As Albert Camus's famous dictum has it, the only truly important philosophical question is suicide, or whether or not life is worth living. Now, in Pieta, his latest collection of essays, George Klein -- distinguished biologist, writer, Holocaust survivor, and humanist -- faces this question head on, in a series of meditations on subjects ranging from the misuses of science to the vital importance of art, music, and literature to surviving catastrophes like the Holocaust and AIDS. Pieta is a passionate book of scientific and personal ethics, inspired by tragic events that resonate in the consciousness of each of us. Klein examines the thoughts of a number of people both famous and obscure -- whose lives may provide some sort of answer to Camus's philosophical question. One essay, for example, deals with the tormented and unstable Atilla Jozsef, one of Hungary's greatest poets and now a national hero. Other figures from the past appear, too: fellow Holocaust survivor Rudolf Vrba, one of the first people to escape from Auschwitz; Simon Srebnik, a teenaged Pole who survived the Nazis by working on their riverboats, singing sentimental ballads for them; the geneticist Benno Multler-Hill, whose meeting with Klein leads to a fascinating discussion of the role of German scientists in preparing the conceptual underpinnings of the Nazi genocide. Klein moves on to a more general elaboration of the misuses of science, from CIA-sponsored LSD experiments to medical experimentation by the Japanese in Manchuria, and ultimately to a thoughtful reconsideration of his own role and responsibility as a scientist. He uses his extensive medical background to present a discussion of the processes of the biology of individuality, concluding with an extended and impassioned look at AIDS, as both a biological problem and a situation that will require the utmost pieta from each of us. Born in prewar Hungary, George Klein was raised in Budapest in an intellectually prominent Jewish family. He has led the Department of Tumor Biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm for more than three decades.
1967 French Painting in the Time of/ean de Beny: The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke. 3 vols. in 5 parts. ... Nash, Steven A. 1979 Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity t0 1942. Exhibition catalogue.
This book offers a fresh perspective on Michelangelo’s well-known masterpiece, the Vatican Pietà, by tracing the shifting meaning of the work of art over time.
The magnificent three Pieta, now in Rome, Florence and Milan, are here introduced by Antonio Paolucci, head of the Florence Soprintendenza and former Minister of Cultural Services in Italy.The works...
Michelangelo's Three Pietàs: Photographic Study
This book tells the story of a painting that was recognized as carrying the signature of Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1868 by his greatest expert of the 19th century, Hermann Grimm.
Sculpture of Compassion: The Pietà and the Beguines in the Southern Low Countries, C.1300-c.1600
The Pieta prayer book is a timeless masterpiece of traditional Catholic prayers - a wonderful little compendium of prayers and devotions including those of St. Bridget of Sweden and the 15 Miraculous prayers given to her, prayers to St. ...
"This is the kind of book every art historian wishes were available on every work of art, major or minor: an in-depth study complete with essays on specific problems by specialists.
" Phillips also writes, "This book, from beginning to end, shows the hand of one who has mastered his craft and lived long enough to have something to say.
"In April 1964, Michelangelo's Renaissance sculpture, the Pietà, embarked on its perilous transatlantic voyage from Rome to New York to become the blockbuster of the World's Fair, accomplished only through the cooperation of two of New ...