{"title":"Brendan Wolfe","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"finding-bix-book-brendan-wolfe-9781609385064","title":"Finding Bix","description":"Bix Beiderbecke was one of the first great legends of jazz. Among the most innovative cornet soloists of the 1920s and the first important white player, he invented the jazz ballad and pointed the way to “cool” jazz. But his recording career lasted just six years; he drank himself to death in 1931—at the age of twenty-eight. It was this meteoric rise and fall, combined with the searing originality of his playing and the mystery of his character—who was Bix? not even his friends or family seemed to know—that inspired subsequent generations to imitate him, worship him, and write about him. It also provoked Brendan Wolfe’s Finding Bix a personal and often surprising attempt to connect music, history, and legend.  A native of Beiderbecke’s hometown of Davenport, Iowa, Wolfe grew up seeing Bix’s iconic portrait on everything from posters to parking garages. He never heard his music, though, until cast to play a bit part in an Italian biopic filmed in Davenport. Then, after writing a newspaper review of a book about Beiderbecke, Wolfe unexpectedly received a letter from the late musician's nephew scolding him for getting a number of facts wrong. This is where Finding Bix begins: in Wolfe's good-faith attempt to get the facts right.  What follows, though, is anything but straightforward, as Wolfe discovers Bix Beiderbecke to be at the heart of furious and ever-timely disputes over addiction, race and the origins of jazz, sex, and the influence of commerce on art. He also uncovers proof that the only newspaper interview Bix gave in his lifetime was a fraud, almost entirely plagiarized from several different sources. In fact, Wolfe comes to realize that the closer he seems to get to Bix, the more the legend retreats.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50167780540689,"sku":"CIN1609385063VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50395119386897,"sku":"CIN1609385063G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50962341626129,"sku":"GOR014149062","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1609385063.jpg?v=1751057088"},{"product_id":"mr-jefferson-s-telescope-book-brendan-wolfe-9780813940106","title":"Mr. Jefferson's Telescope","description":"Thomas Jefferson considered the University of Virginia to be among his finest achievements-a living monument to his artistic and intellectual ambitions. Now, on the occasion of the University's bicentennial, Brendan Wolfe has assembled one hundred objects that, brought together in one fascinating book, offer a new, sometimes surprising history of Jefferson’s favorite project.   Mr. Jefferson’s Telescope begins with the years leading up to the University's 1819 founding and continues to the triumphs and challenges of the present day, each entry joining a full-color image with an engaging description that both stands alone and contributes to an engrossing larger narrative about how the school has evolved over time. Considering an orange and blue silk handkerchief, Wolfe reveals that the University’s school colors were originally cardinal red and gray-calling to mind a Confederate soldier’s blood-stained uniform but ultimately deemed not bright enough to stand out on muddy football fields. The record of an overdue book checked out by a young Edgar Allan Poe speaks to a long literary tradition. On the subject of a key to the Rotunda’s doors, Wolfe introduces us to its keeper, the Monticello-born ex-slave who rang the hourly bells on Grounds into the early twentieth century.  Beautifully illustrated with over one hundred new and archival images, this book brings to life a remarkable array of significant objects while offering to the reader the best introduction available to the history of Jefferson’s great institution.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50193240981777,"sku":"CIN0813940109VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50329694109969,"sku":"CIN0813940109G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008128155921,"sku":"NIN9780813940106","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813940109.jpg?v=1763479873"},{"product_id":"wolfe-s-history-book-brendan-wolfe-9780578564012","title":"Wolfe's History","description":"Wolfe's History, by the author of Finding Bix (2017), wraps its arms around a single, sprawling Irish and American family. In an opening essay, Wolfe introduces a cast of larger-than-life characters?from an Old West barkeep and a Gold Rush pharmacist to an IRA fugitive and a British recruit whose loyalties are tested during the Easter Rising. Together these fast-talking, writerly cousins live intricate lives that move quickly between past and present?complete with periodic and sudden outbursts of violence. A man is set ablaze on the prairie. A Jesuit is tortured in Dublin Castle. In the author's sure hands, their stories are converted into something broader and more searching than just a single family's journey. He wonders what binds the Wolfes together in the first place and whether the experiences of his own immediate family subvert the connections he feels with his ancestors. A biographical dictionary and fifty pages of family trees complete this impressive volume.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53384492744977,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53384494154001,"sku":"NIN9780578564012","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780578564012.jpg?v=1775582053"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-brendan-wolfe.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}