Perhaps the oddest and most influential collaboration in the history of American modernism was hatched in 1926, when a young Virgil Thomson knocked on Gertrude Stein's door in Paris. Eight years later, their opera Four Saints in Three Acts became a sensation--the longest-running opera in Broadway history to date and the most widely reported cultural event of its time. Four Saints was proclaimed the birth of a new art form, a cellophane fantasy, "cubism on stage." It swept the public imagination, inspiring new art and new language, and defied every convention of what an opera should be. Everything about it was revolution-ary: Stein's abstract text and Thomson's homespun music, the all-black cast, the costumes, and the com-bustible sets. Moving from the Wadsworth Atheneum to Broadway, Four Saints was the first popular modernist production. It brought modernism, with all its flamboyant outrage against convention, into the mainstream. This is the story of how that opera came to be. It involves artists, writers, musicians, salon hostesses, and an underwear manufacturer with an appetite for publicity. The opera's success depended on a handful of Harvard-trained men who shaped America's first museums of modern art. The elaborately intertwined lives of the collaborators provide a window onto the pioneering generation that defined modern taste in America in the 1920s and 1930s. A brilliant cultural historian with a talent for bringing the past to life, Steven Watson spent ten years researching and writing this book, interviewing many of the collaborators and performers. Prepare for Saints is the first book to describe this pivotal moment in American cultural history. It does so with a spirit and irreverence worthy of its subject. NOTE: This edition does not include photographs.

This provocative account of the persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s tells the stories of eight pivotal players. The saints are now honored as martyrs by the Catholic Church, and the sinners were political and military leaders who were accomplices in the persecution. The saintly standouts are Anacleto González Flores, whose non-violent demonstrations ended with his death after a day of brutal torture; Archbishop Francisco Orozco y Jiménez, who ran his vast archdiocese from hiding while on the run from the Mexican government; Fr. Toribio Romo González, who was shot in his bed one morning simply for being a Catholic priest; and Fr. Miguel Pro, the famous Jesuit who kept slipping through the hands of the military police in Mexico City despite being on the "most wanted" list for sixteen months. The four sinners are Melchor Ocampo, the powerful politician who believed that Catholicism was the cause of Mexico's problems; President Plutarco Elías Calles, the fanatical atheist who brutally persecuted the Church; José Reyes Vega, the priest who ignored the orders of his archbishop and became a general in the Cristero army; and Tomás Garrido Canabal, a farmer-turned-politician who became known as the "Scourge of Tabasco". This cast of characters is presented in a compelling narrative of the Cristero War that engages the reader like a gripping novel while it unfolds a largely unknown chapter in the history of America.

Jesus told us to be perfect, and the Second Vatican Council highlighted this command by speaking of the universal call to holiness for all Christians. How do we answer this call? One great way is to learn from and pray with the saints, the ordinary men and women who fought the good fight to be holy until the end of their lives – and won. The saints have inspired Christians for more than two thousand years because they show us what it looks like to follow Jesus Christ despite countless challenges and obstacles. This unique book contains short biographies of several saints, along with prayers to each one, for every day of the year. It also provides definitions of Church terms and other helpful back - ground information. The saints in this collection come from every period of Church history and all walks of life. They represent numerous countries, cultures, age groups, and vocations. They show us that holiness truly is a path open to anyone, and by their example and prayers they help us to follow it.

This carefully crafted ebook: "GERTRUDE STEIN Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Plays, Memoirs & Essays" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Introduction A Message from Gertrude Stein Novels Three Lives The Making of Americans Poems, Stories & Plays Tender Buttons Objects Food Rooms Matisse, Picasso and Gertrude Stein A Long Gay Book Many Many Women G.M.P. Geography and Plays Susie Asado Ada Miss Furr and Miss Skeene A Collection France Americans Italians A Sweet Tail The History of Belmonte In the Grass England Mallorcan Stories Scenes The King or Something Publishers, the Portrait Gallery, and the Manuscripts of the British Museum Roche Braque Portrait of Prince B. D. Mrs. Whitehead Portrait of Constance Fletcher A Poem about Walberg Johnny Grey A Portrait of F. B. Sacred Emily IIIIIIIIII One (Van Vechten) One (Harry Phelan Gibb) A Curtain Raiser Ladies Voices What Happened White Wines Do Let Us Go Away For the Country Entirely Turkey Bones and Eating and We Liked It Every Afternoon Captain Walter Arnold Please Do Not Suffer He Said It Counting Her Dresses I Like It to Be a Play Not Sightly Bonne Annee Mexico A Family of Perhaps Three Advertisements Pink Melon Joy If You Had Three Husbands Work Again Tourty or Tourtebattre Next Land of Nations Accents in Alsace The Psychology of Nations or What Are You Looking At Four Saints in Three Acts Memoirs The Winner Loses The Americans are Coming Reflections on the Atom Bomb Biographies The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Picasso Portraits of Painters Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright and art collector, best known for Three Lives, The Making of Americans and Tender Buttons. Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. Picasso and Cubism were an important influence on Stein's writing. Her works are compared to James Joyce's Ulysses and to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

There is no greater authority on the saints than Alban Butler, and his enormous research has been the standard reference on the subject for the last two and a half centuries. This new adaptation of Butler's multi-volume Lives of the Saints presents a modernized text for today's reader and provides an illuminating guide to these historic, symbolic, and foundational Christian men and women. Butler's daily readings from the lives and works of the saints offer readers of all backgrounds the opportunity to engage directly with these great figures. Butler's distinctive contribution to stories about saints was to turn attention away from the superhuman, miraculous themes that are prevalent in earlier works. He gives us saints who are examples of Christian living, who provide inspiration for our own lives, in every time and circumstance. As Butler writes: "They were once what we are now, travelers on earth. They had the same weaknesses we have. We have difficulties; so had the saints." Important features of this version include mention of recently canonized saints as well as those whose path to official sainthood is still in progress. Also included in the daily readings are more obscure saints whose lives and contributions to Christianity should not be forgotten.

This manual of devotion consists of a series of chapters or instructions upon important points of Christian teaching which Saint Alphonsus calls "Considerations". As the Saint describes, "These Considerations are written for the purpose of pricking or of wounding the conscience... that so it may be thoroughly aroused and awakened." The Considerations deal with such doctrines and facts as have a universal application, which admit of no dispute, and which are always confirmed by some passage from Holy Scripture. Preparation for Death is essentially a guide to prayer. It represents, from its beginning to its end, the continual outpouring of heart before God, an outpouring that is at times expressed in the very same words which imply a new phase of thought. Regarded as a Manual of Mental Prayer, each of these "Considerations" has a technical and special signification. They treat of life and death, the value of time, the mercy of God, the habit of sin, the general and particular judgments, the love of God, Holy Communion, and other subjects equally important.