Thirty years after the founding of Mexico’s Fototeca Nacional, this big, bold first catalogue of the archive’s holdings offers a panoramic history of the art of photography in Mexico–a look into one of the most important image collections in Latin America and testimony to over 130 years of social, political, cultural, artistic, scientific and economic happenings.
‘The Rape of Europa’ is one of Titian’s great masterpieces, a work charged with eroticism and classical mystique behind which lies a tale as compelling as the painting itself. Here Charles FitzRoy weaves a unique account of its history and the painting’s movement following the rise and fall of the countries in which it has been housed.
Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall…
‘Buckingham Palace’ is a dingy row of five houses in the heart of District Six, a vibrant community at the foot of Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town. Richard Rive’s classic novel traces this close community through its moments of triumph and despair, its loves, its hatreds – and its bizarre characters. In 1966 parts of…
Lavishly illustrated with historical masterpieces and packed with fascinating contemporary examples, this is an inspirational and wholly original guide to understanding the forces that have shaped world art.
1000 Symbols traces and reveals the historical and cross-cultural significance of 1000 commonly recognized symbols in a comprehensive single-volume dictionary for students and the general reader, placing each symbol in its historical and cultural context.
A private-eye convention and a tussle over a Pierneef A young man’s unsettling experience in the American South and a tragedy off the coast of Mauritius. A bizarre night of industrial theatre and a translator at a loss for words.
Louis Eguaras, a renowned chef at the Le Cordon Bleu Program at the California School of Culinary Arts, provides readers with a terrific overview of what is truly involved in the preparation, cooking, and presentation of meals. He also provides invaluable insights into just what is involved in making this one’s chosen profession. Â The book…
The pop world accelerated and broke through the sound barrier in 1966. In America, in London, in Amsterdam, in Paris, revolutionary ideas slow-cooking since the late ’50s reached boiling point. In the worlds of pop, pop art, fashion and radical politics — often fueled by perception-enhancing substances and literature — the ‘Sixties’, as we have come to know them, hit their Modernist peak.
On a freezing winter’s night, a few hours before dawn on 12 May 1969, security police stormed the Soweto home of Winnie Mandela and detained her in the presence of her two young daughters, then aged eight and ten.
During his lifetime, Beardsley’s subversive illustrations became synonymous with decadence: he delighted in the erotic, shocking audiences with his bizarre sense of humour and fascination with the grotesque. His work was deemed too scandalous by many publishers of the period, but found a suitably unseemly home with the notorious Leonard Charles Smithers (1861–1907). Shortly before his death, with his health in steep decline Beardsley converted to Roman Catholicism and asked Smithers to ‘destory all copies of Lysistrata and bad drawings’. Smithers dutifully ignored his wishes and went on to sell many reproductions and forgeries of his work.
A Hill of Fools cleverly brings together a poetic and traditional story-telling style with the daunting challenges that contemporary Africa faces to create a compelling and memorable read that resonates with the complexity and beauty of Africa.
A History Of Christianity is a major new six-part religious series, presented by Diarmaid MacCulloch – one of the world’s leading historians and Professor of History of the Church and Fellow at St Cross College Oxford. This fascinating series will reveal the true origins of Christianity and delve into what it means to be a Christian.