Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo CastelliFirst (American). Light gray boards with dark gray cloth spine, BW pictorial DJ, [xxv], 543pp, 121 BW photographs and 4 BW maps. From the publisher--Leo and His Circle brilliantly narrates the course of one man\\\'s power and influence. But Castelli had another secret, too: his life as an Italian Jew. Annie Cohen-Solal traces a family whose fortunes rose and fell for centuries before the Castellis fled European fascism. Never hidden but also never discussed, this experience would form the core of a guarded but magnetic character possessed of unfailing old-world charm and a refusal to look backward-traits that ensured Castelli\\\'s visionary precedence in every major new movement from Pop to Conceptual and by which he fostered the worldwide enthusiasm for American contemporary art that is his greatest legacy. Drawing on her friendship with the subject, as well as an uncanny knack for archival excavation, Annie Cohen-Solal gives us in full the elegant, shrewd, irresistible, and enigmatic figure at the very center of postwar American art, bringing an utterly new understanding of its evolution.

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