David Thomson

"She could look demure while behaving like an empress. Blonde, with eyes like pearls too big for her head, she was very striking, but marginally pretty and certainly not beautiful ... But it was her edge that made her memorable-her upstart superiority, her reluctance to pretend deference to others." Bette Davis was the commanding figure of the great era of Hollywood stardom, with a drive and energy that put her contemporaries in the shade. She played...

"Look, I'm hardly pretty, he seems to say. I sound like gravel; I look rough and tough; and, honest, I don't give you the soft, foolish answers the pretty boys will give you. You may not like what I say, but you better believe it." He became a legend as "Bogie," the world-weary, wisecracking outsider, but in reality, Humphrey Bogart was plagued by doubts and demons. He was born upper-class, yet made his name playing mavericks, drank with the Rat...

All aspects of pineapple cultivation in the greenhouse are dealt with in this handy volume written by an expert on the subject. Thoroughly recommended reading for the budding gardener, it contains a wealth of information forming a complete how-to guide. This book contains classic material, but the content has been carefully selected for its interest and relevance to a modern audience.

Contents Include: Growing Melons in Dung-beds or Pits; Sowing the Seed, and Management of Young Plants; Training and Stopping; Soil and Planting, etc; Moulding Up - Temperature; Impregnation, Watering, etc; Forms of Houses - Depths of Soil; Preparing the Plants, Planting; Watering; Temperature and Syringing; Ventilation; Impregnation, Training and Stopping; Very Early Forcing; Varieties; Insects and Diseases. This book contains classic material,...

How many acts of murder have each of us followed on a screen? What does that say about us? Do we remain law-abiding citizens who wouldn't hurt a fly? Film historian David Thomson, known for wit and subversiveness, leads us into this very delicate subject. While unpacking classics such as Seven, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Strangers on a Train, The Conformist, The Godfather, and The Shining, he offers a disconcerting sense of how the form of movies...

The celebrated film critic and author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film explores how sexuality in the movies and the performances of iconic actors have reflected cultural experimentation and the fulfillment of latent desires. From the celebrated film critic and author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, an original, seductive account of sexuality in the movies and of how actors and actresses on screen have fed our desire. Film can make us...

How does one package and sell confidence in the stability of a nation riven by civil strife? This was the question that loomed before the Philadelphia financial house of Jay Cooke & Company, entrusted by the US government with an unprecedented sale of bonds to finance the Union war effort in the early days of the American Civil War. How the government and its agents marketed these bonds revealed a version of the war the public was willing to buy and...