World Art History

The book reveals the creative and innovative discoveries made as a result of in depth research, and years of Graduate studies, beginning at the Villa Schifanoia, and Villa I Tatti on Renaissance Art in Florence, Italy. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with Maria Theresa Duncan and La Bibliothèque Château de Versailles. The Renaissance Culture known as Humanistic, Humanitus, as depicted in the Sculpting and Paintings of Michelangelo, Sandro Boticelli, Raphael, Da Vinci and others. Man was in balance with the Greater Universe, Art and Architecture.

The legendary Pablo Picasso once paid a visit to the legendary Altamira Caves, located near the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain. There, he viewed the ancient cave paintings, deemed to be among the most sophisticated examples in the world. He summarized the visit by saying, “After Altamira, all is decadence,”[1] suggesting a purity in early man that modern people have apparently lost. Other lesser-known artists, psychologists and various scientists have dismissed even the best of the Paleolithic cave painters.

Bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and asking how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it and made symbols out of it. And sometimes why they have fought for it. She beats the inner bark of trees into cloth in Papua New Guinea, fails to handspin cotton in Guatemala, visits tweed weavers at their homes in Harris, and has lessons in patchwork-making in Gee's Bend, Alabama—where in the 1930s, deprived of almost everything they owned, a community of women turned quilting into an art form.

"A diamond is forever." Who among us doesn't recognize this slogan and, with it, the fascination that diamonds hold in our collective imagination as emblems of royalty, glamor, and eternal love? Rachelle Bergstein's cultural biography illuminates the enticing, often surprising story of our society's enduring obsession with diamonds - and the people who have worked tirelessly to ensure their continued allure.

Decoding "Despacito" tracks the stories behind the biggest Latin hits of the past 50 years. From the salsa born and bred in the streets of New York City, to Puerto Rican reggaetón and bilingual chart-toppers, this rich oral history is a veritable treasure trove of never-before heard anecdotes and insight from a who's who of Latin music artists, executives, observers, and players. Their stories, told in their own words, take you inside the hits, to the inner sanctum of the creative minds behind the tracks that have defined eras and become hallmarks of history.

In Detestable and Wicked Arts, Paul B. Moyer places early New England's battle against black magic in a transatlantic perspective. Moyer provides an accessible and comprehensive examination of witch prosecutions in the Puritan colonies that discusses how their English inhabitants understood the crime of witchcraft, why some people ran a greater risk of being accused of occult misdeeds, and how gender intersected with witch-hunting.

Joe Gould, a madman, believed he was the most brilliant historian of the 20th century. So did some of his friends, a group of modernist writers and artists that included E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and Ezra Pound. Gould began his life's work before the First World War, announcing that he intended to write down nearly everything anyone ever said to him. "I am trying to preserve as much detail as I can about the normal life of everyday people," he explained, because "as a rule, history does not deal with such small fry."

From the Baillie Gifford and Orwell Prize longlisted author of The Ministry of Truth comes an equally original and revealing exploration of one of the central concerns of our times: fantasies and nightmares of the end of the world, from Mary Shelley’s The Last Man to the Manic Street Preachers’ Everything Must Go.

Driven by different motives, Robert Moses and Francis Cardinal Spellman had the same vision: to display Michelangelo's masterpiece, the Pietà, in the Vatican's pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair in New York City.

Over a prolific 40-year career, The Fall created a world that was influential, idiosyncratic and fiercely original - and defied simple categorisation. Their front man and lyricist, Mark E Smith, spun opaque tales that resisted conventional understanding; The Fall's worldview was an education in its own right. Who wouldn't want to be armed with a working knowledge of M R James, shipping-dock procedures, contemporary dance, Manchester City and Can? The group inspired and shaped the lives of those who listened to and tried to make sense of their work.

From young artists trying to elbow their way in to those working hard at dropping out, White's essential audiobook offers a once-in-a-generation glimpse of the inner workings of the American art world at a moment of unparalleled ambition, uncertainty, and creative exuberance.

In February 1943, a group of journalists - including a young wire service correspondent named Walter Cronkite and cub reporter Andy Rooney - clamored to fly along on a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. Seven of the 64 bombers that attacked a U-boat base that day never made it back to England. A fellow survivor, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, asked Cronkite if he’d thought through a lede. "I think I’m going to say," mused Cronkite, “that I’ve just returned from an assignment to hell."

Art looting is commonly recognized as a central feature of Nazi expropriation. After the war, the famed Monuments Men (and women) recovered several hundred thousand pieces from the Germans' makeshift repositories. Well-publicized restitution cases, such as that of Gustav Klimt's luminous painting featured in the film Woman in Gold, illustrate the legacy of Nazi looting in the art world today. But what happened to looted art that was never returned to its rightful owners?

Can anyone really own a culture? This magnificent account argues that the story of global civilisations is one of mixing, sharing, and borrowing. It shows how art forms have crisscrossed continents over centuries to produce masterpieces. From Nefertiti's lost city and the Islamic Golden Age to twentieth century Nigerian theatre and Modernist poetry, Martin Puchner explores how contact between different peoples has driven artistic innovation in every era - whilst cultural policing and purism have more often undermined the very societies they tried to protect.

In The World According to Tom Hanks, through deep research and interviews, Gavin Edwards will explore and celebrate how Tom Hanks lives his life, mirroring the way that he embodies optimism and integrity in his movie roles. This book will give insight into the actor by collecting the best stories about how he behaves in the world, providing a loving retrospective of his film career, and putting it all into the context of his all-American philosophy.

Pandemic, climate change, or war: Our era is ripe with the odor of doomsday. In movies, books, and more, our imaginations run wild with visions of dreadful, abandoned cities and returning to the land in a desperate attempt at survival. In The Next Apocalypse, archaeologist Chris Begley argues that we completely misunderstand how disaster works. Examining past collapses of civilizations, such as the Maya and Rome, he argues that these breakdowns are actually less about cataclysmic destruction than they are about long processes of change.

Who were the Lost Girls? Chic, glamorous, and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonette as dining at the Ritz, Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton, and Janetta Parlade cut a swath through English literary and artistic life at the height of World War II. Three of them had affairs with Lucian Freud. One of them married George Orwell. Another became the mistress of the King of Egypt. They had very different - and sometimes explosive - personalities, but taken together they form a distinctive part of the wartime demographic....

Hans Memling, a painter from Flanders, is the holder of an unfortunate record. He painted a triptych, The Last Judgment, commissioned by Medici banker Angelo Tani. The paintings were intended for a new chapel in Fiesole in Tuscany, near the city of Florence. However, in April 1472, the ship on which they were being transported from Bruges to Florence was intercepted by Polish privateer and Danzig Town Council leader Paul Beneke.

"Diamond Is Fragile was one of my favorite books from my late grandfather's library. Much to my surprise (and dismay) it was only published once in the former Soviet Union approximately 50 years ago and (to the best of my knowledge) has never been published abroad. I was inspired to translate Diamond Is Fragile into English by my father-in-law - Thom Seymour, Sr. - due to his passion for geology and history (topics amply covered in the book). I hope that other English-speaking readers who are interested in these disciplines will enjoy it as well." (Maria K., translator)

You can always recognize a painting by Kahlo because she is in nearly all of them, with her black braided hair and colorful Mexican outfits. A brave woman who was an invalid most of her life, she transformed herself into a living work of art. As famous for her self-portraits and haunting imagery as she was for her marriage to another famous artist, Diego Rivera, this strong and courageous painter was inspired by the ancient culture and history of her beloved homeland, Mexico. Her paintings continue to inform and inspire popular culture around the world.