Book picks similar to
Treasures of Catherine the Great by Mikhail B. Piotrovsky
royalty
history
russia
art
The Best of Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell - 1984
Rockwell senior, who said he depicted life “as I would like it to be,” chronicled iconic visions of American life: the Thanksgiving turkey, soda fountains, ice skating on the pond, and small-town boys playing baseball-not to mention the beginning of the civil rights movement. Now, the best-selling collection of Rockwell’s most beloved illustrations, organized by decade, is available in a refreshed edition. With more than 150 images-oil paintings, watercolors, and rare black-and-white sketches--this is an uncommonly faithful Rockwell treasury. The original edition has sold nearly 200,000 copies.
CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed
Frédéric Chaubin - 2011
They reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the twenties and thirties, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Their diversity announces the end of Soviet Union. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes of the widening net, architects revisited all the chronological periods and styles, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba sanatorium), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Tbilisi wedding palace). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to its suprematist influence (Promethee). Then comes the speaking architecture widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Kiev crematorium), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Kiev institute), a political center watching you like a Big Brother (Kaliningrad House of Soviet). This puzzle of styles testifies to all the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of privacy and it also outlines the geography of the USSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before bringing the country to its end.
Putin's Russia: How It Rose, How It Is Maintained, and How It Might End
Mikhail DmitrievNatalia Zubarevich - 2015
As far as the regime’s fault lines are concerned, the evidence presented by the authors shows no reversal, or even narrowing, of these structural dysfunctions in Putin’s third presidential term.Topics covered here include Russia's political economy, political geography, and politics of federalism; the regime, ideology, public opinion, and legitimacy; and potential defeat and radicalization of civil society. Emerging in these pages is a finely textured portrait of a society rife in complexities, contradictions, and postponed but looming crises.
From A to Biba: The Autobiography of Barbara Hulanicki
Barbara Hulanicki - 1984
This lively autobiography evokes the adventurous spirit of the 1960s and describes an extraordinary life with clarity and wit.
Watchmaking
George Daniels - 1982
Hand methods were further eclipsed by the advent of the electronic watch in the 1960s, and many people feared that the mechanical watch would disappear entirely.
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
Lisa Immordino Vreeland - 2011
Beginning in 1936, when she became a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, Vreeland established herself as a controversial visionary with an astonishing ability to invent and discover fashion ideas, designers, personalities, and photographers. She was a memorable writer with a vivid personality and a talent for coining aphorisms. Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel chronicles 50 years of international fashion and Vreeland’s rich life. With more than 350 illustrations, including original magazine spreads and many famous photographs, this intensely visual book shows fashion as it was being invented, and how Vreeland shaped American taste through her superb vision.Praise for Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel:“Before there was Daphne Guinness, before there was Lady Gaga, there was the original style setter. A new book takes a look at the career and influence of the woman who made fashion modern.” —Town & Country “A must-have and the perfect addition to anyone’s holiday gift list, the book begs to be displayed on a coffee table and leisurely reviewed from the corner of a comfy couch, when there is ample time to savor Vreeland's pioneering five decades in fashion.” —Publishers Weekly
Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties
Steven Watson - 2003
Steven Watson follows their diverse lives from childhood through their Factory years. He shows how this ever-changing mix of artists and poets, musicians and filmmakers, drag queens, society figures, and fashion models, all interacted at the Factory to create more than 500 films, the Velvet Underground, paintings and sculpture, and thousands of photographs. Between 1961 and 1964 Warhol produced his most iconic art: the Flower paintings, the Marilyns, the Campbell’s Soup Can paintings, and the Brillo Boxes. But it was his films—Sleep, Kiss, Empire, The Chelsea Girls, and Vinyl—that constituted his most prolific output in the mid-1960s, and with this book Watson points up the important and little-known interaction of the Factory with the New York avant-garde film world. Watson sets his story in the context of the revolutionary milieu of 1960s New York: the opening of Paul Young’s Paraphernalia, Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, Max’s Kansas City, and the Beautiful People Party at the Factory, among many other events. Interspersed throughout are Watson’s trademark sociogram, more than 130 black-and-white photographs—some never before seen—and many sidebars of quotes and slang that help define the Warholian world. With Factory Made, Watson has focused on a moment that transformed the art and style of a generation.
Dodge City, the Cowboy Capital, and the great Southwest in the days of the wild Indian, the buffalo, the cowboy, dance halls, gambling halls and bad men (1913)
Robert Marr Wright - 1975
With all that has been said about Dodge City no true account of conditions as they were in the early days was accessible until publication of Robert Wright's 1911 book "Dodge City, the Cowboy Capital." The author was especially well qualified to write a history of the "wicked city of the plains" since he had lived on the frontier for many years previous to the founding of the city and lived in the city from its opening. He had all the experience gleaned as a plainsman, explorer, scout, trader and as mayor of the town. His is a most interesting narrative of early days, as well as a very valuable contribution to western history. Prior to founding Dodge City in 1868, at 16 years old Wright came West to Missouri. In 1859 he made the first of six overland trips across the plains to Denver. He was later appointed post trader at Fort Dodge in 1867, when Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Prairie Apache abounded there. Wright was acquainted with old-school Western sheriff and gunfighter Bat Masterson, of whom he said, "Bat is a gentleman by instinct. He is a man of pleasant manners, good address and mild disposition, until aroused, and then, for God's sake, look out! "Bat was a most loyal man to his friends. If anyone did him a favor, he never forgot it. I believe that if one of his friends was confined in jail and there was the least doubt of his innocence, he would take a crow-bar and 'jimmy' and dig him out, at the dead hour of midnight; and, if there were determined men guarding him, he would take these desperate chances...." Wright describes a typical day in Dodge: "Someone ran by my store at full speed, crying out, 'Our marshal is being murdered in the dance hall!' I, with several others, quickly ran to the dance hall and burst in the door. The house was so dense with smoke from the pistols a person could hardly see, but Ed Masterson had corralled a lot in one corner of the hall, with his sixshooter in his left hand, holding them there until assistance could reach him...." Wright also describes one hair-raising encounter he witnessed from a roof on his ranch: "The savages circled around the poor Mexican again and again; charged him from the front and rear and on both sides. Presently the poor fellow's horse went down, and he lay behind it for awhile. Then he cut the girth, took off the saddle, and started for the river, running at every possible chance, using the saddle as a shield, stopping to show fight only when the savages pressed him too closely
The Battle of Panchavati and Other Stories from Indian Scriptures
Divya Narain Upadhyaya - 2019
These are the stories most of us have grown up with. The book is an attempt to revisit these timeless stories in a new rendition to make them more acceptable and interesting to the modern reader. This collection of seven timeless classics is an ideal companion of the traveller, the vacationer or even the casual reader. About Author : Divya Narain Upadhyaya is a medical doctor and a Plastic Surgeon by profession. He works in the Department of Plastic Surgery, at King Georges' Medical University, Lucknow, as an Associate Professor. His fields of interest in medicine are cleft and craniofacial surgery and treating brachial plexus injuries. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and has trained extensively in craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery from the United States and Switzerland. He is an International Fellow of the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeon and also an AO-CMF Fellow. His primary literary interests lie in Indian scriptures, religion and Indian history. He has a blog on dnu1blog.com where he writes about a variety of topics. This is his first book.
SHARK AMONG THE MINNOWS: BOOK ONE OF THE HUNTER/KILLER SERIES (HUNTER/KILLER SERIES OF THE FIGHTING TOMCATS 1)
M.L. Maki - 2019
He, and the 128 men on board, depart their home port of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on a six-month deployment as part of the USS Carl Vinson battlegroup. The San Francisco, SSN-711, is the state-of-the-art in submarine technology of the U.S. Navy. The Akula class submarine Kasholot, K-322, is the state-of-the-art submarine of the Russian Navy. These two ships, commanded by very different men, are destined to hunt each other in the Cold War game until a science experiment gone wrong takes them back in time to December 19, 1941, and the beginning of World War II.
The Rise of Harlem's Princess
Chrissy J - 2013
Think about the reaction you would get. That’s how it all started for Diva Woods, but instead of candy it was drugs, guns, and men. She didn’t live the average life of a 16 year old. She had things that ordinary people didn’t have. She experienced things that ordinary people didn’t experience. She owes that to her father Jamel ‘Capo’ Woods, he is the King of Harlem which makes her the Princess. Diva took her title very seriously along with all the fame, fortune, trials, and tribulations. It was all a part of her rise to the top. But like that old saying goes, what goes up must come down. Take a ride through Harlem with Diva and experience the lies, infidelity, and deceit she occur in The Rise of Harlem’s Princess.
Welcome To Dong Tam (Jayhawk Two One Book 1)
Michael Trout - 2014
This is the first in a series of true stories about a young helicopter pilot’s tour of duty in Vietnam.
As if it were yesterday: An old fat man remembers his youth as a Marine in Vietnam
Lee Suydam - 2017
I try to tell what it was like for me and my brother Marines without fanfare or bravado and give the reader a vivid description of my 13 months.
Prisoner in the mud: A young German's diary from 1945
Herwarth Metzel - 2020
The front lines are collapsing all around, bombs are falling. On Thuringia too, a state in the centre-east of Germany. The Second World War is nearing its end. Boys of fifteen and sixteen from the Jungvolk and Hitler Youth movements set off in the belief that they can still save the fatherland – they are determined to defend it, bravely and loyally. Inadequately armed, however, they are forced to retreat from the advancing enemy in an entirely pointless march. They are taken prisoner and transferred to one of the infamous camps near Bad Kreuznach. Conditions in the camp are tough. The diarist is fortunate enough to survive and to be released relatively early, at the end of June 1945. Germany, spring 2005. The fatherland too has survived and has been reunified. It is a year of commemoration days, of monuments and memorials, and in the run-up to the sixtieth anniversary it is already being declared by all the media as a year of remembrance of the downfall of the ‘Third Reich’. Inspired by this, the diarist, now seventy-five years old, remembers the notes and diary entries kept at that time by his fifteen-year-old self. Originally written on scraps of toilet paper, he copied them out after his fortunate return in July 1945, and has not looked at them since. The notes are very personal and honest and, above all, authentic. They give an insight into the experiences and the thoughts of a young boy who by his own admission left as a ‘proud soldier’ and returned home as a ‘pitiful vagabond’. It is a historical document. It is not the story of an individual fate. Thousands had the same experiences. That is why the diarist decided, with some hesitation, to publish his diary as a part of the historical truth, even if there already existed numerous reports and publications about the camps in Bad Kreuznach, Bretzenheim, Dietersheim, Bingen, Heidesheim and the other ‘Rhine Meadows camps’. All these records are testament to the fact that tyranny often abounds when one group of people is given unchecked power over another. According to Livy, as many as 2400 years ago the Gaulish king Brennus called to the defeated Romans: ‘Vae victis!’ – woe to the vanquished! Herwarth Metzel
Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open
Phoebe Hoban - 2014
Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open is the first biography to assess Freud's work and life, showing how the two converge. In Hoban's dramatic and fast-paced narrative, we follow Freud from his birthplace in Berlin to London, where he fled with his family in the 1930s, and then to Paris, where he mixed with Picasso and Giacometti. He led a dissolute life in Soho after the war, gambling and womanizing with fierce energy. He painted his wives nude, his children nude, himself nude. He married twice, had an uncountable number of children, and kept working through it all, painting everyone from close friend and rival Francis Bacon to Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth. He sometimes spent years on a single painting, which could require hundreds of hours of sittings. However various his subjects, his intent was always the same: to find and reveal the character hidden within by means of his intense visual imagination. Along with its startling biographical revelations, the great thrill of Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open is the way Hoban deconstructs the art itself—its influences, models, and technique—to show how Freud reproduced reality on the canvas while breaking down the illusion that what we see is real.