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"The great auk is one of the most tragic and documented examples of extinction. A flightless bird that bred primarily on the remote islands of the North Atlantic, the last of its kind were killed in Iceland in 1844. Gâisli Pâalsson draws on firsthand accounts from the Icelanders who hunted the last great auks to bring to life a bygone age of Victorian scientific exploration while offering vital insights into the extinction of species."--

A major new interpretation of Vergil's epic poem as a struggle between two incompatible versions of the Homeric heroThis compelling book offers an entirely new way of understanding the Aeneid. Many scholars regard Vergil's poem as an attempt to combine Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into a single epic. Joseph Farrell challenges this view, revealing how the Aeneid stages an epic contest to determine which kind of story it will tell-and what kind of hero Aeneas will be.Farrell shows how this contest is provoked by the transgressive goddess Juno, who challenges Vergil for the soul of his hero and poem. Her goal is to transform the poem into an Iliad of continuous Trojan persecution instead of an Odyssey of successful homecoming. Farrell discusses how ancient critics considered the flexible Odysseus the model of a good leader but censured the hero of the Iliad, the intransigent Achilles, as a bad one. He describes how the battle over which kind of leader Aeneas will prove to be continues throughout the poem, and explores how this struggle reflects in very different ways on the ethical legitimacy of Rome's emperor, Caesar Augustus.By reframing the Aeneid in this way, Farrell demonstrates how the purpose of the poem is to confront the reader with an urgent decision between incompatible possibilities and provoke uncertainty about whether the poem is a celebration of Augustus or a melancholy reflection on the discontents of a troubled age.

"A magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans"--

One of the world's preeminent cultural anthropologists leaves a last work that fundamentally reconfigures how we study most other culturesFrom the perspective of Western modernity, humanity inhabits a disenchanted cosmos. Gods, spirits, and ancestors have left us for a transcendent beyond, no longer living in our midst and being involved in all matters of everyday life from the trivial to the dire. Yet the vast majority of cultures throughout human history treat spirits as very real persons, members of a cosmic society who interact with humans and control their fate. In most cultures, even today, people are but a small part of an enchanted universe misconstrued by the transcendent categories of "e;religion"e; and the "e;supernatural."e; The New Science of the Enchanted Universe shows how anthropologists and other social scientists must rethink these cultures of immanence and study them by their own lights.In this, his last, revelatory book, Marshall Sahlins announces a new method and sets an exciting agenda for the field. He takes readers around the world, from Inuit of the Arctic Circle to pastoral Dinka of East Africa, from Arawete swidden gardeners of Amazonia to Trobriand Island horticulturalists. In the process, Sahlins sheds new light on classical and contemporary ethnographies that describe these cultures of immanence and reveals how even the apparently mundane, all-too-human spheres of "e;economics"e; and "e;politics"e; emerge as people negotiate with, and ultimately usurp, the powers of the gods.The New Science of the Enchanted Universe offers a road map for a new practice of anthropology that takes seriously the enchanted universe and its transformations from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary America.

"This book traces the emergence of mass production and Fordism, its accompanying ideology, first in the United States and then in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union"--

"It's closing time for an alarming number of gay bars in cities around the globe-but it's definitely not the last danceIn this exhilarating journey into underground parties, pulsating with life and limitless possibility, acclaimed author Amin Ghaziani unveils the unexpected revolution revitalizing urban nightlife.Far from the gay bar with its largely white, gay male clientele, here is a dazzling scene of secret parties-club nights-wherein culture creatives, many of whom are queer, trans, and racial minorities, reclaim the night in the name of those too long left out. Episodic, nomadic, and radically inclusive, club nights are refashioning queer nightlife in boundlessly imaginative and powerfully defiant ways.Drawing on Ghaziani's immersive encounters at underground parties in London and more than one hundred riveting interviews with everyone from bar owners to party producers, revelers to rabble-rousers, Long Live Queer Nightlife showcases a spectacular, if seldom-seen, vision of a queer world shimmering with self-empowerment, inventiveness, and joy"--

A classic study of the art of painting and its relationship to reality In this book, Étienne Gilson puts forward a bold interpretation of the kind of reality depicted in paintings and its relation to the natural order. Drawing on insights from the writings of great painters-from Leonardo, Reynolds, and Constable to Mondrian and Klee-Gilson shows how painting is foreign to the order of language and knowledge. Painting, he argues, seeks to add new beings to nature, not to represent those that already exist. For this reason, we must distinguish it from another art, that of picturing, which seeks to produce images of actual or possible beings. Though pictures play an important part in human life, they do not belong in the art of painting. Through this distinction, Gilson sheds new light on the evolution of modern painting. A magisterial work of scholarship by an acclaimed historian of philosophy, Painting and Reality features paintings from both classical and modern schools, and includes extended selections from the writings of Reynolds, Delacroix, Gris, Gill, and Ozenfant.

A major account of Renaissance portraiture by one of the twentieth century's most eminent art historians In this book, John Pope-Hennessy provides an unprecedented look at two centuries of experiment in portraiture during the Renaissance. Pope-Hennessy shows how the Renaissance cult of individuality brought with it a demand that the features of the individual be perpetuated, a concept first manifested in the portraits that fill the great Florentine fresco cycles and led, later in the fifteenth century, to the creation of the independent portrait by such artists as Sandro Botticelli, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Giovanni Bellini, and Antonello da Messina. Pope-Hennessy goes on to describe the process by which Titian and the great artists of the High Renaissance transformed the portrait from a record of appearance into an analysis of character.

The classic book on William Blake as prophet of the New Age William Blake (1757-1827) inhabited a remarkable inner world, one that he brought vividly to life in his poetry, painting, and printmaking. Blake and Antiquity situates this brilliant and enigmatic artist within the Western esoteric canon, revealing his indebtedness to Neoplatonism, the Gnostics, alchemy, and astrology. In this book, Kathleen Raine demonstrates how Blake rejected conventional orthodoxy and went in search among the occult traditions of antiquity for symbols that might expand the mind's awareness into a spiritual state where space, time, and even death are transcended.

An illuminating look at the iconography of the early church and its important place in the history of Christian art In this book, historian André Grabar demonstrates how early Christian iconography assimilated contemporary imagery of the time. Grabar looks at the most characteristic examples of paleo-Christian iconography, dwelling on their nature, form, and content. He explores the limits of originality in such art, its debt to figurative art, and the broader cultural climate in the Roman Empire, drawing a distinction between expressive images--that is, genuine works of art--and informative ones. Throughout, Grabar establishes the importance of imperial iconography in the development of Christian portraits and sheds light on the role they played alongside other forms of Christian piety in their day.

An illuminating biographical study of the eighteenth-century English man of letters and patron of the arts Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was a collector, printer, novelist, arbiter of taste, and renowned writer of letters. In this book, eminent scholar Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis provides an unprecedented look at the life and work of one of England's greatest men of letters. Lewis sheds light on Walpole's relationships with his family and friends, his politics, his writings and printmaking activities, and his correspondence. Featuring portraits of Walpole, his relatives, and friends; images of Walpole's sketches and manuscripts; pages from books printed at Walpole's Strawberry Hill Press; and views and plans of Strawberry Hill, the house, its rooms and furnishings, and its grounds, and accompanied by Lewis's extensive annotations, this book provides an invaluable history of an extraordinary man.

Constructivist and sculptor Naum Gabo's personal account of his development as an artist A leading exponent of the modern art movement known as Constructivism, Russian-born Naum Gabo was one of the most important sculptors of the twentieth century--an artist, designer, and theorist whose work changed the course of modern art. Of Divers Arts is Gabo's beautifully written personal account of his development and growing into consciousness as an artist and his constant search for new techniques of communication. Throughout, he reflects on the relationship between art and science and reveals the many important influences on his work, especially the natural world, Russian religious and folk art, and the work of the artist Mikhail Vrubel. The result is a remarkable autobiographical account of a major modern artist.

A groundbreaking reevaluation of paleolithic art through the lens of modernism, from the acclaimed historian of art and architecture In The Beginnings of Art, Sigfried Giedion, best known as a historian of architecture, shifts his attention to art and its very origins. Breaking with an earlier, materialistic approach, he explores paleolithic art by bringing abstraction, transparency, and simultaneity into play as modern art has revealed them anew. Focusing on the dual concepts of constancy and change, he examines paleolithic paintings, engravings, and sculpture, as well as modern art and recent examples of "primitive art." He argues that the two keys to the meaning of prehistoric art are the symbol, portraying reality before reality exists, and the animal as humankind's superior in the unified primordial world in which both human and animal were embedded. The result is a highly original and important study of prehistoric art.

An original account of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian architecture from the acclaimed architectural historian In The Beginnings of Architecture, Sigfried Giedion examines the architecture of ancient Egypt and Sumer. These early builders expressed an attitude of immense force when they confronted their structures with open sky. Giedion argues that it was during these periods that the problem of constancy and change flared up with an intensity unknown in any other period of history, and resolved eventually into the first architectural space conception, the automatic, psychic recording of the visual environment.

A stunning visual history of sculpture from prehistory through modernity This book presents an aesthetic of sculptural art, which has too often submitted to the rule of architecture and painting. Herbert Read emphasizes the essential and autonomous nature of sculpture--"Form in its full spatial completeness," in the words of British sculptor Henry Moore. The Art of Sculpture provides historical support and theoretical rigor to this conception. Along the way, this incisive and wide-ranging book takes readers on a breathtaking tour of great works of sculpture from prehistoric times to the modern era.

The classic work on the sublime interplay between the arts and poetics This book explores the rich and complex relationship between art and poetry, shedding invaluable light on what makes each art form unique yet wholly interdependent. Jacques Maritain insists on the part played by the intellect as well as the imagination, showing how poetry has its source in the preconceptual activity of the rational mind. As Maritain argues, intellect is not merely logical and conceptual reason. Rather, it carries on an exceedingly more profound and obscure life, one that is revealed to us as we seek to penetrate the hidden recesses of poetic and artistic activity. Incisive and authoritative, this illuminating book is the product of a lifelong reflection on the meaning of artistic expression in all its varied forms.

Why our banking system is broken-and the reforms needed to fix it The past few years have shown that risks in banking can impose significant costs on the economy. Many claim, however, that a safer banking system would require sacrificing lending and economic growth. The Bankers' New Clothes examines this claim and the narratives used by bankers, politicians, and regulators to rationalize the lack of reform, exposing them as invalid. Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig argue that we can have a safer and healthier banking system without sacrificing any of its benefits, and at essentially no cost to society. They seek to engage the broader public in the debate by cutting through the jargon of banking, clearing the fog of confusion, and presenting the issues in simple and accessible terms.

"Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) was an intellectual, ideologue, and anticolonial nationalist leader in India's struggle for independence from British colonial rule, one whose anti-Muslim writings exploited India's tensions in pursuit of Hindu majority rule. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva is the first comprehensive intellectual history of one of the most contentious political thinkers of the twentieth century. Janaki Bakhle examines the full range of Savarkar's voluminous writings in his native language of Marathi, from political and historical works to poetry, essays, and speeches. She reveals the complexities in the various positions he took as a champion of the beleaguered Hindu community, an anticaste progressive, an erudite if polemical historian, a pioneering advocate for women's dignity, and a patriotic poet. This critical examination of Savarkar's thought shows that Hindutva is as much about the aesthetic experiences that have been attached to the idea of India itself as it is a militant political program that has targeted the Muslim community in pursuit of power in postcolonial India.By bringing to light the many legends surrounding Savarkar, Bakhle shows how this figure from a provincial locality in colonial India rose to world-historical importance. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva also uncovers the vast hagiographic literature that has kept alive the myth of Savarkar as a uniquely brave, brilliant, and learned revolutionary leader of the Hindu nation"--

From the acclaimed authors of Capitalism without Capital, radical ideas for restoring prosperity in today's intangible economyThe past two decades have witnessed sluggish economic growth, mounting inequality, dysfunctional competition, and a host of other ills that have left people wondering what has happened to the future they were promised. Restarting the Future reveals how these problems arise from a failure to develop the institutions demanded by an economy now reliant on intangible capital such as ideas, relationships, brands, and knowledge.In this groundbreaking and provocative book, Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake argue that the great economic disappointment of the century is the result of an incomplete transition from an economy based on physical capital, and show how the vital institutions that underpin our economy remain geared to an outmoded way of doing business. The growth of intangible investment has slowed significantly in recent years, making the world poorer, less fair, and more vulnerable to existential threats. Haskel and Westlake present exciting new ideas to help us catch up with the intangible revolution, offering a road map for how to finance businesses, improve our cities, fund more science and research, reform monetary policy, and reshape intellectual property rules for the better.Drawing on Haskel and Westlake's experience at the forefront of finance and economic policymaking, Restarting the Future sets out a host of radical but practical solutions that can lead us into the future.

A classic account of the villa--from ancient Rome to the twentieth century--by "the preeminent American scholar of Italian Renaissance architecture" (Architect's Newspaper) In The Villa, James Ackerman explores villa building in the West from ancient Rome to twentieth-century France and America. In this wide-ranging book, he illuminates such topics as the early villas of the Medici, the rise of the Palladian villa in England, and the modern villas of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. Ackerman uses the phenomenon of the "country place" as a focus for examining the relationships between urban and rural life, between building and the natural environment, and between architectural design and social, cultural, economic, and political forces. "The villa," he reminds us, "accommodates a fantasy which is impervious to reality." As city dwellers idealized country life, the villa, unlike the farmhouse, became associated with pleasure and asserted its modernity and status as a product of the architect's imagination.

One of the twentieth century's most influential texts on philosophical aesthetics Painting as an Art is acclaimed philosopher Richard Wollheim's encompassing vision of how to view art. Transcending the traditional boundaries of art history, Wollheim draws on his three great passions--philosophy, psychology, and art--to present an illuminating theory of the very experience of art. He shows how to unlock the meaning of a painting by retrieving--almost reenacting--the creative activity that produced it. In order to fully appreciate a work of art, Wollheim argues, critics must bring a much richer conception of human psychology than they have in the past. This classic book points the way to discovering what is most profound and subtle about paintings by major artists such as Titian, Bellini, and de Kooning.

The classic work by internationally acclaimed Cézanne scholar John Rewald In Cézanne and America, John Rewald presents a full account of how Paul Cézanne's reputation and influence became established in America between 1891 and 1921, and of how some of the world's largest collections of his works were formed in the United States. This is the fascinating story of enthusiastic young American artists who took up Cézanne's cause after they discovered him in Paris. It is also the story of the discerning early American collectors of his work--Leo and Gertrude Stein, the Havemeyers, and John Quinn, among others--many of whom made their first purchases from Cézanne's wily dealer Ambroise Vollard in Paris, or from the dealer Alfred Stieglitz in New York, and of the beginning of the famous collection of Dr. Albert C. Barnes. Each chapter is illustrated not only with Cézanne's works but also with portraits of collectors and critics and with previously unpublished pages from diaries, dealers' ledgers, and Cézanne's own correspondence.

A cultural and social history of art collecting, art history, and the art market In The Rare Art Traditions, Joseph Alsop offers a wide-ranging cultural and social history of art collecting, art history, and the art market. He argues that art collecting is the basic element in a remarkably complex and historically rare behavioral system, which includes the historical study of art, the market for buying and selling art, museums, forgery, and the astonishing prices commanded by some works of art. The Rare Art Traditions tells the story of three important traditions of art collecting: the classical tradition that began in Greece, the Chinese tradition, and the Western tradition. The result is a major original contribution to art history.

From a leading art historian of Renaissance Italy, a compelling account of the artistic and cultural impact of the sack of sixteenth-century Rome In this illustrated account of the sack of Rome as a cultural and artistic phenomenon, André Chastel reveals the historical ambiguities of preceding events and the traumatic contrast between the flourishing world of art under Pope Clement VII and the city after it was looted by the troops of Emperor Charles V in 1527. Chastel illuminates the cultural repercussions of the humiliation of Rome, emphasizing the spread or "Europeanization" of the Mannerist style by artists who fled the city--including Parmigianino, Rosso, Polidoro, Peruzzi, and Perino del Vaga. At the same time, Clement's critics used the new media of printing and engraving to win over the people with caricatures and satirical writings, while Rome responded with monumental works affirming the legitimacy of the pope's temporal power. Chastel explores both the world that was lost by the sack and the great works of art created during Rome's recovery.

A striking account of Vasari's career, friendships, and contribution to the art of the Italian Renaissance Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors, first published in 1550, fixed for three hundred years general European views about the art of the Renaissance, and its influence still lingers today. While much has been written about Vasari's writings, comparatively few full-length studies have dealt with the man himself. In this book, T.S.R. Boase offers a compelling account of Vasari's life and career. At the same time, Boase explores Vasari's ideas about the art and artists he described in the two editions of his Lives, placing these reflections in their contemporary context and later developments in art history and criticism. The result is an important appraisal of Vasari's achievement, which despite its imperfections is without parallel in the history of Western art.

The classic study of the timeless relationship between literature and the visual arts In his search for a common link between literature and the visual arts, Mario Praz draws on the abundant evidence of mutual understanding and correspondence they have long shared. Praz explains that within literature, each epoch has "its peculiar handwriting or handwritings, which, if one could interpret them, would reveal a character, even a physical appearance," and while these characteristics belong to the general style of a given period, the personality of the writer does not fail to pierce through. Praz contends that something similar occurs in art. He shows how the likeness between the arts within various periods of history can ultimately be traced to structural similarities that arise out of the characteristic way in which the people of a certain epoch see and memorize facts aesthetically. Mnemosyne, at once the goddess of memory and the mother of the muses, presides over this view of the arts. In illustrating her influence, Praz ranges widely through Western sources, providing an incomparable tour of the literary and pictorial arts.

An eminent literary biographer and critic shows how poetry enriched the art of two representative English Romantic painters In Visionary and Dreamer, David Cecil evokes the century of the poet-painter, when painting drew much of its inspiration from imaginative literature. Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), an unworldly visionary, obscure in his lifetime but now a recognized master, and Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), the Pre-Raphaelite daydreamer, once revered as a great painter but later admired chiefly for his work in applied art, emerge as artists who turned to their own inner lives to interpret Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats.

Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality: in the past couple of decades, a great deal of attention has been paid to such collective identities. They clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. But to what extent do "e;identities"e; constrain our freedom, our ability to make an individual life, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? In this beautifully written work, renowned philosopher and African Studies scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions. The Ethics of Identity takes seriously both the claims of individuality--the task of making a life---and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves. What sort of life one should lead is a subject that has preoccupied moral and political thinkers from Aristotle to Mill. Here, Appiah develops an account of ethics, in just this venerable sense--but an account that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances, our individuality with our identities. As he observes, the question who we are has always been linked to the question what we are. Adopting a broadly interdisciplinary perspective, Appiah takes aim at the cliches and received ideas amid which talk of identity so often founders. Is "e;culture"e; a good? For that matter, does the concept of culture really explain anything? Is diversity of value in itself? Are moral obligations the only kind there are? Has the rhetoric of "e;human rights"e; been overstretched? In the end, Appiah's arguments make it harder to think of the world as divided between the West and the Rest; between locals and cosmopolitans; between Us and Them. The result is a new vision of liberal humanism--one that can accommodate the vagaries and variety that make us human.

A landmark account of the work, thought, and life of the seventeenth-century French painter In this book, Anthony Blunt presents a rich account of the paintings, life, and development of the great seventeenth-century French classicist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), addressing the artist's entire oeuvre alongside his theory of art. Blunt shows why Poussin holds a central place in the great French humanist line that produced Racine, Molière, Voltaire, the Parnassians, and Mallarmé. At the same time, he examines how Poussin looks back to Raphael and ancient Rome, while pointing forward to Ingres, Cézanne, the Cubists, and Picasso.