Author: Ed Sikov File Type: mobi Amazon.com ReviewHow do you write the biography of a cipher? Thats the daunting challenge veteran Hollywood biographer Ed Sikov tackles in exploring the life of one of the 20th centurys most acclaimed comic actors. Peter Sellers uncanny talents as a mimic would inform everything from English radios Goon Show and the highly profitable--if increasingly broad--cycle of Inspector Clouseau Pink Panther films to his brilliant turn as Chauncey Gardiner in Being There, a role that had all too many discomforting parallels to Sellers own cryptic personality. Sikov reveals that the man long hailed as comedys greatest chameleon was in fact a tragic, troubled personal vacuum, the only child of a literal stage mother who indulged his every whim, yet left him a distinct void for a soul. Sikov interviews many of the relatives, intimates, and survivors of Sellers that filled his alternately strange and spectacular life, while thoroughly chronicling every professional triumph and more than a few missteps. Sikovs straightforward reporting, seasoned by his own dry wit, details the parts that made up the man, but the sum remains an ever compelling enigma. As Lolita and Dr. Strangelove director Stanley Kubrick, no slouch in the personal riddle sweepstakes himself, once said of Sellers There is no such person. --Jerry McCulleyFrom Publishers WeeklySellers was undoubtedly one of the 20th centurys funniest people. From his first star-making turns in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove (in which he played three different characters), to the bumbling but strangely dignified Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies, Sellers never failed to send audiences rolling in the aisles. But as Sikov shows in this hip, unblinking biography, there was a downside to his genius. Sellers abused drugs, beat his wives and neglected his children. On set, he was a nightmare prima donna, insisting on special treatment and embroiling himself in ridiculous feuds with costars and directors. Moreover, his compulsive need to do impressions verged at times on multiple personality disorder (his first wife said, Its like being married to the United Nations). Sikov shows that no one, not even his friends, really knew Sellers. The actor was, in Sikovs estimation, a comic tabula rasa on which he could inscribe any character or personality. This mutability gave Sellers his first break, as he bluffed his way onto radio by impersonating a BBC star on the telephone. He later became the star of the hugely influential radio program The Goon Show, whose eccentric, Dadaist humor predated Monty Python by a decade. An avid party-goer (jet-setting friends included Roman Polanski and the Beatles), Sellers enjoyed a go-go lifestyle finally that caught up with him in 1980, when he suffered a massive heart attack. Sikov, whose previous work includes a Billy Wilder biography, treats Sellers with just the right mix of awe, irritation and sympathy, giving readers a clear-headed, respectful tribute to a disturbed genius.br 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Mark Jurdjevic File Type: pdf Guardians of Republicanism analyses the political and intellectual history of Renaissance Florence-republican and princely-by focusing on five generations of the Valori family, each of which played a dynamic role in the citys political and cultural life. The Valori were early and influential supporters of the Medici family, but were also crucial participants in the citys periodic republican revivals throughout the Renaissance. Mark Jurdjevic examines their political struggles and conflicts against the larger backdrop of their patronage and support of the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino, the radical Dominican prophet Girolamo Savonarola, and Niccolo Machiavelli, the premier political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. Each of these three quintessential Renaissance reformers and philosophers relied heavily on the patronage of the Valori, who evolved an innovative republicanism based on a hybrid fusion of the classical and Christian languages of Florentine communal politics. Jurdjevics study thus illuminates how intellectual forces-humanist, republican, and Machiavellian-intersected and directed the politics and culture of the Florentine Renaissance. Guardians of Republicanism analyses the political and intellectual history of Renaissance Florence-republican and princely-by focusing on five generations of the Valori family, each of which played a dynamic role in the citys political and cultural life. The Valori were early and influential supporters of the Medici family, but were also crucial participants in the citys periodic republican revivals throughout the Renaissance. Mark Jurdjevic examines their political struggles and conflicts against the larger backdrop of their patronage and support of the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino, the radical Dominican prophet Girolamo Savonarola, and Niccoli Machiavelli, the premier political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. Each of these three quintessential Renaissance reformers and philosophers relied heavily on the patronage of the Valori, who evolved an innovative republicanism based on a hybrid fusion of the classical and Christian languages of Florentine communal politics. Jurdjevics study thus illuminates how intellectual forces-humanist, republican, and Machiavellian-intersected and directed the politics and culture of the Florentine Renaissance.ReviewJurdjevics arguments are subtle and imaginative. -- Journal of Modern HistoryAbout the AuthorMark Jurdjevic was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He earned a BA from the University of Toronto in 1996 and a PhD in early modern European history from Northwestern University in 2002. Between 2002-2004, he taught at Yale Universitys Whitney Humanities Center. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa, where he teaches early modern European history. He has published articles in Renaissance Quarterly, Past and Present, English Historical Review, Journal of the History of Ideas, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, and is currently writing a study of Machiavellis later political thought.