On the whole, I really liked this book. It told a fascinating story -- the journey of a lock of Beethoven's hair from Vienna to the United States, by way of Cologne, Germany, Gilleleje, Denmark, and London, England; and its subsequent scientific testing. The intertwined biographies of Beethoven and ...
Taking as an excuse the analysis of a Beethoven's lock of hair, "Beethoven's hair" is the biography of the musician, but also of all these people who owned the lock and the History through which it traveled. It is a very emotive story, full of hypotheses and subjective novelization mixed with facts ...
Pablo Picasso's painting, Guernica, is discussed: the Spanish Civil War that led to its creation, the painting itself of course, the artist's life, the painting's place in the world both physically and symbolically, etc. The author mixes historical and personal narration with excerpts from newspaper...
I'm a musician, and I love Beethoven. But I also love good writing. There are enough facts on record regarding the author's subject--and he knows this; he's included them in the book--to avoid having to make any wild suppositions about the lives of his real-life characters. It's bothering me no end....
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