Best Selling Books by Russell Martin

The destruction of a town, and the creation of a masterpiece--On April 26, 1937, in the late afternoon of a busy market day in the Basque town of Gernika in northern Spain, the German Luftwaffe began the relentless bombing and machine-gunning of buildings and villagers at the request of General Francisco Franco and his rebel forces. Three-and-a-half hours later, the village lay in ruins, its population decimated. This act of terror and unspeakable cruelty--the first intentional, large-scale attack against a nonmilitary target in modern warfare--outraged the world and one man in particular, Pablo Picasso. The renowned artist, an expatriate living in Paris, reacted immediately to the devastation in his homeland by creating the canvas that would become widely considered one of the greatest artworks of the twentieth century--Guernica. Weaving themes of conflict and redemption, of the horrors of war and of the power of art to transfigure tragedy, Russell Martin follows this monumental work from its fevered creation through its journey across decades and continents--from Europe to America and, finally and triumphantly, to democratic Spain. Full of historical sweep and deeply moving drama, Picasso's War delivers an unforgettable portrait of a painting, the dramatic events that led to its creation, and its ongoing power today.

The basis for the movie of the same name, an astonishing tale of one lock of hair and its amazing travels--from nineteenth-century Vienna to twenty-first-century America. When Ludwig van Beethoven lay dying in 1827, a young musician named Ferdinand Hiller came to pay his respects to the great composer, snipping a lock of Beethoven's hair as a keepsake--as was custom at the time--in the process. For a century, the lock of hair was a treasured Hiller family relic, until it somehow found its way to the town of Gilleleje, in Nazi-occupied Denmark. There, it was given to a local doctor, Kay Fremming, who was deeply involved in the effort to help save hundreds of hunted and frightened Jews. After Fremming's death, his daughter assumed ownership of the lock, and eventually consigned it for sale at Sotheby's, where two American Beethoven enthusiasts, Ira Brilliant and Che Guevara, purchased it in 1994. Subsequently, they and others instituted a series of complex forensic tests in the hope of finding the probable causes of the composer's chronically bad health, his deafness, and the final demise that Ferdinand Hiller had witnessed all those years ago. The results, revealed for the first time here, are the most compelling explanation yet offered for why one of the foremost musicians the world has ever known was forced to spend much of his life in silence. In Beethoven's Hair, Russell Martin has created a rich historical treasure hunt, a tale of false leads, amazing breakthroughs, and incredible revelations. This unique and fascinating book is a moving testament to the power of music, the lure of relics, the heroism of the Resistance movement, and the brilliance of molecular science.

Describes what is is like traveling and working in the space shuttle and looks at highlights of the space exploration program.

Introduces the life of the Austrian composer, along with the story of a lock of his hair cut by a barber after his death, which was kept by various owners and the analysis of which revealed the high level of lead present in the composer's body.

Having just returned from a successful space shuttle mission, Jack Healy must now deal with problems on earth.

On a bright afternoon in February 1910, thirteen-year-old Tommy Dumont witnesses the most stupendous event he has ever seen-the first flight of a powered airplane in Denver history. But only months later, this enterprising son of a wealthy banker is living on the city's streets and alleys because his father is appalled by the epileptic seizures that have begun to regularly overtake him. Eventually looked after by both an Irish immigrant who earns her living as a prostitute and Denver's renowned juvenile court Judge Ben Lindsey, Tommy survives by his bountiful wits and his determination to make something of his life despite his seizures until the judge make a life-changing request of him. Tommy is a remarkable character, and his story is one of courage and the meaning friendship, tragedy and redemption. "Martin is, first and foremost, a consummate storyteller," says Kirkus Reviews. Daily Bread is a novella that will capture your heart and linger in your memory.

One hot Colorado afternoon, physician-turned-archaeologist Sarah MacLeish unearths the skeleton of an Ancestral Puebloan girl with a deformed leg. Her efforts to understand something of the long-ago life of that girl confront her with the flaws in her own body and her marriage. Sarah struggles with multiple sclerosis, and she is increasingly persuaded that her husband, archaeologist Harry MacLeish, is profoundly discontented in their childless marriage. Sarah must contend, too, with the question of where she comes from, what her pioneer heritage truly means to her, how she can live up to the values of her grandmother-whose long life is drawing to its inevitable close-and whether she has both the power and the will to shape the days that remains to her. Employing archeology as both subject and metaphor, The Sorrow of Archaeology is a provocative and always lyrical novel whose characters grapple with the deepest human questions: How can we know who we really are? What is best for us? How do we construct satisfying narratives of our own lives out of the broken materials fate hands us? Set near Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, where the author grew up and lived for many years, it is a novel rich with emotional, medical, archaeological, and cultural truths.

From 1505 to 1689, Russia's tsars chose their wives through an elaborate ritual: the bride-show. The realm's most beautiful young maidens--provided they hailed from the aristocracy--gathered in Moscow, where the tsar's trusted boyars reviewed their medical histories, evaluated their spiritual qualities, noted their physical appearances, and confirmed their virtue. Those who passed muster were presented to the tsar, who inspected the candidates one by one--usually without speaking to any of them--and chose one to be immediately escorted to the Kremlin to prepare for her wedding and new life as the tsar's consort. Alongside accounts of sordid boyar plots against brides, the multiple marriages of Ivan the Terrible, and the fascinating spectacle of the bride-show ritual, A Bride for the Tsar offers an analysis of the show's role in the complex politics of royal marriage in early modern Russia. Russell E. Martin argues that the nature of the rituals surrounding the selection of a bride for the tsar tells us much about the extent of his power, revealing it to be limited and collaborative, not autocratic. Extracting the bride-show from relative obscurity, Martin persuasively establishes it as an essential element of the tsarist political system.

This is the story of one particular little boy trapped in silence, struggling to regain language. And it is the story of every one of us who uses language in much the same way we breathe: effortlessly, intuitively, taking this gift for granted in our daily lives. In a work that captures the whole universe of language, Russell Martin probes this most profound and complex human trait but never abandons his central concern, always circling back to the troubling question of the speechless child. Investigating the mystery of what went wrong and why, he spins a tale of detection, unearthing disturbing truths and reaching surprising conclusions. In the end, his is a spellbinding drama; a tale of one family's determination to help their child find his way back to words; a story of one school's willingness to make room for this child; a story, too, about big, seemingly insurmountable problems, and small but noble victories. In combining this story, with an elegant inquiry into the totality of language, Martin takes us on a voyage of discovery into the very essence of what makes us human. Moving us with the miracle of language, he tells a tale that is a cause for celebration. "A wholly remarkable book . . . Martin leaves us with a deeper understanding of language itself, a richer appreciation of its promise, and a realization that the ability to communicate is a kind of grace." --The Los Angeles Times "A deeply moving rendering of human beings in adversity. . . Other accounts of the suffering of autism have been published, but few can vie with this one for thoughtfulness, scholarship, and personal accent." --New York Times Book Review "The journey into language is a magical passage for any of us, and Russell Martin's brilliantly observed story of a boy struggling to speak takes us into the latest realms of how and why words come to us, and we to them." --Ivan Doig, author of This House of Sky and English Creek

Author Russell Martin follows a practicing Colorado neurologist into the frontier of brain science. Together, they provide an unforgettable picture of the brain and its diseases, a moving account of personal courage and a revealing look into the practice of modern medicine.

Russell Martin, the best-selling author of ¿Beethoven¿s Hair,¿ weaves politics, history, art, & science into a stirring narrative of the monumental canvas that was to become the most important artwork of the 20th century. Pablo Picasso, enraged by Hitler¿s bombing of Guernica in northern Spain on April 26, 1937, responded to the devastation in his homeland by beginning work on ¿Guernica,¿ a painting that became his masterpiece & perhaps the most eloquent visual statement in opposition to war in history. Here, Martin follows ¿Guernica¿ across decades & continents, crafting a story of its impassioned creation & the struggle to find hope in the face of unspeakable acts of terror. Martin is a first-rate investigator who deftly weaves together world & art history.