Kenosha-born actor, director and writer Orson Welles is best known for his 1938 broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” and his path-finding film Citizen Kane. Now, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, a new biography from award-winning Milwaukee writer Patrick McGilligan focuses on the life and accomplishments of this locally grown talent.
Tracing Welles’ roots from his Midwestern upbringing through his early successes, Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane is a sweeping narrative, groundbreaking in its account of Welles’ fascinating life. A dense yet page-turning tome of one of America’s premier 20th-century talents sizzles with action as it follows the famous Orson from his early radio career to his transformation into a fabled movie star. Exhaustively researched and endlessly revealing, Young Orson sheds new light on the famous artist’s sweeping rise to fame, enduring popularity and his devastating decline in later years. Sharing fresh insights into familiar old stories of his fatherless coming of age and his supposed exploits as a bullfighter in Spain, this engaging portrait of a crucial American artist will be adored by scholars and casual fans alike.
The prolific McGilligan has recounted the lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson, among others and is the author of two New York Times Notable Books. McGilligan will speak at Boswell Book Co. at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 8.
BOOK HAPPENING:
Quraysh Ali Lansana
7 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 3
Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E. Locust St.
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Poet and educator Quraysh Ali Lansana earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University and has led workshops and classes in prisons, schools and universities in more than 30 states. He is most recently the author of the poetry collection mystic turf (2012) and the chapbook reluctant minivan (2014). The 2000 Poet of the Year Quraysh Ali Lansana will perform a live reading at Woodland Pattern Book Center.
