sandburg, Nikita Khrushchev, Frank Sinatra, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Salvador Dali, Irving Lazar, John Belushi, and scores of others.

How have the arrangement of biblical narratives over the centuries had an impact on the understanding and practice of discipleship? David Brown''s Tradition and Imagination was described on its publication as ''an achievement unmatched by any British theologian for a long time'' (Maurice Wiles). In this controversial sequel Professor Brown tackles questions about the presentation of biblical narratives over the centuries, and asks whether it has had an impact on our understanding of discipleship. He explores presentations of Job, the biblical Marys, heaven, and the saints to argue that the Church went beyond purely scriptural ideas to keep the life of Christ continually relevant to a changing society. This book includes new attitudes to suffering and sexual equality, and concludes with arguments for a new way of understanding Bible and Tradition. Professor Brown shows in his consistently open and sensitive way that not only does conflict exercise a creative role in the search for truth, but that the most important type of truth, far from being narrowly historical, is in fact imaginative.

Tradition and revelation are often seen as opposites: tradition is viewed as being secondary and reactionary to revelation which is a one-off gift from God. Drawing on examples from Christian history, Judaism, Islam, and the classical world, this book challenges these definitions and presents a controversial examination of the effect history and cultural development has on religious belief: its narratives and art. David Brown pays close attention to the nature of the relationship between historical and imaginative truth, and focuses on the way stories from the Bible have not stood still but are subject to imaginative ''rewriting''. This rewriting is explained as a natural consequence of the interaction between religion and history: God speaks to humanity through the imagination, and human imagination is influenced by historical context. It is the imagination that ensures that religion continues to develop in new and challenging ways.

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is the most up-to-date body of musical knowledge ever gathered together. The New Grove composer biographies have been selected from the dictionary to bring the finest of the biographies to a wider audience. Each has been expanded and updated for book publication and contains a comprehensive work-list, index, and fully revised bibliography, in addition to the definitive view of the subject''s life and works. The great traditions of Russian music began in the mid-19th century with Mikhail Glinka—the father figure for the next generations of Russian composers. His direct heirs were ''The Five,'' or ''The Mighty Handful,'' drawn together by Mily Balakirev, the teacher of two leading figures in the group: Alexander Borodin, creator of Prince Igor and quartets of an unmistakably Russian flavor, and Modest Musorgsky, creator of the greatest Russian epics of the lyric stage. Slightly apart from this group because of his more cosmopolitan approach to his art stands the most-loved of all Russian composers, the ever-appealing Tchaikovsky.

A critical, experimental, and practical commentary on the Bible, this three-volume work is renowned for its scholarship and keen insight into the Scriptures. While scholarly, the commentary is not overly technical and so is accessible to pastor, student, and layperson alike. C. H. Spurgeon commented on Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, It contains so great a variety of information that if a man had no other exposition he would find himself at no great loss if he possessed and used it diligently.

150 years after his death Tchaikovsky remains a controversial & enigmatic figure. His enormous popularity as a composer has never faded, yet the character of the man himself continues to conjure up paradoxes. David Brown has drawn together a fascinating collection of reminiscences & contemporary documents, many of them never before translated into English. They provide a chronicle of Tchaikovsky''s upbringing in Russia & the early years of his career, as well as impressions of his extensive European concert tours. The memoirs of colleagues & pupils shed valuable light on the mysterious circumstances of his death. Illustrated.

This book looks at the origins of the suicide campaign amid the concepts of Bushido, Japan''s self-sacrificing warrior code, and Shinto, the state religion. It follows the ebb and flow of major battles as well as tactics and U.S. response.

This military history reveals the untold story of the United Kingdom’s Royal and Merchant Navies during the Falkland’s War. Soldiers and journalists alike wasted no time in memorializing the campaign to recapture the Falkland Islands after the Argentinian invasion in April, 1982. With the overwhelming focus on the role of the Army, the vital contributions of the Royal and Merchant Navies have been largely overlooked. Yet no British military forces would have been there at all had the Royal Navy not provided the necessary transport, not to mention air cover and bombardment support. In this book, naval historian David Brown tells the extraordinary story of how the fleet was assembled. Merchant-ships ranging from luxury liners such as the SS Canberra to cargo-carriers of every description were quickly converted to their new role as STUFTs, or Ships Taken Up From Trade. Brown describes the stupendous problems presented by the assembling and stowing of the thousands of tons of stores and equipment needed by the Expeditionary Forces and the way in which these problems were solved.

"Addie Pray, eleven, and her father are con artists who travel the South before they join a more sophisticated schemer who plans their ultimate con." *** "The death of eleven-year-old Addie Pray''s mother leaves her in the care of Long Boy, a man who may or may not be her biological father, and together they set out to con their way through the Deep South in the middle of the Great Depression."

Results of detailed studies of a moderate magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks.