In 1740, George Anson and his fleet set off to harass Spanish commerce in the Pacific and attack towns on the coasts of Chile and Peru. Four years later, over half the men had died and of the seven ships which left Portsmouth only the Centurion had completed its objective of attacking Spanish possessions around the globe. Although this journey came at the cost of numerous lives and ships, the Centurion had succeeded in capturing the biggest prize of all time, the Acapulco galleon. Captain Philip Saumarez kept a daily record of the voyage around the world in his four log books, which along with a wealth of letters and documents give brilliant insight into life aboard these ships. Leo Heaps has compiled and edited these manuscripts to provide a complete chronicle of the expedition which saw men decimated by scurvy, mutinies among marooned sailors, ships battered by mountainous waves around Cape Horn and eventual glory in the capture of the gold-laden Nuestra Señora de la Covadonga. Log of the Centurion is a unique account of a daring maritime expedition across the high seas of the globe in the mid-eighteenth century. “It is a tribute to her officers that she not only captured the greatest prize at sea, but that she returned at all.” Christopher Lloyd, former Professor of History at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich “It is an absorbing tale … The merit of this book lies in its realistic evocation of the mid-18th century. We have fine descriptions of China and the delicate negotiations conducted with the Manchus for supplies and repairs. Patagonia, Juan Fernandez (Crusoe’s island), Madeira, and other exotic places are vividly described.” Regis A. Courtemanche, History: Reviews of New Books

    Drawing on fourteen years of research; more than a hundred letters unknown to prior biographers; exclusive interviews with Lorca's friends, family, and acquaintances; and dozens of newly discovered archival material, Stainton has brought her subject to Life as few writers can. She describes his carefree childhood in rural Andalusia; his residencies in Madrid and Granada, then in New York, Havana, and Buenos Aires; his potent interaction with other Spanish artists, such as Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, and the composer Manuel de Falla; and, finally, Stainton shows how Lorca's marginal political activity during the Spanish Civil War still cost him his life.Throughout, Stainton meticulously but unobtrusively relates the oeuvre to the life. Her biography is quickly becoming the standard one-volume work on the poet.

    During our journey we will explore stories from Babylon, Greece, Ireland, Ethiopia, and various other cultures to fill in the missing pieces to one of the biggest mysteries on our planet. This 2nd Edition includes 40+ hours of additional audio and video content for your enjoyment. Make sure you download a free QR code scanner for your smart phone or tablet so you can take full advantage of the features in this book.

    A miniature pig splashing in a bowl of soup; a duck leading a wheelbarrow down a country lane; a woman gently stroking her daughter's face with a rabbit: take a trip into Sowa's brilliant and darkly comic imagination, where a menagerie of creatures adopt strange personae and pop up in the most unexpected places. In the same realm as Chris Van Allsburg and Maurice Sendak, Sowa's paintings take on the other-worldly look of a whacked-out fairy tale—each work full of irony, a wry Brothers Grimm for grown-ups. These witty and satirical images—a cross between Magritte and The Far Side—are sure to attract a well-deserved and passionate following in the States.

    You'll also find character profiles, promotional artwork, rare concept art, and a detailed look at the origins of the "Blue Blur".

    A teenage girl disappears on her way home from Coatesville High School. A reputed witch turns up dead in Pottsville. A young woman seemingly helps solve her own murder after she dies in a Philadelphia park.True-crime author Tammy Mal digs up facts on four of Pennsylvania’s weirdest killings in her book Tortured Minds: Pennsylvania’s Most Bizarre—But Forgotten—Murders. These 1930s crimes have long fallen into obscurity, but Mal deftly revives them in stark detail, from discovery of the body and through the trial. Ghosts, witches, resentment, and sex factor into these crimes, giving them a chilling edge as Mal brings them back to life in her latest true-crime book. It’s a look into just what tortured minds can do, certain to convince you to lock your doors after dark.

    The book introduces two basic art historical methods formal analysis and contextual analysis revealing how to use these methods in writing papers and in class discussion.

    Through his street roots in graffiti, Basquiat helped to establish new possibilities for figurative and expressionistic painting, breaking the white male stranglehold of Conceptual and Minimal art, and foreshadowing, among other tendencies, Germany's Junge Wilde movement. It was not only Basquiat's art but also the details of his biography that made his name legendary--his early years as "Samo" (his graffiti artist moniker), his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Madonna and his tragically early death from a heroin overdose. This superbly produced retrospective publication assesses Basquiat's luminous career with commentary by, among others, Glenn O'Brien, and 160 color reproductions of the work.Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father--an ethnic mix that meant young Jean-Michel was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of 11. In 1977, at the age of 17, Basquiat took up graffiti, inscribing the landscape of downtown Manhattan with his signature "Samo." In 1980 he was included in the landmark group exhibition The Times Square Show; the following year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist ever to be invited to Documenta. By 1982, Basquiat had befriended Andy Warhol, later collaborating with him; Basquiat was much affected by Warhol's death in 1987. He died of a heroin overdose on August 22, 1988, at the age of 27.

    There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, or experienced,” said Grant Wood, “that’s been even the least bit exciting.” Wood was one of America’s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an “almost mythical figure,” recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America’s traditional values—a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age. In this major new biography of America’s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . . R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie” of small-town America. We see Wood as an artist haunted and inspired by the images of childhood; by the complex relationship with his father (stern, pious, the “manliest of men”); with his sister and his beloved mother (Wood shared his studio and sleeping quarters with his mother until her death at seventy-seven; he was forty-four). We see Wood’s homosexuality and how his studied masculinity was a ruse that shaped his work.Here is Wood’s life and work explored more deeply and insightfully than ever before. Drawing on letters, the artist’s unfinished autobiography, his sister’s writings, and many never-before-seen documents, Evans’s book is a dimensional portrait of a deeply complicated artist who became a “National Symbol.” It is as well a portrait of the American art scene at a time when America’s Calvinistic spirit and provincialism saw Europe as decadent and artists were divided between red-blooded patriotic men and “hothouse aesthetes.” Thomas Hart Benton said of Grant Wood: “When this new America looks back for landmarks to help gauge its forward footsteps, it will find a monument standing up in the midst of the wreckage . . . This monument will be made out of Grant Wood’s works.”

    He continued to make great music while slowly returning to his Catholic roots. His hard-won wisdom filters through his stories whether he's recalling how he went shopping with John Lennon and ended up on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or what it was like to travel in the Jim Crow South with Sam Cooke.Praise for Dion... "To this day nobody, nobody can rock like Dion."—Lou Reed "He always had the name that said it all...Dion."—Bruce Springsteen "If you want to hear a great singer, listen to Dion. His genius has never deserted him."—Bob DylanThe audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

    In this book, artist and workshop teacher Patti Mollica walks you through surprisingly simple and efficient strategies for achieving that kind of powerful composition, whatever your subject. Complete with timed exercises and start-to-finish painting demonstrations, this book is for any artist who feels overwhelmed by where to start or daunted by the urge to paint everything in sight. Patti Mollica's mindful approach will lead you to better, bolder results, as well as greater confidence and joy in the process. So load your palette with ample paint, grab some fat brushes and get ready to paint fast, paint loose, paint bold. Start with a strong, simple value statement Get expressive with color Be brave with your brushwork 5 technique exercises 5 start-to-finish painting demonstrations Paint fearlessly!

    She introduces us to and takes us into the homes of these unusually creative people, who share her belief that thrift, economy, and ingenuity translate into high style indeed. There are before-and-after pictures, tips on repair and storage hints on how to bargain, ideas for themed collections and even a list of what to bring on junking expeditions. The author reveals the price of almost every one of the hundreds and hundreds of items pictured, and best of all provides a directory to more than two "junking sites" nationwide. American Junk is a one-of-a-kind book for those who appreciate the rare, the idiosyncratic, and the unexpected - those who realize that there are as many kinds of junk as there are individuals.

    It avoids the typical encyclopedic approach of surveys in favor of examining selected but highly representative works in greater depth and from an enlarged spectrum of critical discourse. Organized along chronological lines, topics explore the ideas, forms, events, artists, and works with each chapter devoted to a style, movement, or decade from Cezanne, Seurat, Gauguin, and Van Gogh through Minimalism and the general reaction known as Post-Modernism. Ideal for readers with a "general" interest in art. "

    Once it had been a forbidding place of exile, inhabited by thousands of the disease’s victims who had been removed from their families and confined against their will, far away from a society that feared and misunderstood their condition. When Brooke Jarvis came across a posting for a job in Kalaupapa, tending to the needs of the handful of remaining patients, it seemed like an impossibly exotic opportunity for a college student. But what she found there was both more remarkable and more familiar than what she had imagined. When We Are Called to Part is the absorbing, affecting, and often funny story of life in the last years of a rapidly vanishing community. “Even a prison,” she would learn, “eventually becomes a home, becomes something you mourn.”

    As painters, sculptors, photographers, and other visual artists see and experience the world through a unique lens, Art Is the Highest Form of Hope & Other Quotes by Artists shows that their life lessons, private revelations, and frank, often irreverent, opinions can guide us all.This unique and carefully curated book, packed with totally original research, is a go-to resource for revealing thoughts and personal advice on subjects as diverse as beauty, colour, light, sex, chance, discipline, money troubles, originality, fear of failure, danger of success, the creative process, and more – all messages transmitted from the artistic trenches.