Examines the details of architectural styles from 1485 to 1996, and provides a directory of suppliers and biographical data on select architects and designers.

    Essinger, a master story-teller, describes how Joseph-Marie Jacquard's loom enabled the silk-weavers of Lyons to weave fabrics 25 times faster than had previously been possible. The device used punched cards, which stored instructions for weaving whatever pattern or design was required. Thesecards can very reasonably be described as the world's first computer programs. Indeed, Essinger shows through a series of remarkable and meticulously researched historical connections--connections never before investigated--that the Jacquard loom kick-started a process of scientific evolution whichwould lead directly to the development of the modern computer. The book examines a wealth of extraordinary links between the nineteenth-century world of weaving and today's computer age: for example, modern computer graphics displays are based on exactly the same principles as those employed inJacquard's special woven tableaux. Jacquard's Web also introduces some of the most colorful and interesting characters in the history of science and technology: the modest but exceptionally dedicated Jacquard himself; the brilliant but temperamental Victorian polymath Charles Babbage, who dreamed ofa cogwheel computer operated using Jacquard cards; and the imaginative and perceptive Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's only legitimate daughter. Attractively illustrated and compellingly narrated, Jacquard's Web is an engaging and delightful volume. It is an impressive case of historical detective work, one that will leave the reader mesmerized.

    Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.

    This text consists of an illustrated guide to all the major sites in twelve main areas in central Rome, and four in Greater Rome, including the Capitoline Hill, Roman Forum, Colosseum, Mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian, the Circus Maximus, Catacombs, Ostia, and Tivoli.

    Its coverage and color capture the authors' lasting excitement for the period and its artists. A three-part organization covers international currents in the Fourteen Century, Fifteenth-Century Innovations, and Renaissance and Reformation in the Sixteenth Century. For a complete understanding of Northern Renaissance Art--its geography, patronage, and audience expectations.

     In ancient times, it was known as one of the Pillars of Hercules, and a glance at its formidable mass suggests that it may well have been created by the gods. Sought after by every nation with territorial ambitions in Europe, Asia, and Africa, Gibraltar was possessed by the Arabs, the Spanish, and ultimately the British, who captured it in the early 1700s and held onto it in a siege of more than three years late in the eighteenth century. The fact that that was one of more than a dozen sieges exemplifies Gibraltar’s quintessential value as a prize and the desperation of governments to fly their flag above its forbidding ramparts. Bradford uses his matchless skill and knowledge to take the reader through the history of this great and unique fortress. From its geological creation to its two-thousand-year influence on politics and war, he crafts the compelling tale of how these few square miles played a major part in history. Ernle Bradford's books have been widely praised. 'A gripping story' - The Economist. Ernle Bradford (1922-1986) was an historian who wrote books on naval battles and historical figures. Among his subjects were Lord Nelson, the Mary Rose, Christopher Columbus, Julius Caesar and Hannibal. He also documented his own voyages on the Mediterranean Sea.

    Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture. "Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

    A brilliantly creative work that established the reputation of Dutch historian John Huizinga (1872-1945), the book argues that the era of diminishing chivalry reflected the spirit of an age and that its figures and events were neither a prelude to the Renaissance nor harbingers of a coming culture, but a consummation of the old.Among other topics, the author examines the violent tenor of medieval life, the idea of chivalry, the conventions of love, religious life, the vision of death, the symbolism that pervaded medieval life, and aesthetic sentiment. We view the late Middle Ages through the psychology and thought of artists, theologians, poets, court chroniclers, princes, and statesmen of the period, witnessing the splendor and simplicity of medieval life, its courtesy and cruelty, its idyllic vision of life, despair and mysticism, religious, artistic, and practical life, and much more.Long regarded as a landmark of historical scholarship, The Waning of the Middle Ages is also a remarkable work of literature. Of its author, the New York Times said, "Professor Huizinga has dressed his imposing and variegated assemblage of facts in the colorful garments characteristic of novels, and he parades them from his first page to the last in a vivid style."An international success following its original publication in 1919 and subsequently translated into several languages, The Waning of the Middle Ages will not only serve as an invaluable reference for students and scholars of medieval history but will also appeal to general readers and anyone fascinated by life during the Middle Ages.

    The #1 bestseller in England tells the story of the obsessive pursuit of the secret formula to 18th-century Europe's most precious commodity -- fine porcelain.

    These essays, collected from the pages of The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine, reveal the special hold that some museums have over us all.In his ode to the Museum of Anthropology in Xalapa, Mexico, the great novelist and essayist Carlos Fuentes writes, “Museums, like lovers, can lose their charms. But the next time can always be the first time.” William Boyd visits the Leopold Museum in Vienna—a shrine to his favorite artist, Egon Schiele, whom Boyd first discovered on a postcard as a University student. In front of her favorite Rodins, Allison Pearson recalls a traumatic episode she suffered at the hands of a schoolteacher following a trip to the Musée in Paris. Neil Gaiman admires the fantastic world depicted in British outsider artist Richard Dadd’s “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke,” a tiny painting that also decorated the foldout cover of a Queen album, housed in the Victorian room of Tate Britain’s Pre-Raphaelite collection. Ann Patchett fondly revisits Harvard University’s Museum of Natural History—which she discovered at 19, while in the throes of summer romance with a biology student named Jack.Treasure Palaces is a treasure trove of wonders, a tribute to the diversity and power of the museums, the safe-keepers of our world’s most extraordinary artifacts, and an intimate look into the deeply personal reveries we fall into when before great art.

    Starting in Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre would make his way north to Dunkirk, while Pierre-François-André Méchain voyaged south to Barcelona. Their mission was to measure the world, and their findings would help define the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the pole and the equator-- a standard that would be used for all people, for all time. "The Measure of All Things" is the astonishing tale of one of history's greatest scientific adventures. Yet behind the public triumph of the metric system lies a secret error, one that is perpetuated in every subsequent definition of the meter. As acclaimed historian and novelist Ken Alder discovered through his research, there were only two people on the planet who knew the full extent of this error: Delambre and Méchain themselves. By turns a science history, detective tale, and human drama, "The Measure of All Things" describes a quest that succeeded as it failed, and continues to enlighten and inspire to this day.

    It is the most ambitious history of the continent ever undertaken.

    This up-to-date new survey draws on evidence produced at the cutting edge of modern archaeological research, revealing how the evidence for life in this city was first uncovered, and how archaeologists over the centuries have unpeeled the layers that enable us to reconstruct Pompeii's history.With its lavish illustrations, covering monumental architecture and inscriptions, shops, graffiti, wall-paintings, and mosaics, plus its numerous box features ranging from theatrical entertainments to water supply, The Complete Pompeii is the ultimate resource and inspirational guide to this iconic ancient town.Among the many topics covered:How Pompeii was destroyed in the eruption of AD 79What we know of the lives and deaths of its inhabitantsWhat the houses tell us about the people who lived in themWho was involved in politicsWhat can be reconstructed about religious practices

    But how many of us can place that event in the context of the entire dramatic year in which it took place? From the death of Edward the Confessor in early January to the Christmas coronation of Duke William of Normandy, there is an almost uncanny symmetry, as well as a relentlessly exciting surge, of events leading to and from Hastings.

    Focusing on art before 1520, this edition organizes the material chronologically. It now incorporates considerable new material on the history of music and theatre, and updates scholarship on ancient art.