Joy Adamson Joy Adamson Friederike Victoria "Joy" Adamson (née Gessner, 20 January 1910 – 3 January 1980) was a naturalist, artist and author. Her book, "Born Free", describes her experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa. "Born Free" was printed in several languages, and made into an Academy Award-winning movie of the same name. In 1977, she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. Adamson was born to Victor and Traute Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic), the second of three daughters. Her parents divorced when she was 10, and she went to live with
The Joy of Music The Joy of Music The Joy of Music is Leonard Bernstein's first book, originally published in 1959 by Simon & Schuster. A highly acclaimed, bestselling work, it is still in print today. In the book, Bernstein completely abandons the traditional academic style of books on classical music. Some of the chapters are cast in the style of conversations about music between Bernstein and several imaginary people. (One of these conversations contains Bernstein's thoughts on Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess", a work he never conducted or recorded.) Other chapters of the book are made up of complete transcribed scripts of Bernstein's television