Robert Oppenheimer is one of the characters who changed the course of history in the 20th century. He was in charge of the Manhattan project that developed the atomic bomb and was aware of the tragic significance of his scientific achievement. The life of this scientist, who was later suspected of collaborating with the enemy, is told in American Prometheus. The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Debate) by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, a monumental and extraordinary Pulitzer Prize-winning biography.
Another figure that has marked the 20th century, in this case in the artistic field, is Andy Warhol, to whom Blake Gopnik dedicates an exhaustive biography, Warhol (Taurus), destined to be the definitive one, since it presents the most complete and complex portrait of the character that is difficult to overcome. Almost as popular and iconic as the king of pop art was in his day, in the field of science fiction, Isaac Asimov, from whom now, after more than two decades out of print, his memoirs I, Asimov (Harp) are rescued . In them, the writer, with an agile and casual style, reviews his life and his professional career as a prolific author of more than five hundred books that bear his signature. On the other hand, the memories of the painter Celia Paul in Self-portrait (Chai Editora) are of a much more intimate nature and focus on the complicated relationship she had with the also painter Lucian Freud.
Intimacy is what the letters of the Correspondence 1944-1959 (Debate) between Albert Camus and María Casares also exude, who lived an intense love story from the end of the Second World War until the death of the writer in a car accident. The letters bear witness to the couple's passion, but also to their rich cultural and political life in post-war France.
The American Kurt Vonnegut also lived through that world war, in his case as an American soldier who was taken prisoner by the Germans. He too, like Camus, combined literature with social and political commitment, as attested by his epistolary selected in Letters (Editions B). And another character who lived through World War II, but in a different way, was the Slovakian Jew Rudolf Vrba, who in April 1944 managed to escape from Auschwitz and tell the world what was happening there. His life and his escape are recounted by Jonathan Freedland in The Master of Escape (Planet).
Long before Hitler led Germany down the path of barbarism and destruction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe represented the best of Germanic culture between the 18th and 19th centuries. His vital and literary trajectory is addressed in Goethe. Live to be immortal (Harp), a biography for the uninitiated, entertaining and very well documented, written by the Germanist Helena Cortés. Goethe exerted a great influence on the later generation, that of the romantics, and the British representatives of this movement are the protagonists of The Death of Adonais (Planet) by Fernando Valverde. Specifically, the author deals with the tragic end of three of the great poets of the second generation of English romantics: Shelley, Byron and Keats, all of whom died far from their mother country. Set in Victorian England is the delicious Parallel Lives (Gatopardo) by Phyllis Rose. The author analyzes how love relationships worked at that time through the marriages or sentimental ties of various relevant figures in the cultural field: Dickens and Carlyle with their disastrous marriages, Stuart Mill with his determination to be a modern man, Ruskin with his fear to sexuality, and George Eliot with his passionate romance.
We jump to the 20th century without abandoning the field of culture with Pessoa, the man of dreams (Ediciones del Subsuelo) by Manuel Moya, translator of the Portuguese poet, who strives to draw a portrait free of the many clichés that have accumulated on the figure of the lonely Lisbon. Many of his efforts have been dedicated to another great poet, Federico García Lorca, by Ian Gibson, who has just won this year's Comillas prize with Un carmen en Granada. Memoirs of a Dublin Hispanist (Tusquets), where he reviews his Irish childhood and adolescence, his first trips through Spain, the discovery of our culture, the stay in a garden house –a carmen– from Granada and his dedication to the study of figures such as Lorca, Dali and Bunuel. Also autobiographical is the little book Memè Scianca (Anagram) by Roberto Calasso, in which the great editor evokes some episodes of his childhood in Florence during World War II: the arrest of his father, the appearance of American soldiers in the city, the first readings, the fascination for Doré's engravings discovered in a book...
We now jump to Barcelona and we are situated between the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th through the figure of a modernist architect whose centenary of death is celebrated this year. For this reason, his great-granddaughter Lluís Domènech Girbau dedicates Lluís Domènech i Montaner to him. A vision from the XXI century (Vienna), which addresses his professional facet, but also his personal one, which makes it possible to explain abundant family anecdotes of an intimate nature that the author knows firsthand. Also closely linked to Barcelona is the figure of Juan Ramón Masoliver, editor, critic and translator, who met great figures of the international avant-garde, participated in the creation of the magazine Destino and directed the literary pages of La Vanguardia. His enormous intellectual figure is addressed by Miriam Gázquez in Juan Ramón Masoliver. Publishing and culture in post-war Barcelona (Fórcola).
Another character who moved behind the scenes of culture, in this case of entertainment, is the businessman Pedro Balañá, who staged bullfights, boxing matches, circus shows and, above all, movie theaters in Barcelona. He is portrayed by Josep Guixà in Balañá. The greatest show in the world (Almuzara). On the other hand, The weight of the straw. Complete Memoirs (Tusquets) brings together in a single volume the three volumes of Terenci Moix's memoirs, in which he reviews his poor childhood in the Raval, the discovery of cinema and stays in various European capitals during the sixties, where there is a reality far removed from the gray Francoist Barcelona...
Josep Fornas dedicated part of his political efforts precisely to trying to overthrow Franco, who was also Tarradellas' trusted man in Catalonia during his long exile and as such participated in all kinds of secret conversations and other behind-the-scenes tasks. His figure is the subject of the biography Josep Fornas, the solver (Pòrtic) by Joan Esculies, winner of the Carles Rahola essay prize. He also pulled political strings, but in his case not from the shadows but from the front line, Francesc Cambó, of whom Borja de Riquer has written a detailed and monumental biography: Cambó, l'últim retrat / Cambó, the last portrait (Edicions 62 / Criticism The author has had new documentation that helps to shed light on the complex and contradictory figure of the politician, businessman and patron.
Cambó is the connection point between two relevant cultural figures, connected through him: Josep Pla and Joan Estelrich. His correspondence has been collected in Periodisme i llibertat. Cartes 1920-1950 (Fate) edited by Sílvia Coll-Vinent. Estelrich was Cambó's secretary and manager of cultural initiatives, while Pla became his relevant and controversial collaborator in Catalonia and in exile. And we conclude with another epistolary book, the voluminous Dear Isaac, dear Albert (Crítica), in which José Manuel Sánchez Ron has selected the most significant letters written by great scientists over the centuries. Properly contextualized and explained, they allow us to take a journey through the history of science and its protagonists.
