According to ancient Hindu beliefs, dreads signified a singleminded pursuit of the spiritual. Devotion to God displaced vanity, and hair was left to its own devices.Dreads captures this organic explosion of hair in all its beautiful, subversive glory. One hundred duotone portraits present dread-heads from around the world, in all walks of life. Interviewed on location by the photographers, jatta-wearers wax philosophic about the integrity of their hair, and every stunning image confirms their choice. Alice Walker puts words to pictures, offering lyrical ruminations about her decision to let her own mane mat.

    All the buildings in New York Paint the City of Passion, New York b All the Buildings in New York . James Gulliver Hancock is a unique and attractive drawing that captures New Yorks colorful architecture and cityscape. Hancocks buildings are colorful, playful and full of unusual details. Yet the author does not miss the technical elements and essence of architecture familiar to those who love New York. New Yorks district-specific book features iconic skyscrapers in New York, such as the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and the Flatiron Building. It also includes everyday buildings that create New York. Everyone will be able to savor this unique book that expresses the energy and spirit of New York City that never sleeps.

    Tuscany has its grand cities—Florence and Siena—but their distinctive elegance is found on a more intimate scale in numerous small towns and villages.There is a richness in these small places, of architecture and artistic life, which lends them an interest and complexity shared by no other rural communities in Europe. Their sense of civilization is deep and ancient, but it is the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance which have left their mark, tempting travelers and settlers from abroad from the time of the Grand Tour to the present day. Here is the village of Settignano, where Michelangelo lived and which also boasts the glorious Renassiance garden of the Villa Gamberaia. Piero della Francesca's lovely Madonna del Parto decorates the tiny cemetery chapel of Monterchi. The medieval towers of San Gimignano loom over the town's squares and streets like the backdrop to some surreal stage set.James Bentley has chosen thirty-seven villages and small towns, both for their intrinsic beauty and for the part they have played in Tuscan history and culture. Page after page of Hugh Palmer's magnificent color photographs evoke the beauty and the wonder of this land. For the visitor, there are specially compiled listings of hotels, restaurants, and festivals to complete the tribute to Tuscany and its villages.

    Their sound was inventive and tetchy, and front man Jello Biafra’s lyrics were incisive and often scathing. This chronicle—the first in-depth book written about Dead Kennedys—uses dozens of firsthand interviews, photos, and original artwork to offer a new perspective on a group that was mired in controversy almost from its inception. It examines and applauds the band’s key role in transforming punk rhetoric, both polemical and musical, into something genuinely threatening and enormously funny. Author Alex Ogg puts the local and global trajectory of punk into context and, while not flinching from the wildly differing takes the individual band members have on the evolution of the band, attempts to be celebratory—if not uncritical.

    Yet contemporary Japanese designers and architects keep finding new ways to refurbish and take inspiration from the ways of old. Whether it's a pristinely preserved traditional house or a cutting-edge apartment, the best Japanese homes share a love of cleverly designed spaces and warm materials such as wood, bricks, and bamboo. From a thatched roof farmhouse occupied by a Zen priest to Tadao Ando's experimental 4x4 House, Shigeru Ban's conceptual Shutter House, and a beautiful homage to bamboo in the form of a home, this book traverses the multifaceted landscape of Japanese living today. Also included is a list of addresses and a glossary of terms, such as tatami.

    The world is a different place after dark, and this breathtaking book illuminates the mesmerizing realm of all things nocturnal, with more than 250 glorious images. Page after page of vivid photographs explore the many nuances of night vision--from the sea by moonlight to night markets in Laos to the face of a child lit up by a screen in a darkened room. The range of images in these pages is breathtaking: A smoky jazz club. Flowers that bloom only at night. Phosphorescent fish. Lions photographed with infrared cameras. The Eiffel Tower, all lit up. Faces around a campfire. A stadium lit by floodlights. Earth from space. Elegant, sexy, and a little mysterious, this richly illustrated book is a stunning pathway to some of the world's most captivating sights.

     The Taj Mahal in Agra is arguably the most iconic image of India and is visited by eight million tourists annually. It was characterized as “pure, perfect and unutterably lovely” by the British Viceroy, Lord Curzon, and in 1983, UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site of “outstanding universal value.” For centuries the world has believed that it was built by Shah Jahan in 1631 to immortalize his love for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Certain mysteries and myths that surround the monument have recently come to the fore in the country, stimulating a public debate about the place it holds as a true representation of Indian culture. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Life of Mumtaz Mahal: The Jewel of the Palace ✓ The Building of the Taj Mahal ✓ A UNESCO World Heritage Site ✓ Myths, Conjecture, and Controversy ✓ The 22 Locked Rooms in the Basement And much more! This book presents the five main historical figures of the Mughal Empire in India during that period as well as many details of how the Taj Mahal was built. It traces the events that have led to the present controversy.

    Naples is always a shock, flaunting beauty and squalor like nowhere else. Naples is the only city in Europe whose ancient past still lives in its irrepressible people. Their ancestors came from all over the early Mediterranean to the wide bay and its islands, shadowed by a dormant volcano. Not all of them found what they were looking for, but they made a great and terribly human city. Peter Robb's Street Fight in Naples ranges across nearly three thousand years of Neapolitan life and art, from the first Greeklandings in Italy to his own less auspicious arrival thirty-something years ago.In 1503 Naples became the Mediterranean capital of Spain's world empire and the base for the Christian struggle with Islam. It was a European metropolis matched only by Paris and Istanbul, an extraordinary concentration of military power, lavish consumption, poverty and desperation. As the occupying empire went into crisis, exhausted by its wars against Islamists in the Mediterranean and Protestants in the North, the people of Naples paid a dreadful price.Naples was where in 1606 the greatest painter of his age fled from Rome after a fatal street fight. Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio found in its teeming streets an image of the age's crisis, and released among the painters of Naples the energies of a great age in European art - until everything erupted in a revolt by the dispossessed, and the people of an occupied city brought Europe into the modern world.

    She inherited her mother's stunning looks - she was known for her slender figure, gray-blue eyes, and blonde hair.When her father became pope, he sought to consolidate his power and arranged a marriage between fourteen-year-old Lucrezia and the first of her three husbands, twenty-eight-year-old Giovanni Sforza. Shortly after the marriage, Alexander, concluded he no longer needed an alliance with the Sforza family. He ordered Giovanni's assassination, but when the young bridegroom escaped, ended Lucrezia's marriage by ordering an annulment.Following the lengthy annulment process - during which Lucrezia was accused of having an affair and a child with Alexander's chamberlain Pedro Calderon, whose body was later found floating in Rome's Tiber River, “where he fell against his will” - Lucrezia was married to Alfonso of Aragon in 1498. Alexander appointed a pregnant Lucrezia governor of the Umbrian town of Spoleto in 1499. Alfonso, wary of shifting political alliances, fled Rome for a brief time, but returned in 1500, where he was murdered. Alfonso left Lucrezia with a son, Rodrigo.After Alfonso's conveniently timed murder, Alexander arranged a third marriage for Lucrezia, to Alfonso I d'Este, a powerful duke. The two had several children, and Lucrezia came into her own as a Renaissance woman, overcoming her scandalous reputation - despite several affairs - and maintaining her position and power as the Borgia family's influence and fortunes fell following Alexander's death.Lucrezia Borgia was a woman of and ahead of her time. Here is her little-told story.

    In this graphic biography like no other, his genius and astonishing records — no man has won more majors, or spent more weeks as the world number one — are explored and celebrated with beautiful infographics analysing his serving patterns, the speed of his shots, the spin he generates, his movement, as well as his performance in high-pressure situations such as tiebreaks and Grand Slam finals. Drawing on interviews with Federer and those close to him, this is the story of how a young hothead from Basel transformed himself into a calm and poised athlete who came to dominate tennis. And who, while deep in his thirties, has continued to seek improvements, to challenge men many years younger than him and to contend for the sport's biggest prizes. The sheer brilliance of Roger Federer is revealed through illuminating infographics of his game alongside stunning photography, stories and analysis from those who have played, watched and admired him that will give you a new appreciation of his greatness and how his tennis has moved so many people.

    His awe-inspiring aerial photographs of beaches around the world are shot from doorless helicopters, creating playful and stunning celebrations of light, shape, and perspective, as well as summer bliss. Combining the spirit of travel, adventure, luxury, and artistry, Malin built his eponymous lifestyle brand from a deep passion for photography and interior design. His work forges the synergy between wanderlust and adventure, creating the ultimate visual escape.Beaches features more than twenty cities across six continents: Australia: Sydney; North America: Santa Monica, Miami, San Francisco, Kaua’i, Chicago, The Hamptons, and Cancun; South America: Rio de Janeiro; Europe: Capri, Rimini, Forte dei Marmi, Viareggio, Amalfi Coast, Barcelona, Lisbon and Saint-Tropez; Africa: Cape Town; Asia: Dubai

    Illustrated with 100 of his paintings, the book is accompanied by an elegant biographical portrait of the artist’s life and achievements.

    What took place as an astonished public came upon these snowballs -- each weighing about a ton -- is captured in spontaneous and evocative pictures taken by photographers working around the clock.Here, then, is the story of Goldsworthy's largest ephemeral work to date. Made in one century (the 20th) and unwrapped to melt very slowly in the next, this is four-dimensional sculpture in which the lifespan and history of the snowballs are as important as their appearance at any moment. As Judith Collins explains in her introduction, and Goldsworthy in his diaries, this is a natural progression from his previous work with snow. Goldsworthy presents a unique confrontation between the wilderness and the city -- snowballs made in the Scottish winter brought to the streets of London in the summertime.

    Here too are the famous convention halls, parks, and racetracks of a great American city whose architectural treasures have been, and continue to be, recklessly squandered.Rare photographs and prints, many of them published here for the first time, document the transformative architectural achievements of such giants as Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, John Wellburn Root, Daniel Burnham, William Holabird, and Frank Lloyd Wright. But this remarkable book is much more than a portfolio of now-vanished buildings; within its pages are evocative sketches of scores of Chicago personalities, from the world-famous (Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Dreiser, Clarence Darrow, Ben Hecht, Jane Addams, Cyrus McCormick, George Pullman, and Gustavus Swift, to name just a few) to the locally notorious.

    This collection presents fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's color field period (1949–1970) alongside essays by Rothko's son, Christopher Rothko, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator of painting and sculpture Janet Bishop. Featuring illuminating details about Rothko's life, influences, and legacy, and brimming with the emotional power and expressive color of his groundbreaking canvases, this essential volume brings the renowned artist's luminous work to light for both longtime Rothko fans and those discovering his work for the very first time. A textured case and large-scale tip-on on the front cover round out this sumptious package.