Nonfiction Book Reviews
Chopin in Paris : The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer by Tad Szulc
Scribner, April 1998.Hardcover, 448 pages.
ISBN: 0679409793.
Ordering information:
Amazon.com.

You will not finish this book in a weekend, nor will you be able to abandon it. Instead, Mr. Szulc pulls you back to an age when people poured out every thought and passion in their letters and diaries. Events took place or did not come to pass through letters. You meet many well known persons through the eyes of their contemporaries, and personalities are summed up not in a book but through phrases of many writers brought together. Here it is: everything you ever wanted to know about Chopin's tuberculosis, method of writing music, composing, his real personality, early childhood, sex life and finally his death. You feel when you have finished this book that you could pick him out in a crowd, know what he would order for dinner, react to his unerring charm, and experience one of his concerts. Just as few struggling piano students ever master very many of Chopin's works, none ever fails to come away without a sense that genius has been met. One does not meet Chopin without a sense of awe and so often an unrequited wish that one could play more of his music. This is a book that all music lovers as well as all lovers of biography must have.
--Sarah Reaves White
Modern Antiques for the Table by Sheila Chefetz, photography by Joshua Greene, text by Risa Palazzo
Penguin Studio, August 1998.Hardcover, 236 pages.
ISBN: 0670875155.
Ordering information:
Amazon.com.

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