latest news
Tell Me Press Author, Carla Ulbrich, a muppet! Carla comes on at 14:15. CLICK HERE
Carla U: An episode of the Wellness Journey, including a 30-minute interview with Tell Me Press Author, Carla Ulbrich. Carla talks about the benefits of laughter and how she became the Singing Patient. Listen here: LISTEN HERE
Tell Me Press is proud to announce the release of the Teacher's/Reader's Guide for Tonya Trimble's wonderful childrens book, CURIOSITY WITH A CAPITAL S. The Teacher's/Reader's Guide is available here and it's free. CLICK HERE
NEW! A very informative VIDEO on the role of the Anesthesiologist from Tell Me Press author Panchali Dhar, M.D. Dr. Dhar's book, Before the Scalpel: What Everyone Should Know About Anesthesia, is a must-have for every bookshelf. CLICK HERE
The Smile at the Heart of Things
The Smile at the Heart of Things:
Essays and Life Stories
January 2010
ISBN-13 numbers:
Hardcover:
978-0-9819835-5-4
eBook:
978-0-9829421-2-3
Hardcover
List price: $28.95
Price: $21.72 (25% off)
You save: $7.23
247 pages
hardcover limited edition, 7 x 10 inches
47 black-and-white and full-color photos
Inside this book
What are the essential ingredients of a creative life? How does an artist become an artist? Can art and religion find common ground? What does it mean to be an individual, and as individuals can we be separate and singular as well as communal and connected?
Brian H. Peterson wrestles with these questions and offers some answers in The Smile at the Heart of Things, a wide-ranging and deeply satisfying collection of personal essays, journal entries, and reflections on art, artists, and art museums. Drawing on his experiences as a musician, visual artist, scholar, and museum curator, Peterson connects his own search for growth and meaning with larger issues of creativity and the human spirit, often by simply telling stories about his own life and the lives of artists, friends, and family members.
Forty-seven full-color images of well-known paintings and photographs enrich these stories and underscore their celebration of humor and sadness, grief and joy.
Praise for Brian H. Peterson’s work:
“The Smile at the Heart of Things is a luminous book. It’s open, quirky, vulnerable, wise. It rings true.”
—Dennis Lee, poet and essayist; poet laureate of Toronto, 2001–2004
“Peterson has an incredible way of encapsulating his life experience in powerful and imaginative prose (tinged with a kind of poetry). At times I feel an almost Proustian sense of ‘lost time.’ ”
—George Crumb, Pulitzer Prize–winning composer
“The Smile at the Heart of Things is a very personal and touching book that is deeply and heart-searchingly important. The stories from life are a true treasure.”
—Emmet Gowin, photographer; professor of photography, Princeton University
“In a day, I devoured Brian Peterson’s lovely memoir on art and artists, life, love and marriage, work, museums, human strength, habits-of-mind, diminishment and death. Now nothing in the house is worth reading or watching or even doing, so ardent and tender and enduring are his stories.”
—Mary E. Case, founding director, Qm2; former director, Office of the Registrar, Smithsonian Institution
meet the author
