The Library

“Lewis Thomas is a gifted writer with wit, imagination and a bold encouraging vision.” – Time Magazine
“One of the best writers of short essays in English.” – Newsweek

40 brief essays on words that “enchanted and obsessed” Lewis Thomas, author of Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony among other works.

This vivid photo-essay on “the great adventure” of discovery and exploration is drawn from the collection of the Royal Geographical Society in London. It begins with Stanley and Livingstone in Africa and proceeds through Asia and Oceania, the Americas, and the Middle East. The work of twenty-three intrepid photographers is included.

“A brilliantly fresh, provocative, exquisitely written re-working of documentary events. Dawson has discovered a female language that picks up where Jean Rhys left off. A woman’s novel in the best sense of the world.” – Whitbread Jury

“Dawson has brilliantly got under the skin of her main character. Her polished prose is consistently stylish and her descriptions of the sexual act, from a woman’s viewpoint, are both lyrical and sublime.” – The Daily Mail

“The best single book I have seen on the history, sociology, literature, cultures, and philosophy of money. This book is my pick of the year for any intelligent and broadly curious reader.” – Worth Magazine

“Buchan’s unusual and inspired history of money resembles his fiction more than his reporting for the Financial Times because it is so imaginative, impressionistic, anecdotal, and philosophical…mixing facts with astute observations, and writing lovely comples sentences that seem to unwind from a far more gracious era than the present. – The Library Journal

“These poems have, among other virtues, erudition, heart, and a casual eloquence. We’ve long needed a comprehensive collection like this, to acquaint the reader with the full scope and quality of Ruthven Todd’s work.” – Richard Wilbur

Ruthven Todd is widely acknowledged as one of the great nature poets of the 20th century. Born in Edinburgh in 1914 – the same year as his best friend Dylan Thomas, with whom he has always mentioned in the same breath during his lifetime…

“Gold Rush reads a little like a Nipponized version of Bret Easton Ellis cause macabre American Psycho, with a healthy cut of Murakami sprinkled in. Bracingly and clinically realist.” – Time Magazine

“One thing Miss Yu can do is write. She is simultaneously a social outcast and a literary star, a dark, brooding presence on the bookshelves. A creative genius.” – The New York Times

The beginnings of Gothic art can be dated toward the middle of the 12th century. Starting from the Ile de France, this artistic movement spread throughout Europe with varying speed and intensity, embracing all fields of artistic endeavor and lasting in some regions until the 16th century. The most obvious architectural developments involved the introduction of the ogival arch, flying buttresses, spires, and galleries that permitted the lightening of walls and the construction of taller buildings. Statuary began to become distinct from architectural decoration…

Starting in the 10th century BCE, Greek art began to stand out for its variety of regional styles found mainly in ceramic works of the Protogeometric and Geometric Periods, which were given these names due to the use of decorative patterns based on a combination of lines and circles. These characteristics were orientalized following the acquisition of motifs from eastern civilizations during the 8th and 7th centuries BCE…

Winner of the Guardian Fiction Award

“I don’t believe this country has a better writer to offer than James Buchan.” – Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books

“The toughest-minded and most romantic genre-transcending thriller in more than a generation.”
– Ron Rosenbaum, New York Observer

A brilliantly written and generously illustrated addition to the “Life and Times” series, which includes Elizabeth I, Richard III and Victoria; edited, and with an introduction by Antonia Fraser.

“A variation in nine movements on the guitar through the ages, from ancient Egypt to Jimi Hendrix, with Eric Clapton as the guide… A brief journey through the human adventure… An elegant, solemn tale.” – Le Monde

“Intoxicating!” Lire Magazine

“A terrific, swinging story.” Le Nouvel Observateur

When in May of 1993 retired Lutheran pastor and renowned writer Thomas E. Mails accepted an invitation to visit the Traditionalist village of Hotevilla on the remote Hopi reservation in Arizona, he had little reason to imagine that her would soon be chosen by 100-year-old high priest Dan Evehema to reveal to the outside world the entire range of Hopi prophecy, instructions and warnings – the sum of which make searching for today – a proven way for our endangered world to survive.

A stunningly illustrated history of Nelson’s Navy using the character of Horatio Hornblower as our guide. Drawing on the resources of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich and the Naval Dockyard Trust at Chatham, Hornblower’s Navy shows how a naval warship was built and how it fought during the Anglo-French wars, the bloodiest era in British naval history.

Amid the innovative developments of the second half of the 19th century, a new trend in painting came to the fore in France. From 1874 onward, it was called Impressionism. Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Mary Cassatt, and Berthe Morisot were the leading lights of this movement that would spread throughout Europe and the United States. Their aim: to give art a modern dimension, free from the contents and the conventions dictated by academic tradition…

An encounter with the artistic heritage of Islam is characterized by two factors that make it very special: the vast dimension of the areas involved, from Spain to Central Asia as far as China, to sub-Saharan Africa, and duration through fourteen centuries of history. Is it possible to treat such a complex and multifaceted phenomenon as a single subject? The images that follow are an answer. Within the great variety of architectural forms and materials, some constants stand out: the mosque…

No opportunity was overlooked to flaunt wealth and status in Italian palazzi. From the Middle Ages these buildings, often family residences, incorporated anything from phantasmagoric ballrooms and theaters, to intimate salons which attracted illuminati and patrons of the arts, who could bask in the work of the most talented and passionate artists and architects of their time.

This gorgeous volume leads us century by century, from the 1300s to 1900, through the palaces of Colonna, Farnese, and Altemps, where, within their secret rooms, the papal throne was disputed throughout the Middle Ages…

Ever since the advent of Modernism, the rebirth in Italy of classical Greek and Roman styles remains the basis for most modern architecture. Marco Bussaghi’s vast pictorial survey of Italian Rennaissance architecture reveals, with lush photographs, contemporary architectural drawings, maps and models, how geniuses such as Palladio Brunelleschi, and Alberti achieved perfect integration of their buildings with surrounding landscapes. Stunning interiors, such as those of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, the Chiesa di San Bernardino in Urbino, and the Palazzo Farnese are all detailed with full-color photographs which beautifully capture the decor.

“Characteristically thorough and painstaking, and about as close to her secret soul as we shall get in a well-guarded lifetime.” – The Sunday Times (London)

“Compelling reading for anyone intrigued by actors and acting… (Dench) seems ‘real,’ disarmingly untheatrical, down-to-earth, sensible, ordinary. With barely a look, scarcely a word, she can move others from one contrasting mood to another, like British weather.” – The Christian Science Monitor

“An excellent biography… A welcome explanation of what (Dench) has been doing for 65 years before E! Entertainment Television become aware of her existence.” – American Theatre

“James Haskins has approached the majesty and mystery of the African-American preacher with wonderful respect and appreciation. In Keeping the Faith, the reader can hear the great drama that is enacted in the pulpit of the African-American church and the melody the preacher composes as he speaks.” – Maya Angelou

Sermons by Martin Luther King, Jr., C.L. Franklin and others downloadable from the book page.

“Clever, twisted and ultimately insightful, Jeff Cohen’s The Killing of Mindi Quintana upends legality and redefines justice – a dazzling debut novel. Cohen has created one of the most instantly despicable characters in crime fiction.” – Burl Barer

“Julian Rathbone’s follow-up to the bestselling The Last English King is a hugely enjoyable amble into a most gruesome period in history.” – The Times (London)

England, 1460. The Wars of the Roses are at their terrible and bloody climax, and Lancastrists and Yorkists are busy chopping each other into little pieces. Into this unlikely idyll walk three sophisticated and highly civilized visitors from the empire of Vijayanagara in South India, on a mission to track down the Prince of Vijayanagara’s long-lost brother. Through the visitor’s eyes the heart of darkness that was England is revealed…

The economic boom helped to encourage new fashions, fun and rejection of the rules. American films depicted and at the same time acted as a catalyst for this vast social mosaic. The unknown Turkish dancer Aiche Nana performed her legendary impromptu striptease at the Rugantino restaurant in Rome and the majors from the USA moved the sets for their blockbusters to the city, that was not only historical and hospitable, but also offered very low production costs. “Spartacus” and “Ben-Hur” created some momentum. Via Veneto filled up with stars, nobles…

Thirty years after disbanding following Bonham’s death in 1980, the band continues to be held in high regard for their artistic achievements. They have sold more than 300 million albums worldwide, including 110 million sales in The U.S. All of their albums reached the Billboard Top 10, with six reaching the number one spot.

In December, 2007, the surviving members of Led Zeppelin reunited…

For thirty years Colin Garratt has been professionally documenting the last steam locomotives of the world. He has mounted expeditions to some forty countries embracing all continents in a desperate race against time. Little more than 6,000 steam locomotives remain active world-wide “€œ less than one-third of what Britain alone had as recently as the 1950s. The pictures in this book are grouped into themes that reflect the wonder of the world of steam in the twentieth century.