Photo de l'auteur

Meryle Secrest

Auteur de Frank Lloyd Wright

17 oeuvres 1,176 utilisateurs 9 critiques

A propos de l'auteur

Meryle Secrest was born and educated in Bath, England, and now lives in Washington, D.C. She has written biographies of Romaine Brooks, Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark, and Salvador Dali, among others
Crédit image: Marion Ettlinger

Œuvres de Meryle Secrest

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Date de naissance
1930
Sexe
female
Nationalité
UK
Canada
USA
Professions
journalist
Organisations
The Washington Post
Prix et distinctions
National Humanities Medal (2006)

Membres

Critiques

"From the plethora of recent Bernsteiniana, Secrest's biography emerges as the definitive portrait because it is the most level-headed, the most astute,, the most humane, and certainly the best written." Ned Rorem
 
Signalé
PendleHillLibrary | Aug 18, 2022 |
A very good, readable biography of art dealer extraordinaire Joseph Duveen (with much background about the rest of his family and the firm's doings, too).
 
Signalé
JBD1 | Apr 22, 2021 |
Meryle Secrest has written highly acclaimed biographies of artists and architects including Modigliani, Bernstein, Wright, and Berenson, and now in her eighties, she turns to the brilliant Italian industrialists Adriano Olivetti. But instead of writing a straight biography, she posits a conspiracy in which American intelligence services, concerned about powerful minicomputers becoming available to Cold War enemies, assassinate the head of Olivetti's desktop computing project, and then Olivetti himself. While this is not entirely implausible given the history of American Cold War interventionism in Cuba, Guatemala, Chile, Iran, Zaire, and many other places, neither is it, despite Secrest's efforts, entirely convincing. In fact, she would have done much better to fold her idea into a more standard biography of Olivetti—the company, the dynasty, or the man, all of which are (really!) interesting enough to support that project.

Those histories have been written, I believe, in Italian, but not to my knowledge translated to English. Until they are, this book will have to do as an introduction to Adriano Olivetti and his remarkable vision of a humane and democratic industrial society, which he successfully nursed through the Fascist era and the second world war into the cold war period. Now the immense Olivetti complex in Ivrea stands mostly unoccupied and one of the most interesting socio-industrial projects of the twentieth century is in danger of being forgotten. If only we had a chronicler who finds that story the most interesting one. Meanwhile, this book, despite its flaws, is well worth the read.
… (plus d'informations)
½
 
Signalé
john.cooper | 1 autre critique | May 25, 2020 |
Disclaimer: I received a copy of the book from the publisher for review.

This book was basically a hodgepodge history of the Olivetti family: what they manufactured, where they had offices, who lived where and with whom, who they liked, what their politics were, and so forth. As a dynastic history, it was barely adequate. As a book about the history of desktop computers, it was a failure. If there was a conspiracy, I must have skipped over it because I don't remember reading about one.
 
Signalé
seitherin | 1 autre critique | Dec 2, 2019 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
17
Membres
1,176
Popularité
#21,865
Évaluation
½ 3.7
Critiques
9
ISBN
65
Langues
7

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