Or sunflowers. (Though it does wax lyrical about some stunning Alpine scenery . . . and, with the race starting in Yorkshire, even some stunning scenery not far from Bradford).From Leeds to Paris (how often do you say that?), Ned details the minutiae of his encounters with the likes of Vincenzo Nibali, David Millar, Chris Froome, Chris Boardman (or ‘Broadman’ as some would have it), Marcel Kittel, Mrs Cavendish (Mark’s wife), Peter Sagan and the rest. Their endeavours, achievements, humour and occasional rancour, sit alongside his own decade-long quest for the ideal end-of-race T-shirt.Ned weaves together the interesting, amusing and unheralded threads of the race itself, and reflects on his own perennial struggle to get round, get on and get by. 101 Damnations encapsulates all that is incredible – and incredibly ordinary – about the greatest race on earth.

    J. Clark describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others as an attempt to give form to that modernity and seek out its typical representatives—be they bar-maids, boaters, prostitutes, sightseers, or petits bourgeois lunching on the grass. The central question of The Painting of Modern Life is this: did modern painting as it came into being celebrate the consumer-oriented culture of the Paris of Napoleon III, or open it to critical scrutiny? The revised edition of this classic book includes a new preface by the author.

    A recent French biography begins, Who doesn't know Nadar? In France, that's a rhetorical question. Of all of the legendary figures who thrived in mid-19th-century Paris a cohort that includes Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Gustave Courbet, and Alexandre Dumas Nadar was perhaps the most innovative, the most restless, the most modern. The first great portrait photographer, a pioneering balloonist, the first person to take an aerial photograph, and the prime mover behind the first airmail service, Nadar was one of the original celebrity artist-entrepreneurs. A kind of 19th-century Andy Warhol, he knew everyone worth knowing and photographed them all, conferring on posterity psychologically compelling portraits of Manet, Sarah Bernhardt, Delacroix, Daumier and countless others a priceless panorama of Parisian celebrity. Born Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, he adopted the pseudonym Nadar as a young bohemian, when he was a budding writer and cartoonist. Later he affixed the name Nadar to the facade of his opulent photographic studio in giant script, the illuminated letters ten feet tall, the whole sign fifty feet long, a garish red beacon on the boulevard. Nadar became known to all of Europe and even across the Atlantic when he launched "The Giant," a gas balloon the size of a twelve-story building, the largest of its time. With his daring exploits aboard his humongous balloon (including a catastrophic crash that made headlines around the world), he gave his friend Jules Verne the model for one of his most dynamic heroes. The Great Nadaris a brilliant, lavishly illustrated biography of a larger-than-life figure, a visionary whose outsized talent and canny self-promotion put him way ahead of his time."

    This extraordinary book is the account of how he pulled it off. By turns thrilling and slapstick, sublime and outrageous, A Viking Voyage is an unforgettable adventure story that will take you to the heart of some of the most magnificent, unspoiled territory on earth, and even deeper, to the heart of a journey like no other. A celebration of the people and places Carter visits and a treasure-trove of fascinating Viking lore, here is an unforgettable story of friendship and teamwork–and the thrill of accomplishing a goal that once seemed impossible.

    The fully updated guide includes unique cutaways, floor plans, and reconstructions of the must-see sights, plus street-by-street maps of cities and towns. DK's insider travel tips and essential local information will help you discover the best of the Greek Islands, from local festivals and markets to day trips around the countryside. Detailed listings will guide you to hotels, restaurants, bars and shops for all budgets, while practical information will help you to get around by train, bus, or car.With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that brighten up every page, "DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Greek Islands" truly shows you around this destination as no one else can.

    Gerda Panofsky-Soergel has updated the commentary in the light of new material, and the bibliography that she has prepared reflects the scholarship on St.-Denis in the last three decades. She has obtained some additional and more recent photographs, and the illustrations include a new ground plan and a new section of the chevet of the Abbey Church, both drawn under the supervision of Sumner McKnight Crosby.

    The sight dazed and disturbed us profoundly. I was on the edge of tears. Something priceless was dying in front of our eyes. The feeling was bewildering, as if the earth was shaking.” —Ken Follett“[A] treasure of a book.” —The New Yorker In this short, spellbinding book, international bestselling author Ken Follett describes the emotions that gripped him when he learned about the fire that threatened to destroy one of the greatest cathedrals in the world—the Notre-Dame de Paris. Follett then tells the story of the cathedral, from its construction to the role it has played across time and history, and he reveals the influence that the Notre-Dame had upon cathedrals around the world and on the writing of one of Follett's most famous and beloved novels, The Pillars of the Earth. Ken Follett will donate his proceeds from this book to the charity La Fondation du Patrimoine.

    Encompassing a grand sweep of human history, A History of the World in 100 Objects begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with objects which characterise the world we live in today. Seen through MacGregor's eyes, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. A stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people; Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency; and an early Victorian tea-set speaks to us about the impact of empire. An intellectual and visual feast, this is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years. 'Brilliant, engagingly written, deeply researched' Mary Beard, Guardian 'A triumph: hugely popular, and rightly lauded as one of the most effective and intellectually ambitious initiatives in the making of 'public history' for many decades' Sunday Telegraph 'Highly intelligent, delightfully written and utterly absorbing ' Timothy Clifford, Spectator 'This is a story book, vivid and witty, shining with insights, connections, shocks and delights' Gillian Reynolds Daily Telegraph

    

    For the political-minded philosopher, the connection between visual art and power was clear: art is not an aesthetic pursuit, but a means to explore and challenge power dynamics. A precursor to Foucault's later work on le regard, or the gaze, the text examines paintings like Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère, where Manet used the mirror to imply the multiple gaze of the waitress, the viewer, and the man at the bar, who may or may not be the artist himself. Foucault used Manet as a basis for a wider exploration of culture.With a new introduction by leading French critic and Tate curator Nicolas Bourriaud and a note on the translation by Matthew Barr, this is a major contribution to the fields of both modern philosophy and art history.

    His subject is the forbidden Paris of the 1930s, its opium dens, its brothels and its whores, where high society mingled with the underworld.

    He announced to the public his grandiose plans for the thousands of acres he had secretly purchased.For the eighteen months prior to the announcement, Walt entrusted a small group of men to covertly make these purchases. Next, they were tasked with drafting a legislative act to submit to the state of Florida that would allow Disney to wield nearly absolute legal control over the property under a quasi-government municipality.Staying true to its storytelling roots, Disney wove a tale of mystery centered around a high-ranking CIA operative, who was rumored to have been, just a few short years before, the paymaster behind the Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba.This savvy and well-connected CIA agent became the de facto leader for the group of Disney executives and attorneys who orchestrated and executed a nearly perfect plan to keep Disney’s identity a secret from the public by utilizing aliases, shell corporations, and meandering travel itineraries, all in an effort to protect the company’s identity during the land acquisition process.As told through the personal notes and files from the key figures involved in the project, Buying Disney’s World details the story of how Walt Disney World came to be, like you’ve never heard before.From conception to construction and everything in between—including how a parcel of land within Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort was acquired during a high-stakes poker game—explore how the company most famous for creating Mickey Mouse acquired central Florida’s swamps, orange groves, and cow pastures to build a Disney fiefdom and a Magic Kingdom.

    This is the story of how, with the odd misstep along the way, the owners of the Bond franchise, Eon Productions, have contrived to keep James Bond abreast of the zeitgeist and at the top of the charts for 45 years, through 21 films featuring six Bonds, three M’s, two Q’s and three Moneypennies. Thanks to the films, Fleming’s original creation has been transformed from a black sheep of the post-war English upper classes into a figure with universal appeal, constantly evolving to keep pace with changing social and political circumstances. Having interviewed people concerned with all aspects of the films, Sinclair McKay is ideally placed to describe how the Bond ‘brand’ has been managed over the years as well as to give us the inside stories of the supporting cast of Bond girls, Bond villains, Bond cars and Bond gadgetry. Sinclair McKay, formerly assistant features editor of the Daily Telegraph, works as a freelance writer and journalist. He is also the author of A Thing of Unspeakable Horror: The History of Hammer Films, which the Guardian called ‘A splendid history’ and the Independent on Sunday described as ‘Brisk, cheerful and enthusiastic.’

    Nowhere is this more apparent than in the writings of Marcel Duchamp, who fashioned some of the more joyous and ingenious couplings and uncouplings in modern art. This collection beings together two essential interviews and two statements about his art that underscore the serious side of Duchamp. But most of the book is made up of his experimental writings, which he called ”Texticles,” the long and extraordinary notes he wrote for The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Eben (also known as The Large Glass), and the outrageous puns and alter-ego he constructed for his female self, Rrose Sélavy (”Eros, c’est la vie” or “arouser la vie”—“drink it up”; “celebrate life”). Wacky, perverse, deliberately frustrating, these entertaining notes are basic for understanding one of the twentieth century’s most provocative artists, a figure whose influence on the contemporary scene has never been stronger.

    Originally published in Munich in 1912 and edited by Kandinsky and Marc-- the movements's almanac presented their synthesis of international culture to the European avant garde at large. In both the selection of essays and its innovative interplay of word and image, The Blaue Reiter Almanac remains one of our most critically important works of literature on the art theory and culture of the twentieth century. This edition, long unavailable in English and indispensable to any student of Modernism, simulates the original German format, and includes documents, and musical notations, as well as seminal essays by Kandinsky, Schoenberg, Marc and others. Nearly 150 illustrations, from ancient and contemporary sources, capture the wide-ranging interests and passions that inspired Kandinsky's and Marc's programmatic attempt to make Modernism accessible across national and chronological boundaries. Also included is Klaus Lankheit's extensive critical introduction, which places the Blaue Reiter in context for contemporary readers."The almanac remains unique among European writings on art; no other country produced a comparable work capturing the excitement and tension of the years before World War I." (Will Grohmann)