 | Camille Claudel
Buy used from: $8.81 Student of Rodin, and possibly the one who shaped the Rodin style we know. A few years of brilliant art, then decades in sanatoria
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 | Camille Claudel & Rodin: Fateful Encounter by Antoinette Lenormand-Romain
Buy used from: $550.00 Camille's art - we can only wish that she had created more of it and destroyed less.
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 | Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh
Buy new: $11.56 / Used from: $0.92 van Gogh - that's all that needs to be said.
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 | Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges
Buy used from: $24.94 Heroic WWII cryptographer, created the foundations of computing theory. Hounded into a bizarre suicide for being homosexual.
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 | Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance by Kenneth Silverman
Buy new: $14.81 / Used from: $4.90 Alcoholism, despair, and an early death.
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 | Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel (Great Discoveries) by Rebecca Goldstein
Buy used from: $3.49 Shook the foundation of mathematical reasoning, and died in fear of his own food.
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 | The Conquering Sword of Conan (Conan of Cimmeria, Book 3) by Robert E. Howard
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $6.25 Howard lived with his mother until age 30, then committed suicide. How many of his wonderful stories never had time to be written?
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 | The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
Buy used from: $0.01 Literate, eloquent, homicidal, insane. One of the founding contributors to the definitive catalog of the English language.
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 | Georg Cantor by Joseph W. Dauben
Buy new: $34.83 / Used from: $14.95 What is it about the frontiers of mathematics? He could tame infinity, but not his own mind.
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 | Munch: In His Own Words by Poul Erik Tojner
Buy used from: $5.37 In and out of mental hospitals throughout his career. Still, he lived out his life peacefully enough, and left us great treasures.
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 | Bride of Science: Romance, Reason and Byron's Daughter by Benjamin Woolley
Buy used from: $4.41 A destructive gambling habit - not a grand tragedy, but it ruined her life.
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 | Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings by Marquis De Sade
Buy new: $12.89 / Used from: $6.24 30 years in prison for some terrible derangement. How would you like to have your name turned into a word for perversion?
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 | Wally's World: The Brillant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World's 2nd Best Comic Book Artist by Steve Starger
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $11.00 Suicide. He arguably had good reason, but some will say that no reason can be good enough. Suicide.
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 | Bolero - The Life Of Maurice Ravel by Madeleine Goss
Buy new: $42.45 / Used from: $64.01 Did his mind decay from frontotemporal dementia, or from brain injury? (I can't vouch for this book from my own experience.)
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 | Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician by Professor John Worthen
Buy new: $26.40 / Used from: $21.45 Did syphilitic brain damage cost him his mind, or unintentional mercury poisoning? The loss to the world is the same either way. (Haven't read this book - recommendations welcome.)
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 | Venus in Furs (Penguin Classics) by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Buy new: $9.10 / Used from: $3.05 Another man whose name is now a word for perversion.
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 | Breakdown Lane, Traveled: An Anthology of Writings on Madness by Julie Greene
Buy new: $15.95 / Used from: $9.50 Contemporary, not historical. Neither tragedy nor triumph, but an ongoing struggle. She does better, she does worse, and she writes.
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 | A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash by Sylvia Nasar
Buy new: $12.48 / Used from: $0.01 Not all stories end badly. Brilliant man, years of profound illness, then a return of his sanity and his genius.
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