Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn's Holy Experiment
Kevin Kenny - 2009
In this book, historian Kevin Kenny explains how this Peaceable Kingdom--benevolent, Quaker, pacifist--gradually disintegrated in the eighteenth century, with disastrous consequences for Native Americans.Kenny recounts how rapacious frontier settlers, most of them of Ulster extraction, began to encroach on Indian land as squatters, while William Penn's sons cast off their father's Quaker heritage and turned instead to fraud, intimidation, and eventually violence during the French and Indian War. In 1763, a group of frontier settlers known as the Paxton Boys exterminated the last twenty Conestogas, descendants of Indians who had lived peacefully since the 1690s on land donated by William Penn near Lancaster. Invoking the principle of right of conquest, the Paxton Boys claimed after the massacres that the Conestogas' land was rightfully theirs. They set out for Philadelphia, threatening to sack the city unless their grievances were met. A delegation led by Benjamin Franklin met them and what followed was a war of words, with Quakers doing battle against Anglican and Presbyterian champions of the Paxton Boys. The killers were never prosecuted and the Pennsylvania frontier descended into anarchy in the late 1760s, with Indians the principal victims. The new order heralded by the Conestoga massacres was consummated during the American Revolution with the destruction of the Iroquois confederacy. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States confiscated the lands of Britain's Indian allies, basing its claim on the principle of right of conquest.Based on extensive research in eighteenth-century primary sources, this engaging history offers an eye-opening look at how colonists--at first, the backwoods Paxton Boys but later the U.S. government--expropriated Native American lands, ending forever the dream of colonists and Indians living together in peace.
Freakin' Fabulous on a Budget
Clinton Kelly - 2013
Now Clinton Kelly—America’s favorite expert on, well, everything—applies his brilliant sense of style and humor to all aspects of life, from dining and entertaining to decorating and etiquette. And he does it all without spending a fortune!In this ingenious new collection of must haves, whatnots, and need-to-knows, Clinton Kelly proves that it doesn’t take a lot of money to look like a million bucks. In fact, you can dress, entertain, and decorate in a way that makes everyone think you’re filthy rich!Clinton shows you how to:LOOK YOUR BEST—FOR LESS Put together beautiful designer looks at a fraction of the cost!EAT LIKE A KING (OR QUEEN) Stuffed Artichokes! Beef Bourguignon! Chocolate Soufflé!LIVE IT UP & PARTY DOWN Throw fabulous dinner parties that won’t break the bank!DIY YOUR HOME, CHIC HOME Make your own “mercury glass” lamps, haute-couture napkins, high-end centerpieces, and MoMA-worthy artwork! Packed with full-color photos, bargain-hunting tips, posh party ideas, easy-but impressive recipes, dazzling home projects, and everyday indulgences that don’t cost a dime, Clinton’s book is the perfect fit for any size bank account. Now that’s freakin’ fabulous!
Finding Emilie
Laurel Corona - 2011
. . .Lili du Châtelet yearns to know more about her mother, the brilliant French mathematician Emilie. But the shrouded details of Emilie's unconventional life -- and her sudden death -- are elusive. Caught between the confines of a convent upbringing and the intrigues of the Versailles court, Lili blossoms under the care of a Parisian salonnière as she absorbs the excitement of the Enlightenment, even as the scandalous shadow of her mother's past haunts her and puts her on her own path of self-discovery.Laurel Corona's breathtaking new novel, set on the eve of the French Revolution, vividly illuminates the tensions of the times, and the dangerous dance between the need to conform and the desire to chart one's own destiny and journey of the heart.
The American Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort 1750-1950
Roderick Kiracofe - 1993
The American Quilt shows how these virtuoso textiles, long appreciated for their bold graphic appeal and naive charm, are also a fascinating reflection of cultural and social attitudes, painting an indelible portrait of our nation’s history and the remarkable women who lived it. America of the 18th and 19th centuries developed at a breathtaking pace, and the changes that marked each era were inevitably mirrored in the prevailing quilting styles of the period. The American Quilt marks the first time the evolution of quilting has been traced chronologically, identifying the fabric, design, and construction hallmarks of each period and showing the genesis of beloved patterns and styles. A thorough discussion of America’s textile history, complete with a fabric time-line, provides further insight into antique quilts, offering important clues to their age and provenance.The American Quilt charts the course of quilting in America, from the earliest whole-cloth and broderie perse quilts through the emergence of the block style in all its regional and popular permutations. Special sections are devoted to quilt subgenres, including Amish quilts, Baltimore Album quilts, mourning quilts, and African-American quilts, that are highly prized by collectors today.Quilt collectors will also find helpful information on displaying, storing, and caring for quilts, as well as an exhaustive directory of dealers and quilt collections that have been updated for this edition.Filled with more than 250 photographs of rarely seen quilts and delightful evocations of quilting’s colorful past, The American Quilt is a thought-provoking and important step forward in our ever-expanding knowledge of this remarkable folk art.“[The American Quilt] offers a profusely illustrated survey that ingeniously weaves the threads of America’s social, political, economic, and industrial history into the evolution of the quilt-making arts.” —New York Times“A longtime dealer of antique quilts, Kiracofe has given us a guide to evaluating and dating old quilts, and has included methods of tracking down the makers, and advice on their cleaning, storage, hanging, and restoration. A pleasure for the generalist, this book will be indispensable to serious students and collectors.” —Washington Post“A must for any serious student of quilts.” —Quilter’s NotebookA “classic quilt tome.”—USA Today
Style Me Vintage: The Complete Guide to Creating a Retro Look: Hair, Make-up, Clothes
Naomi Thompson - 2012
It provides everything fashionistas need to know about all things vintage, so whether one is looking to completely overhaul a look, go for total vintage glam, or just introduce a few key vintage elements into the day-to-day look, this book explains how. Combining step-by-step hair and make-up styling techniques with a guide to sourcing vintage clothing from the 1920s to the 1980s, the book's detailed photographs and expert insight from its three authors provides readers with the knowledge needed to determine an individual style. It also offers tips on how to make retro styles work with modern accessories, making it essential reading for every girl who likes to dress up.
Who What Wear: Celebrity and Runway Style for Real Life
Hillary Kerr - 2009
Now, the creators share their tricks of the trade, translating high fashion in a low-fuss, accessible way. Hillary Kerr and Katherine Power, two former Elle magazine editors, are the fashionable duo behind the booming website. In Who What Wear they’ve compiled the best of their tips and advice into one stylish compendium.Trends come and go at a dizzying pace and it can be challenging to just get dressed in the morning!Kerr and Power banish those fashion faux-pas fears and give readers the tools necessary to update their own personal styles and recognize and incorporate the latest runway and Hollywood looks.Celebrity contributors such as Rachel Zoe, Nicole Richie, and Rachel Bilson also dish their insider style secrets alongside images from the runway and beyond.
Grace: A Memoir
Grace Coddington - 2012
Willful. Charming. Blunt. Grace Coddington’s extraordinary talent and fierce dedication to her work as creative director of Vogue have made her an international icon. Known through much of her career only to those behind the scenes, she might have remained fashion’s best-kept secret were it not for The September Issue, the acclaimed 2009 documentary that turned publicity-averse Grace into a sudden, reluctant celebrity. Grace’s palpable engagement with her work brought a rare insight into the passion that produces many of the magazine’s most memorable shoots. With the witty, forthright voice that has endeared her to her colleagues and peers for more than forty years, Grace now creatively directs the reader through the storied narrative of her life so far. Evoking the time when models had to tote their own bags and props to shoots, Grace describes her early career as a model, working with such world-class photographers as David Bailey and Norman Parkinson, before she stepped behind the camera to become a fashion editor at British Vogue in the late 1960s. Here she began creating the fantasy “travelogues” that would become her trademark. In 1988 she joined American Vogue, where her breathtakingly romantic and imaginative fashion features, a sampling of which appear in this book, have become instant classics. Delightfully underscored by Grace’s pen-and-ink illustrations, Grace will introduce readers to the colorful designers, hairstylists, makeup artists, photographers, models, and celebrities with whom Grace has created her signature images. Grace reveals her private world with equal candor—the car accident that almost derailed her modeling career, her two marriages, the untimely death of her sister, Rosemary, her friendship with Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Liz Tilberis, and her thirty-year romance with Didier Malige. Finally, Grace describes her abiding relationship with Anna Wintour, and the evolving mastery by which she has come to define the height of fashion. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FINANCIAL TIMES“If Wintour is the Pope . . . Coddington is Michelangelo, trying to paint a fresh version of the Sistine Chapel twelve times a year.”—Time
Dressing Marilyn: How a Hollywood Icon Was Styled by William Travilla
Andrew Hansford - 2011
William Travilla is one of the best costume designers of all time and Marilyn Monroe his most famous client. Dressing Marilyn: How a Hollywood Icon Was Styled by William Travilla focuses on the striking dresses that Travilla designed for Marilyn, from his early work on the thriller Don't Bother to Knock and the gorgeous pink dress in which Marilyn sang "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" to the legendary white dress from The Seven Year Itch, which arguably contributed to the collapse of Marilyn's marriage to Joe DiMaggio. Featuring Travilla's original sketches, rare costume test shots, dress patterns, photographs of Marilyn wearing the dresses, plus exclusive and never-before-seen extracts from interviews with Travilla, this book offers a fresh insight into the golden age of Hollywood.
Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers
Jessica Roux - 2020
The book explores the coded significances associated with various blooms, from flowers for a lover to flowers for an enemy.The language of flowers was historically used as a means of secret communication. It soared in popularity during the 19th century, especially in Victorian England and the U.S., when proper etiquette discouraged open displays of emotion. Mysterious and playful, the language of flowers has roots in everything from the characteristics of the plant to its presence in folklore and history. Researched and illustrated by popular artist Jessica Roux, this book makes a stunning display piece, conversation-starter, or thoughtful gift.
Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons From The World's Most Elegant Woman
Karen Karbo - 2009
Delving into the long, extraordinary life of renowned French fashion designer Coco Chanel, Karen Karbo has written a new kind of book, exploring Chanel's philosophy on a range of universal themes - from style to passion, from money and success to femininity and living life on your own terms.For a live viewing of Chesley McLaren's illustrations you can visit The 4th Wall Gallery.Click here for more info.
The French Mistress
Susan Holloway Scott - 2009
With few friends, many rivals, and ever-shifting loyalties, Louise learns the perils of her new role. Yet she is too ambitious to be a pawn in the intrigues of others. With the promise of riches, power, and even the love of a king, Louise creates her own destiny in a dance of intrigue between two monarchs-and two countries.
Diane: A Signature Life: My Adventures in Fashion, Business, and Life
Diane Von Furstenberg - 1998
"Most fairy tales end with the girl marrying the prince. That's where mine began", says Diane Von Furstenberg. She didn't have to work, but she did. She lived the American Dream before she was thirty, building a multimillion-dollar fashion empire while raising two children and living life in the fast lane.Von Furstenberg's wrap dress, a cultural phenomenon in the seventies, hangs in the Smithsonian Institution. "No one was making a little bourgeois dress, so I did," she told Newsweek in her 1976 cover story. The dress achieved such popularity that in the five years it was on the market, Diane sold more than five million of them. Her entry into the beauty business in 1979 was as serendipitous and as successful.Diane learned her trade in the trenches, crisscrossing the country to make personal appearances at department stores, selling her dresses and cosmetics. "As I was learning to be a woman and enjoying being one, I was sharing my discoveries, designing for my needs, and making a business of it", she writes. That business had its ups and downs. Eventually, there was so much demand for and exposure of the dress that the market became saturated; on the verge of bankruptcy, she licensed that part of the business, focusing on her fragrance and beauty products.Von Furstenberg's personal world unraveled a bit in 1980 when her mother, Lily, a survivor of Auschwitz, had a breakdown. Diane of course knew about her mother's experience in the camps, though her mother had never wanted to dwell on it. She understood that her own need for freedom came from her mother's lack of it, and that her resilience derived from her mother's life lesson to always turn a negative into a positive.Leaving the glitz of Manhattan and the music of Studio 54 behind, Diane escaped to Bali with her children, returning inspired and renewed. With all of this energy, the cosmetics business flourished. But it grew so fast that in 1983 she found herself undercapitalized and was forced to sell.In 1985, having given up control of her brand to licensees and with her children away at school, Diane turned her back on America and packed for Paris. She spent four years in her new role as part of the literary scene there, trading in her spike heels for flat shoes and tweed.In 1990, she found she missed the chase and returned to New York to regain control of her name and relaunch her company. Frustrated by the degraded status of her brand and dismissed by the retail community, she searched for a new way to reconnect with her customers. She found it through the revolutionary new medium of teleshopping and once again became a success. However, she still wanted to return to retail.In 1997, as the wrap dress was making a comeback with the nostalgia for the seventies, Von Furstenberg, with the help of her beautiful daughter-in-law, Alexandra, redesigned the dress for the nineties and made her name relevant to a whole new generation.Now, at fifty, Diane works to make sense of the contradictions in her life: glamour vs. hard work, European vs. American, daughter of a Holocaust survivor vs. wife of an Austro-Italian prince, mother vs. entrepreneur, lover vs. tycoon. She emerges wiser, stronger, and ever more determined never to sacrifice her passion for life.
Vidal: The Autobiography
Vidal Sassoon - 2010
His memoir begins with surprising and often moving stories of his early life—his time at the Spanish & Portuguese Jewish Orphanage in Maida Vale, fighting fascists in London's East End, and fighting in the army of the fledgling state of Israel in the late 1940s. He then discusses his extraordinary career, during which he cut the hair of everyone who was anyone—including Mary Quant, Grace Coddington, Twiggy, Rita Hayworth, and Mia Farrow; launched salons all over the world; founded the hairdressing school that still bears his name; and became a global brand. He also shares the passions that drive him—architecture and beautiful women, Israel and anti-Semitism, family ties and season tickets at Chelsea. The compelling memoir of a genuine fashion icon who reinvented the art of hairdressing.
Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear
Lucy Adlington - 2015
Starting with underwear – did you know Elizabeth I owned just one pair of drawers, worn only after her death? – she moves garment by garment through Western attire, exploring both the items we still wear every day and those that have gone the way of the dodo (sugared petticoats, farthingales and spatterdashers to name but a few).Beautifully illustrated throughout, and crammed with fascinating and eminently quotable facts, Stitches in Time shows how the way we dress is inextricably bound up with considerations of aesthetics, sex, gender, class and lifestyle – and offers us the chance to truly appreciate the extraordinary qualities of these, our most ordinary possessions.
Myths & Legends: An Illustrated Guide to Their Origins and Meanings
Philip Wilkinson - 1999
Their narratives, themes, and characters address and provide answers to eternal questions: where do we come from, how do we live, what do we believe in? This fascinating book explores the major myths and legends across the world, from Classical mythology to Eastern beliefs, and from American legends to African folk tales. The stories are retold in compelling detail, while key aspects of each myth are considered: their meaning, purpose, and power; the main characters; and their importance to modern culture.Special illustrations and photographs combine with informative text, family trees, and a focus on themes such as creation, death, and the afterlife. From Gilgamesh to Quetzalcoatl, Heracles to Pan Gu, Myths and Legends provides a full and captivating reference guide to the worlds of mythical beings, mortal heroes, and immortal gods.