The most important scientist of the twentieth century and the most important artist had their periods of greatest creativity almost simultaneously and in remarkably similar circumstances. This fascinating parallel biography of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso as young men examines their greatest creations-Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Einstein's special theory of relativity. Miller shows how these breakthroughs arose not only from within...

"Amrita Sher-Gil was always making art -- as a little girl in Budapest, as a young woman in Northern India, as an art student in Paris, she filled up notebooks with sketches and drawings -- but what kind of artist would she grow up to be? The third title in Penny Candy's Amazing Women series of nonfiction picture books, Between Two Worlds: The Art and Life of Amrita Sher-Gil follows Amrita, the daughter of a Hungarian opera singer and an Indian scholar,...

"First published in 1978, Mary Oppen's seminal Meaning a Life has been largely unavailable for decades. Written in her sixties, her first and only prose book recounts, with honesty, depth, and conviction, her fiercely independent life-"a twentieth-century American romance," as Yang describes it in the new introduction, "of consciousness on the open road; a book of travel where the autobiographer is not the usual singular self at the center of the...

"Whether at peace of at war, Paris during the first half of the twentieth century pulsated with frenzied energy. Creatives from across Europe flocked to the French capital where they had free rein to experiment with innovative forms of expression. Inspired by the challenge made possible through technological advances and market expectations, members from every artistic discipline -- art, design, architecture, photography, fashion, and cinema -- forged...