Who introduced Babe Ruth to Albert Einstein, and why? Who was privy to the pact between Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray, the romance of the artist formerly known as Prince and Princess Di, and the fate of Marilyn Monroe? Behold Max Vail (b. Maxim Valesky, 1900, St. Petersburg; d. 1999, Manhattan)--a middleman of genius who be-strode the realms of politics, entertainment, art, sport, crime and science. "I have witnessed the world," he said simply. Yet the man who knew everyone--kept their secrets, did their deals and never forgot where the bodies were buried--was himself known to virtually none. His private diaries, here made vivid with eighty-six extraordinary computer collages, provide nothing less than the secret history of our century, confirming some long-rumored events and revealing others that are freshly shocking. In all, some two hundred iconic personalities throng these pages, and their sagas--comic, ignominious, tragic, heroic and bizarre--make a strange, compelling narrative from the conflicted desires and obsessions of our times, and a rare gift to the millennium.

In the wake of the monstrous projects of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others in the twentieth century, the idea of utopia has been discredited. Yet, historian Jay Winter suggests, alongside the “major utopians” who murdered millions in their attempts to transform the world were disparate groups of people trying in their own separate ways to imagine a radically better world. This original book focuses on some of the twentieth-century’s “minor utopias” whose stories, overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust and the Gulag, suggest that the future need not be as catastrophic as the past. The book is organized around six key moments when utopian ideas and projects flourished in Europe: 1900 (the Paris World's Fair), 1919 (the Paris Peace Conference), 1937 (the Paris exhibition celebrating science and light), 1948 (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), 1968 (moral indictments and student revolt), and 1992 (the emergence of visions of global citizenship). Winter considers the dreamers and the nature of their dreams as well as their connections to one another and to the history of utopian thought. By restoring minor utopias to their rightful place in the recent past, Winter fills an important gap in the history of social thought and action in the twentieth century.

In a mix of story and history, we follow the lives of artists Romy March and Augustine Marks.

"Written to commemorate the centenary of Freud's classic work, this illustrated book examines the shifting roles that dreams have played in twentieth century art and science."--BOOK JACKET.

Florida Book Awards, Gold Medal for Florida Nonfiction Florida Historical Society Charlton Tebeau Book Award A leading Florida historian explores one of the state’s most consequential eras It was a time of stunning episodes of boom and bust, an era of extremes, a decade of historic changes that point to Florida’s future. In this book, eminent historian Gary Mormino illuminates early twenty-first-century Florida and its connections to some of the most significant events in contemporary American history. Following Mormino’s milestone work Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams, which details the dynamic history of Florida from 1950 to 2000, Dreams in the New Century explores the state’s tumultuous next chapter, a period that included the Bush v. Gore election, 9/11, the housing bubble and Great Recession, and the election of Barack Obama. During these years the Elián González story engrossed the country, Tim Tebow rose to football fame, and Donald Trump became a Florida celebrity. From hurricanes to Ponzi schemes, red tides, climate change, the “Stand-Your-Ground” gun law, demographic diversity, and more, Florida offered nonstop news fodder that reflected its extraordinary internal trends and its importance in the nation. As Mormino shows, Florida is a place of deep conflicts—North and South, liberal and conservative, newcomer and local, growth and conservation—with histories that can be traced back centuries. In 2000‒2010, Mormino argues, these tensions collided to produce a “Big Bang” that will continue to resonate in years to come. Mormino takes stock of this crucible of change and explains the social, cultural, and political intricacies of a state the world struggles to understand. Dreams in the New Century unravels Florida’s complicated recent history in a gripping, informative, and fascinating narrative.

Kelley unearths freedom dreams in this exciting history of renegade intellectuals and artists of the African diaspora in the twentieth century. Focusing on the visions of activists from C. L. R. James to Aime Cesaire and Malcolm X, Kelley writes of the hope that Communism offered, the mindscapes of Surrealism, the transformative potential of radical feminism, and of the four-hundred-year-old dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow. From'the preeminent historian of black popular culture' (Cornel West), an inspiring work on the power of imagination to transform society.

Part of the second tranche of Routledge Classics for the autumn Jung needs no introduction and this is his most famous book