1429) builds an allegorical fortified city for women using examples of the important contributions women have made to Western Civilization and arguments that prove their intellectual and moral equality to men. Earl Jeffrey Richards' acclaimed translation is used nationwide in the most eminent colleges and universities in America, from Columbia to Stanford.

    Now, 30 years later, Puzo enriches us all with his ultimate vision of the subject: the story of the greatest crime family in Italian history, the Borgias.In The Family, this singular novelist transports his readers back to 15th century Rome, and reveals to us the extravagance and intrigue of the Vatican as surely as he once revealed the secrets of the Mafia. At the story's center is Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, a man whose lustful appetites were matched only by his consuming love of family. Surrounding him are his extraordinary children: simple, unloved Jofre; irascible, heartless Juan; beautiful, strong-willed Lucrezia; and passionate warrior Cesare, Machiavelli's friend and inspiration. Their stories constitute a symphony of human emotion and behavior, from pride to romance to jealousy to betrayal and murderous rage.A labor of love two decades in the making, The Family marks the final triumph of one of the greatest storytellers of our time.

    Think of Hamlet, trapped in indecision, or Macbeth’s merciless and ultimately self-destructive ambition, or the Machiavellian rise and short reign of Richard III. They are so vital, so alive and real that we can see aspects of ourselves in them. But their world was at once familiar and nothing like our own. In this brilliant work of historical reconstruction Neil MacGregor and his team at the British Museum, working together in a landmark collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, bring us twenty objects that capture the essence of Shakespeare’s universe. A perfect complement to A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor’s landmark New York Times bestseller, Shakespeare’s Restless World highlights a turning point in human history. This magnificent book, illustrated throughout with more than one hundred vibrant color photographs, invites you to travel back in history and to touch, smell, and feel what life was like at that pivotal moment, when humankind leaped into the modern age. This was an exhilarating time when discoveries in science and technology altered the parameters of the known world. Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation map allows us to imagine the age of exploration from the point of view of one of its most ambitious navigators. A bishop’s cup captures the most sacred and divisive act in Christendom. With A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor pioneered a new way of telling history through artifacts. Now he trains his eye closer to home, on a subject that has mesmerized him since childhood, and lets us see Shakespeare and his world in a whole new light.

    Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature.The idea for the book, which is entirely new, is to invite the reader into intimate conversations with twelve of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to explore with the author what they tell us about nearly a thousand years of medieval history - and sometimes about the modern world too. Christopher de Hamel introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, collectors and the international community of manuscript scholars, showing us how he and his fellows piece together evidence to reach unexpected conclusions. He traces the elaborate journeys which these exceptionally precious artefacts have made through time and space, shows us how they have been copied, who has owned them or lusted after them (and how we can tell), how they have been embroiled in politics and scholarly disputes, how they have been regarded as objects of supreme beauty and luxury and as symbols of national identity. The book touches on religion, art, literature, music, science and the history of taste.Part travel book, part detective story, part conversation with the reader, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts conveys the fascination and excitement of encountering some of the greatest works of art in our culture which, in the originals, are to most people completely inaccessible. At the end, we have a slightly different perspective on history and how we come by knowledge. It is a most unusual book.

    Out of favor with Amsterdam's elite, and considered brash and unreasonable by his patrons, Rembrandt van Rijn, once revered, is now teetering on the brink of madness. Cornelia alone must care for him, though she herself is haunted by secrets and scandal. Her only happiness comes in chance meetings with Carel, the son of a wealthy shipping magnate whose passion for art stirs Cornelia. And then there is Neel, her father's last remaining pupil, whose steadfast devotion to Rembrandt both baffles and touches her. Based on historical fact, and filled with family dramas and a love triangle that would make Jane Austen proud, I Am Rembrandt's Daughter is a powerful account of a young woman's struggle to come of age within the shadow of one of the world's most brilliant and complicated artists.

    Published on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the iconic brand, the book brings together the expertise of Joa Studholme and Farrow & Ball's creative team to demystify the nitty-gritty of transforming a home - from deciding which colors work best in a north-facing room to creating accents with paint and making the most of a feature wall.

    It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_...

    But Luca Bastardo is anything but an ordinary boy. Across two centuries of passion and intrigue, Luca will discover an astonishing gift—one that will lead him to embrace the ancient mysteries of alchemy and healing and to become a trusted confidant to the powerful Medicis…even as he faces persecution from a sadistic cabal determined to wrest his secrets for themselves.But as the Black Death and the Inquisition wreak havoc on his beloved city, Luca’s survival lies in the quest to solve two riddles. One is the enigma of his parents and his ageless beauty. The other is a choice between immortality and the only chance to find his one true love. As Luca journeys through the heights of the Renaissance, befriends Giotto and Leonardo Da Vinci—140 years apart—and pursues the most closely guarded secrets of religious faith and science for the answers to his own burning questions, his remarkable search will not only change him…but will change the course of history.

    Following the life of the duty-bound but passionless Soames Forsyte, stuck in an unhappy marriage with his quick-witted and sensitive wife Irene, his domineering uncle Old Jolyon, and his libertine cousin Young Jolyon, it exposes fully the realities of Victorian society of the day. The sympathetic and evocative picture it paints has made this trilogy.a classic.A Modern Comedy takes up where the Forsyte Saga leaves off, following the lives of the next generation of Forsytes: Jon Forsyte and Fleur Mont, living with the legacy of their parents misadventures. Written after "the great earthquake", as Galsworthy puts it, of World War I, the second Forsyte trilogy speaks of the changes in British society of the 1920s, depicted through the prism of the Forsyte family.The End of the Chapter is the third trilogy in the series, continuing the story of the Forsytes as the old Victorian society declines further under the onslaught of the Edwardian era.This material was NOT merely scanned from an ink-and-paper book, like many Kindle e-books are. All e-books offered by Di Lernia Publishers are hand-edited and checked for spelling and punctuation errors.

    When Brooke and Steve Giannetti decided to leave their suburban Santa Monica home to build a new life on a farm, they looked into themselves, and traveled to Belgium and France, for inspiration. Brooke’s inviting prose combines with 200 photographs and Steve’s architectural drawings to show their inspirations, their materials selections, and the enviable result of their team effort and creativity: an idyllic farm in California’s Ojai Valley. We see every corner of the family home, guesthouse, lush gardens, and delightful animal quarters. Steve Giannetti is a renowned architect, and Brooke is an interior decorator and writer of the design blog Velvet and Linen. They also own Giannetti Home, a store that sells furniture and products for the home in their signature Patina style. The couple’s work has been featured in the Veranda, Coastal Living, Good Housekeeping, the New York Times. They are the authors of Patina Style.

    Enriched by the lush calligraphic illustrations of Arabic artist Lassa d Metoui, the poems bear remarkable power and emotional intensity, reflecting on the complexities of love, passion, pain, and faith. These songs of the spirit offer an intimate introduction to the poet's genius, as well as a sublime meditation on the mysteries of love.

    Torn away from the girl he wants to marry, he spends many bitter years in the grim island prison of the Chateau d'If. A fellow prisoner, the Abbe Faria, tells him the secret of the treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo. Now, if only he can escape from the fortress, he can become rich - and be revenged on the people who betrayed him all those years ago...The Count of Monte Cristo has been abridged and simplified by Beatrice Conway

    Lewis' The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, as historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It describes the image discarded by later ages as the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe. This, Lewis' last book, was hailed as the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind.

    Among the immortals--Leonardo, Rembrandt, Picasso--Michelangelo stands alone as a master of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He was not only the greatest artist in an age of giants, but a man who reinvented the practice of art itself. Throughout his long career he clashed with patrons by insisting that he had no master but his own demanding muse and promoting the novel idea that it was the artist, rather than the lord who paid for it, who was creative force behind the work. Miles Unger narrates the astonishing life of this driven and difficult man through six of his greatest masterpieces. Each work expanded the expressive range of the medium, from the "Pieta "Michelangelo carved as a brash young man, to the apocalyptic "Last Judgment," the work of an old man tested by personal trials. Throughout the course of his career he explored the full range of human possibility. In the gargantuan "David "he depicts Man in the glory of his youth, while in the tombs he carved for the Medici he offers a sustained meditation on death and the afterlife. In the Sistine Chapel ceiling he tells the epic story of Creation, from the perfection of God's initial procreative act to the corruption introduced by His imperfect children. In the final decades of his life, his hands too unsteady to wield the brush and chisel, he exercised his mind by raising the soaring vaults and dome of St. Peter's in a final tribute to his God. A work of deep artistic understanding, Miles Unger's "Michelangelo" brings to life the irascible, egotistical, and undeniably brilliant man whose artistry continues to amaze and inspire us after 500 years.