Global Model Village


Slinkachu - 2012
    A tiny mother and child bustle through a dusty township in Cape Town, while a miniature informant whispers in a telephone booth in Beijing. Thumb-size riot police climb the Acropolis in Athens, while an inch-high woman pole-dances around a lamppost in a Hong Kong red-light district.Global Model Village collects the international works of Slinkachu, the London-based artist who as part of his “Little People Project” has been abandoning tiny model people on the mean streets of the world since 2006. Documented through photography, these little dramas of hope and tragedy, loneliness and humor, somehow get to the heart of what it means to be human, to be alone among millions of other people, all experiencing the melancholy and magic of life in the big city.

William Pitt the Younger


William Hague - 2004
    The younger William Pitt -- known as the 'schoolboy' -- began his days as Prime Minister in 1783 deeply underestimated and completely beleaguered. Yet he annihilated his opponents in the General Election the following year and dominated the governing of Britain for twenty-two years, nearly nineteen of them as Prime Minister. No British politician since then has exercised such supremacy for so long. Pitt presided over dramatic changes in the country's finances and trade, brought about the union with Ireland, but was ultimately consumed by the years of debilitating war with France. Domestic crises included unrest in Ireland, deep division in the royal family, the madness of the King and a full-scale naval mutiny. He enjoyed huge success, yet died at the nadir of his fortunes, struggling to maintain a government beset by a thin majority at home and military disaster abroad; he worked, worried and drank himself to death. Finally his story is told with the drama, wit and authority it deserves.

Art Through the Ages


Helen Gardner - 1926
    With this book in hand, thousands of students have watched the story of art unfold in its full historical, social, religious, economic, and cultural context, and thus deepened their understanding of art, architecture, painting, and sculpture. By virtue of its comprehensive coverage, strong emphasis on context, and rich, accurate art reproductions, GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES has earned and sustained a reputation of excellence and authority. So much so, that in 2001, the Text and Academic Authors Association awarded both the McGuffey and the "Texty" Book Prizes to the Eleventh Edition of the text. It is the first art history book to win either award and the only title ever to win both prizes in one year. The Twelfth Edition maintains and exceeds the richness of the Gardner legacy with updated research and scholarship and an even more beautiful art program featuring more color images than any other art history book available. The Twelfth Edition features such enhancements as more color photographs, a stunning new design, and the most current research and scholarship. What's more, the expanded ancillary package that accompanies GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES, features a wealth of tools to enhance your students' experience in the course. With each new copy of the book, students receive a copy of the ArtStudy 2.0 CD-ROM--an interactive electronic study aid that fully integrates with the Twelfth Edition and includes hundreds of high-quality digital images, plus maps, quizzes, and more.

M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work


M.C. Escher - 1954
    Escher was born in 1898 in Leeuwarden (Netherlands). He received his first drawing lessons during secondary school from F.W. van der Haagen, who also taught him the block printing, thus fostering Escher's innate graphic talents. From 1912 to 1922 he studied at the School of Architecture and Ornamental Design in Haarlem, where he was instructed in graphic techniques by S. Jessurun de Mesquita, who greatly influenced Escher's further artistic development. Between 1922 and 1934 the artist lived and worked in Italy. Afterwards Escher spent two years in Switzerland and five in Brussels before finally moving back to Barn in Holland, where he died in 1972. M.C. Escher is not a surrealist drawing us into his dream world, but an architect of perfectly impossible worlds who presents the structurally unthinkable as though it were a law of nature. The resulting dimensional and perspectival illusions bring us into confrontation with the limitations of our sensory perception. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Creative Collage Techniques


Nita Leland - 1994
    This book can help you bring all of these together in one beautiful creation.Here you'll see magnificent collages by leading artists who show you--in step-by-step demonstrations--how to begin, how to design, how to apply collage techniques in exciting ways.Plus you'll get your chance to use those techniques with nearly fifty projects that challenge you to do your most creative work.

A Fortunate Life


Paddy Ashdown - 2009
    He has been an officer in the Royal Marine Commandos, a diplomat, an MP and leader of his party, and an international peacemaker in war-torn Bosnia. In this sprawling autobiography that addresses his years in politics, he writes with authority about topics as diverse as tracking down infiltrating Indonesian forces in the jungles of Sarawak; landing a raiding party from a submerged submarine; the difficulties of learning Chinese; negotiating with Tony Blair; and bringing stability to a country wracked by civil war. While deadly serious when discussing his family, his country, his party, and the Bosnian people, Ashdown also has a refreshing gift for self-deprecating wit and has wealth of anecdotes. This is the self-portrait of a man who has lived life to the fullest for the benefit of a nation.

Hieronymus Bosch: Complete Works


Stefan Fischer - 2013
    1450–1516) was more than an anomaly. Bosch’s paintings are populated with grotesque scenes of fantastical creatures succumbing to all manner of human desire, fantasy, and angst. One of his greatest inventions was to take the figural and scenic representations known as drolleries, which use the monstrous and the grotesque to illustrate sin and evil, and to transfer them from the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts into large-format panel paintings. Alongside traditional hybrids of man and beast, such as centaurs, and mythological creatures such as unicorns, devils, dragons, and griffins, we also encounter countless mixed creatures freely invented by the artist. Many subsidiary scenes illustrate proverbs and figures of speech in common use in Bosch’s day. In his Temptation of St Anthony triptych, for example, the artist shows a messenger devil wearing ice skates, evoking the popular expression that the world was “skating on ice”—meaning it had gone astray. In his pictorial translation of proverbs, in particular, Bosch was very much an innovator. Bosch—whose real name was Jheronimus van Aken—was widely copied and imitated: the number of surviving works by Bosch’s followers exceeds the master’s own production by more than tenfold. Today only 20 paintings and eight drawings are confidently assigned to Bosch’s oeuvre. He continues to be seen as a visionary, a portrayer of dreams and nightmares, and the painter par excellence of hell and its demons. Featuring brand new photography of recently restored paintings, this exhaustive book, published in view of the upcoming 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death, covers the artist’s complete works. Discover Bosch’s pictorial inventions in splendid reproductions with copious details and a huge fold-out spread, over 110 cm (43 in.) long, of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Art historian and acknowledged Bosch expert Stefan Fischer examines just what it was about Bosch and his painting that proved so immensely influential.

Captives among the Indians: Firsthand Narratives of Indian Wars, Customs, Tortures, and Habits of Life in Colonial Times


Horace Kephart - 2015
    This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Wellington: The Years of the Sword


Elizabeth Longford - 1969
    But Waterloo was one peak only in the career of this phenomenal man, and it is the achievement of this major biography that it reveals the subtlety and full variety of Wellington's genius as well as the fascinating complexity of England in his time.He was born Arthur Wesley, third son of the Earl of Mornington, in 1769--the same year as Napoleon. His family, which belonged to the ruling caste of Englishmen in Ireland, was long on the tradition of proud service to the King and chronically short of funds. Neither his childhood nor his years at Eton were happy; but when he went to Anjou at seventeen, to study at France's Royal Academy of Equitation, he came into his own, learned well, and emerged qualified and cosmopolitan.He joined the British Army as an ensign and, for the next few years, rose through the ranks. He courted Kitty Pakenham but her family would not allow his suit--his family was not rich enough-- so he went to India at the age of twenty-seven still a bachelor.It was in India that he made his name. There he became a scholar and a soldier. He returned a Knight of the Bath, a major-general, a hero to his countrymen and acceptable, at last, to the Pakenhams. (He had courted Kitty by post over the twelve intervening years; it was scarcely surprising that the woman he married proved different indeed from the charming girl he had left.)When he was forty, the youngest lieutenant-general in the army, he took command of the allied armies in the Peninsular War. With Napoleon's downfall, abdication and exile to Elba, the hero of Europe began a gay career as ambassador to Paris. All the ladies, from the formidable Madame de Staël to the melting Signora Grassini, vied--often successfully--for his favors. His behavior with them and as a diplomat caused some disquiet, and there was evident relief when he was dispatched to the Congress of Vienna. When word came of Napoleon's escape, Wellington took command once more, and after the spectacular eve-of-battle ball in Brussels, led the British and Dutch-Belgian armies to triumph at Waterloo.Lady Longford's unique biography draws on new material from private papers and Wellington's own uninhibited correspondence. Wellington: The Years of the Sword is a worthy successor to her superb Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed.

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art


Laney Salisbury - 2009
    Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a great con man and unforgettable villain, John Drewe, and his sometimes unwitting accomplices. Chief among those was the struggling artist John Myatt, a vulnerable single father who was manipulated by Drewe into becoming a prolific art forger. Once Myatt had painted the pieces, the real fraud began. Drewe managed to infiltrate the archives of the upper echelons of the British art world in order to fake the provenance of Myatt's forged pieces, hoping to irrevocably legitimize the fakes while effectively rewriting art history. The story stretches from London to Paris to New York, from tony Manhattan art galleries to the esteemed Giacometti and Dubuffet associations, to the archives at the Tate Gallery. This enormous swindle resulted in the introduction of at least two hundred forged paintings, some of them breathtakingly good and most of them selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of these fakes are still out in the world, considered genuine and hung prominently in private houses, large galleries, and prestigious museums. And the sacred archives, undermined by John Drewe, remain tainted to this day. Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller, filled with unforgettable characters and told at a breakneck pace. But this is most certainly not fiction; Provenance is the meticulously researched and captivating account of one of the greatest cons in the history of art forgery.

The Things That Make Us: Life, loss and football


Nick Riewoldt - 2017
    1 pick in the 2000 AFL draft, to six-time winner of St Kilda's best and fairest award, to five-time All Australian, to captaining his club for a record 220 games, to more than 330 games as a star of the AFL, Nick Riewoldt is an out-and-out champion.The Things that Make Us is Nick's autobiography, written with a deep intelligence and insight, and giving a fascinating perspective on his extraordinary life and career. As Nick describes it:'I hope there's something in these pages for everyone who's known grief, especially anyone who's lost a sibling. I hope, too, that my story brings a deeper understanding of a footballer's crazy world. An insight into what goes into making it, what it takes to stay there, and the crippling anxiety that can consume you when your burden is to accept only the best. I hope it paints a picture of what it's like to be the focus of acclamation and scandal, the good and bad of a searing spotlight, and how these experiences can bring out the best and worst in us.'I hope it honours my family - the German and Tasmanian sides with their stories of struggle and endurance - who are the essence of the book's title. I hope it gives thanks for the love I found on the other side of the world, and the beautiful next generation Cath and I are building together. 'I hope above all that it honours my sister Maddie. 'These are the things that made me.'The Things That Make Us is the intimate, powerful and revealing account of the life of an AFL superstar, and a classic in the making.