"In 2015, a team of researchers carefully removed a plastic straw from a sea turtle's nostril off the coast of Costa Rica. The disturbing incident, which was captured on video, went viral, leading to corporate straw bans around the world. In this evocative book, the marine biologist behind the camera, Christine Figgener, recounts her own life spent studying and protecting sea turtles. Figgener describes patrolling the beach at night, swimming with...

A portrait of the German pastor-theologian draws on new research to cover the 1930 visit to America that shaped his perspectives on faith and moral responsibility, his achievements as an anti-Nazi activist, and the plot against Hitler that would result in his execution.

Adolf Hitler spent 1924 away from society and surrounded by co-conspirators of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. Behind bars in a prison near Munich, Hitler passed the year with deep reading and intensive writing, a year of slowly walking gravel paths while working feverishly on his book Mein Kampf. This was the year of Hitler's final transformation into the self-proclaimed savior and infallible leader who would appropriate Germany's historical traditions...

In Anselm, Wim Wenders creates a hypnotic portrait of Anselm Kiefer, one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time. Shot in 6K resolution, and presented theatrically and on Blu-ray in 3D, the film presents an immersive cinematic experience of the German artist₂s work, which explores the overawing beauty of human existence, landscape, and myth while confronting the horrors of his country's history and seeking to undo...

""Whether in Kraftwerk or as an acclaimed solo artist, Karl Bartos has had an extraordinary impact on electronic music. In The Sound of the Machine, Bartos' recollections include his childhood in postwar Germany, the early musical encounters that led him to Kraftwerk, and fascinating insights from his time with the group, such as the genesis of monumental songs like 'The Robots,' 'The Model,' and 'Tour de France,' and candid accounts of his relationships...

A tribute to a cultural icon and the creative director for the storied House of Chanel reveals a side the elusive designer kept private from the world while introducing some of the most unforgettable figures of fashion's inner circle for the past four decades. Karl Lagerfield, the creative director for the storied House of Chanel for thirty-five years, not only reinvented Chanel, but was reknown for his vivid personal style. Middleton spent years...

This massive, admiring biography refutes the notion that Marlene Dietrich's femme fatale image was wholly the invention of director Josef von Sternberg. Bach, a film producer and author of Final Cut, who studied with von Sternberg, portrays the latter as a megalomaniac whose amorous frustrations with the star he had created drove him to maintain that she was a puppet who danced to his strings. Bach rejects the standard comparisons with Garbo as

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"The life and times of the wealthiest man who ever lived--Jacob Fugger--the Renaissance banker who revolutionized the art of making money and established the radical idea of pursuing wealth for its own sake. Jacob Fugger lived in Germany at the turn of the sixteenth century, the grandson of a peasant. By the time he died, his fortune amounted to nearly two percent of European GDP. Not even John D. Rockefeller had that kind of wealth. Most people become...

Examines Hitler's years in Munich after World War I and his radical transformation from a directionless loner into the leader of Munich's right-wing movement.

"Jan Swafford's biographies of Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment...