Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, pulls back the curtain on his career for the first time.Rising from humble roots as the son of an antiques dealer, Wittman built a twenty-year career that was nothing short of extraordinary. He went undercover, usually unarmed, to catch art thieves, scammers, and black market traders in Paris and Philadelphia, Rio and Santa Fe, Miami and Madrid.In this memoir, Wittman relates the stories behind his recoveries of priceless art and antiquities: The golden armor of an ancient Peruvian warrior king. The Rodin sculpture that inspired the Impressionist movement. The headdress Geronimo wore at his final Pow-Wow. The rare Civil War battle flag carried into battle by one of the nation’s first African-American regiments.The breadth of Wittman’s exploits is unmatched: He traveled the world to rescue paintings by Rockwell and Rembrandt, Pissarro, Monet and Picasso, often working undercover overseas at the whim of foreign governments. Closer to home, he recovered an original copy of the Bill of Rights and cracked the scam that rocked the PBS series Antiques Roadshow.By the FBI’s accounting, Wittman saved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art and antiquities. He says the statistic isn’t important. After all, who’s to say what is worth more --a Rembrandt self-portrait or an American flag carried into battle? They're both priceless.The art thieves and scammers Wittman caught run the gamut from rich to poor, smart to foolish, organized criminals to desperate loners.  The smuggler who brought him a looted 6th-century treasure turned out to be a high-ranking diplomat.  The appraiser who stole countless heirlooms from war heroes’ descendants was a slick, aristocratic con man.  The museum janitor who made off with locks of George Washington's hair just wanted to make a few extra bucks, figuring no one would miss what he’d filched.In his final case, Wittman called on every bit of knowledge and experience in his arsenal to take on his greatest challenge: working undercover to track the vicious criminals behind what might be the most audacious art theft of all.

    Find out below how all profits from every purchase of this book saves another person's life.Has your life turned out exactly as planned?When you were younger did you have dreams of being a rockstar?...a fireman?...a doctor?Who did you want to be before the world told you who you should be?When we're born, we enter a world full of systems, most of which are out of our control. There are tons of unwritten rules and social pressures we feel forced to follow. We're pressured to:- study hard and get good grades- get accepted and attend college- graduate and find a secure job- get married and start a familyWe're trained not to stray too far from the path.If we follow this recommended path, why do we still feel that we're missing something? In Breaking Out of a Broken System, Seth & Chandler Bolt give you the tools to re-draw the lines, chart new roads, and expand the borders around your life. Each of the brothers writes a totally different perspective on the 15 most important life lessons taught by their parents. These are things they thought everyone learned growing up, but they realized otherwise after going out into the "real world".As you read, you'll have the option to read two completely different perspectives on each life lesson.You can start with the artistic account written by Seth, bass player for the southern rock band NEEDTOBREATHE.Or...Dive into Chandler's entrepreneurial story told from the perspective of the younger brother.There are two major benefits that will manifest from reading these intriguing tales. First, your life will gain a fresh new outlook on how blazing new trails can be the perfect addition to your own path.And secondly, you'll be saving someone else's life.Each book sold saves a life by providing a life-saving malaria pill (#1book1life). Each year, 1.2 million people die from malaria. This is solely because many villages only receive 3-4 months worth of pills per year to cure the disease.Our mission with the "Breaking Out of a Broken System" book launch is to buy 10,000 life-saving malaria pills by selling 10,000 copies of this book.Buy this book, change your life. Buy this book, save another.Buy the book during launch week to get tons of free stuff & a chance to win the trip of lifetime to Uganda!

    In a book that spans the years from the wild speculation of the late 1980s to the recession of the 1990s, Polsky, himself a private dealer, takes his readers on a funny, fast-paced tour through an industry characterized by humor, hypocrisy, greed, and gossip.

    Nearly as frequently, he wrote dense and joyful letters to his wife, Clara Westhoff, expressing his dismay before the paintings and his ensuing revelations about art and life.Rilke was knowledgeable about art and had even published monographs, including a famous study of Rodin that inspired his New Poems. But Cézanne's impact on him could not be conveyed in a traditional essay. Rilke's sense of kinship with Cézanne provides a powerful and prescient undercurrent in these letters -- passages from them appear verbatim in Rilke's great modernist novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Letters on Cézanne is a collection of meaningfully private responses to a radically new art."Rilke makes the feeling and views around great art real, weaving into his letters the indescribable thing that gives us beauty, truth, pleasure."--HELEN FRANKENTHALER, Art & Antiques"[These letters] are themselves extraordinarily peaceful and concentrated, seeping with the sense and recognition of Cézanne's colors, in nature as on canvas, colors which seem a part of Rilke himself, of the words and paper."--JOHN BAYLEY, The New York Review of Books

    His guitarist is trying to get them all killed. Fans are stealing his things. Mechanics are rebuking his lifestyle. Even his own fragile, uptight psyche is antagonizing him. But despite having every odd stacked against him, Project 86's frontman is living the dream and loving it. In It's All Downhill From Here, Andrew Schwab chronicles the highs and lows, the struggles and triumphs of this underground, independent rock band's rocky road to stardom. From a hostage situation on their first day on the road, to a drummer's crushed hand, a haunting female fan and an '80s rocker's halitosis problem, Schwab tells it like it is, with biting wit and rock star charm. This insider's look at the real life of a rock band not only reaffirms that everyone's human, but makes you hungry for a dream of your own to chase after.

    Their conversation, one of the most illuminating and insightful looks into MirO's philosophy and creative process, was first published in a limited edition of seventy five copies in 1964. Though long out of print, this bilingual "treasure," in the words of Maria Popova, "remains the most direct and comprehensive record of MirO's ideas on art." This beautiful new edition presents an updated English translation of MirO's invaluable text in an elegant and striking package. In addition to Taillandier's original foreword, a new preface by preeminent MirO scholar Robert Lubar provides wider context and insight. An appendix includes the original French text in its entirety. Joan MirO I Work Like a Gardener brings to life the words and work of one of the most beloved and influential artists of the twentieth century.

    At the time he was in prison for disseminating immoral drawings. Throughout his work the note of defiance, provocation, and rebellion was sounded. Schiele's favorite subjects were female nudes and self-portraits, and he worked at his art with furious commitment, though it was not until shortly before his early death that he began to win real recognition. Today, with Oskar Kokoschka, he is seen as the most important of the Austrian artists who came after Klimt. This study examines the life and work of Egon Schiele through all the major oil paintings and many of his erotic drawings.

    Humans are creative; it is a quality embedded in the fabric of our being, and a reality that reflects our existence as being made in the image of God.This book is a compilation of our e-books Liturgy for Creatives and On Becoming Creative, and new reflections—encompassing Alabaster's lived experience as a creative company for the past two years. It is a first step, the beginning of a conversation that allows readers to engage their faith and creativity against the larger backdrop of the God who has made all that is made.

    Symons reveals Poe as his contemporaries saw him a man struggling to make a living out of hack journalism and striving to find a backer for his new magazine, and a man whose life was beset by so many tragedies that he was often driven to excessive drinking and a string of unhealthy relationships. Fittingly written by another master in the art of crime writing, this volume brilliantly portrays the original creator of the detective story and reveals him as the genius and unashamed plagiarist that he was."

    

    Written by Amy Eldridge, founder and CEO of Love Without Boundaries, this poignant chronicle of LWB's life-changing work, told through the stories of individual children, offers personal insight into the complex issues surrounding orphan care, abandonment, international aid, and adoption. Both thought-provoking and inspirational, "The Heart of an Orphan" reminds us all that while the needs of vulnerable children around the world may seem overwhelming, the human heart triumphs in believing that every life has value and every child deserves love.

    These large, colorful works are the capstone of his engagement with nature, not only in England but also in the American Southwest, through the media of painting and photography. This book, the catalog of the first major Hockney museum exhibition in many years, offers a glorious view of the landscape as seen by the artist, and it includes not only his recent paintings but also his iPhone and iPad drawings. Essays by leading art historians—as well as a more literary piece by novelist Margaret Drabble and Hockney’s own reflections on his recent work—explore Hockney’s art from various perspectives.Praise for David Hockney:"Supplemented with numerous essays by art critics and Hockney himself, this is a mesmerizing volume of an established artist who continues to assert his dynamic relevancy." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "This glorious volume showcases this unique and exhilarating body of work, which celebrates the pulse of life in trees, fields, flowers, and clouds over the great cycle of the seasons . . . The enlightening commentary is merely prelude to a swoon once the reader turns to the 300 resplendent color reproductions." —Booklist, starred review

    The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic."Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.

    Each turning point and breakthrough of modernism and postmodernism is explored in depth, as are the frequent anti-modernist reactions that proposed alternative visions of art and the world. Art Since 1900 introduces students to the key theoretical approaches to modern and contemporary art in a way that enables them to comprehend the many “voices” of art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

    The station manager who hired him was the first to recognize his considerable on-air talent, and helped start what has become a legendary radio career. Often compared to Howard Stern, Carton has hosted a series of highly rated shows, and in 2007 he joined WFAN, where he and Boomer Esiason host an eponymous show every morning for four hours out of a studio in New York City.In this debut book, Carton invites the reader to join him as he recounts tales from his suburban youth, defends his long-held love affair with the New York Jets, reminisces about the shenanigans of some of the highest paid and most celebrated athletes playing today, and reflects on his work as one of radio’s craftiest, most hilarious personalities ever to get behind the microphone.