The Samurai spirit, Bushido, is an integral component of Japanese tattooing that is traced through the imagery and interpersonal dynamics of this veiled subculture. The eloquent text is based largely on Takahiro Kitamura's experiences as client and student of the famed Japanese tattoo master, Horiyoshi III. Over 200 beautiful photos by Jai Tanju capture the breathtaking tattoo artistry of Horiyoshi III. Five original, unpublished prints by Horiyoshi III, like those in his acclaimed book, 100 Demons of Horiyoshi III, are included here. Bushido: Legacies of the Japanese Tattoo is certain to fascinate everyone with an interest in tattoo culture.

    Kennedy has been more carefully scrutinized. Michael O’Brien, who knows as much about Kennedy as any historian now writing, here takes a comprehensive look at the feature of Camelot that remained largely under the radar during the White House years: Kennedy’s womanizing. Indeed, O’Brien writes, Kennedy’s approach to women and sex was near pathological, beyond the farthest reaches of the media’s imagination at the time. The record makes for an astonishing piece of presidential history.---Michael O’Brien was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and studied at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he received a Ph.D. in history. He is the author of the widely praised John F. Kennedy: A Biography, a full-scale study based on eleven years’ research into letters, diaries, financial papers, medical records, manuscripts, and oral histories; and a concise analytical life of the president, Rethinking Kennedy. He is now emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Fox Valley, and lives in Door County, Wisconsin.

    Shambaugh Award Winner 2015 Spirited Awards Top Ten FinalistDuring Prohibition, while Al Capone was rising to worldwide prominence as Public Enemy Number One, the townspeople of rural Templeton, Iowa—population just 428—were busy with a bootlegging empire of their own. Led by Joe Irlbeck, the whip-smart and gregarious son of a Bavarian immigrant, the outfit of farmers, small merchants, and even the church monsignor worked together to create a whiskey so excellent it was ordered by name: "Templeton rye."Just as Al Capone had Eliot Ness, Templeton’s bootleggers had as their own enemy a respected Prohibition agent from the adjacent county named Benjamin Franklin Wilson. Wilson was ardent in his fight against alcohol, and he chased Irlbeck for over a decade. But Irlbeck was not Capone, and Templeton would not be ruled by violence like Chicago.Gentlemen Bootleggers tells a never-before-told tale of ingenuity, bootstrapping, and perseverance in one small town, showcasing a group of immigrants and first-generation Americans who embraced the ideals of self-reliance, dynamism, and democratic justice. It relies on previously classified Prohibition Bureau investigation files, federal court case files, extensive newspaper archive research, and a recently disclosed interview with kingpin Joe Irlbeck. Unlike other Prohibition-era tales of big-city gangsters, it provides an important reminder that bootlegging wasn’t only about glory and riches, but could be in the service of a higher goal: producing the best whiskey money could buy.

    Ceram visualized archeology as a wonderful combination of high adventure, romance, history and scholarship, and this book, a chronicle of man's search for his past, reads like a dramatic narrative. We travel with Heinrich Schliemann as, defying the ridicule of the learned world, he actually unearths the remains of the ancient city of Troy. We share the excitement of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter as they first glimpse the riches of Tutankhamen's tomb, of George Smith when he found the ancient clay tablets that contained the records of the Biblical Flood. We rediscover the ruined splendors of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient wold; of Chichen Itza, the abandoned pyramids of the Maya: and the legendary Labyrinth of tile Minotaur in Crete. Here is much of the history of civilization and the stories of the men who rediscovered it.From the Paperback edition.

    The strange saga of American architecture in the twentieth century makes for both high comedy and intellectual excitement as Wolfe debunks the European gods of modern and postmodern architecture and their American counterparts.

    The Devil and Dr. Barnes traces the near-mythical journey of a man who was born into poverty, amassed a fortune through the promotion of a popular medicine, and acquired the premier private collection of works by such masters as Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, and Picasso. Ostentatiously turning his back on the art establishment, Barnes challenged the aesthetic sensibilities of an uninitiated, often resistant and scoffing, American audience. In particular, he championed Matisse, Soutine, and Modigliani when they were obscure or in difficult straits. Analyzing what he saw as the formal relationships underlying all art, linking the old and the new, Barnes applied these principles in a rigorous course of study offered at his Merion foundation. Barnes's own mordant words, culled from the copious printed record, animate the narrative throughout, as do accounts of his associations with notables of the era--Gertrude and Leo Stein, Bertrand Russell, and John Dewey among them--many of whom he alienated with his appetite for passionate, public feuds. In this rounded portrait, Albert Barnes emerges as a complex, flawed man, who--blessed with an astute eye for greatness--has left us an incomparable treasure, gathered in one place and unforgettable to all who have seen it.

    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.

    It looks at French religious art in the Middle Ages, its forms, and especially the Eastern sources of sculptural iconography used in the cathedrals of France. Fully illustrated with many footnotes it acts as a useful guide for the student of Western culture.

    It investigated Rennes-le-Chteau, a small town in southwestern France where, in the late 19th century, village priest Berenger Saunire's discovery of a series of parchments led in turn to a large but cursed treasure that challenged many traditional Christian beliefs - including the possibility that Jesus' bloodline still exists. The treasure's story moved back through history to the Crusades, the origins of the Knights Templar, and the Virgin Birth itself. Now Dan Brown's international best-seller The Da Vinci Code has re-ignited curiosity about this ancient, powerful place. In The Holy Place, Lincoln reveals through further surveys, decoding, and analysis that this area in southwest France is the site of a Christian holy place of enormous size and importance. The book contains more than a hundred photographs, illustrations, and diagrams of Sauniere, Rennes-le-Chateau, the parchments that were the original impetus for Sauniere's discoveries, and the geometric foundations upon which they were based.(Description from back cover of trade paperback edition)

    Here is the dramatic story of that climatic battle and the men who planned and fought in it. The Normandy invasion altered the course of World War II and led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Third Reich. It is a story of courage and fear, tragedy and determination.

    Quotations by Native American leaders inspire us with their wisdom.

    Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it?In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible.The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.

    With every good thing life had to offer, she was due to marry the man she loved—a man who, in turn, adored her. But all this was to change in a single moment.One happy day, in the midst of writing to her fiancée, her hand stopped writing unbidden; then it continued by itself, etching the words which would change her life forever: ‘…but there’s no point now, as I am going to be a nun.’ That bolt from the blue set events in motion that caused Shirley to lose her mother and sisters, her husband to be, her horses, her parties and life of ease.Within months, Shirley had become Sister Agatha. But her faith in her choice never faltered, despite years of great difficulty when her Convent was close to bankruptcy. Her belief took her to London to knock on the intimidating Sir Paul Getty’s door and secure the money to ensure her community would not lose their home….and getting it. Now eighty-five, she looks back on an incredible life of love, loss and belief.This is at once a deeply poignant tale of doomed romance, and a heart-warming story of taking a leap of faith and finding a meaning in life beyond wealth and comfort. Whether a believer or not, Sister Agatha’s momentous life will touch and inspire, whilst reminding us that it is perhaps better to accept that not everything in the world is yet explained.

    Its scaffolding-cloaked spires reach up to the heavens, dominating the Barcelona skyline and drawing in millions of visitors every year. What seduces our attention is not only its architectural extravagance but the sheer longevity of its construction. More than a century after Gaudí saw the first stone laid in 1882, the Sagrada Familia remains unfinished, unlikely to be completed until 2026 at the very earliest. It has survived two World Wars, the ravages of the Spanish Civil War and the “Hunger Years” of Franco's rule. It has defied the critics, the penny-pinching accountants, the conservative town-planners, and the devotees of sterile modernism; it has enchanted and frustrated the citizens of Barcelona; and it has passed through some of the most momentous changes in society and history.The Sagrada Familia explores the evolution of this remarkable building, working through the decades right up to the present day before looking beyond to the final stretch of its construction. At once a guidebook and a history, it is also a moving study of man's aspiration toward the divine. Rich in detail, vast in scope, this is a revelatory chronicle of an iconic structure, its place in history, and the wild genius that created it.