A decimated Shiite shrine in Iraq. The smoking World Trade Center site. The scorched cityscape of 1945 Dresden. Among the most indelible scars left by war is the destroyed landscapes, and such architectural devastation damages far more than mere bui…
The rat has been described as the shadow of the human. From ancient times it spread via the routes of commerce and conquest to eventually inhabit almost every part of the world. Its impact on history has been enormous in terms of the damage done thr…
Gypsies, Roma and Travellers are some of the most marginalized and vilified people in society. They are rarely seen as having a place in a country, either geographically or socially, no matter where they live or what they do. Another Darkness, Anoth…
We have always known dread and panic, felt threatened by certain groups or situations, or by natural and human-made forces. And the spectres haunting our own era of 'late modernity' are many and varied. Food, people, environments and technologies ca…
For over 2,000 years barrels have been used to store and transport a diverse array of commodities around the earth. The story of the barrel - from its earliest form, crafted by the Celtic tribes of northern Europe in the first millennium BC, to its…
No other civilization in the pre-modern world was more obsessed with creating underground burial structures than the Chinese. For at least five thousand years, from the fourth millennium BCE to the early twentieth century, Chinese people devoted an…
Elvis Aaron Presley is more popular today than ever, yet he died nearly forty years ago. His music is constantly remixed and re-released to a new generation of fans, and his image thrives in popular art and culture. Elvis's Graceland home and Tupelo…
Whether it's a homemade strawberry shortcake in summer or a chef's complex medley of sweets, dessert is the perfect ending to a meal. Most of us, even those who seldom indulge, have a favourite dessert. After all, sweet is one of the basic flavours…
Except for in terms of the Vietnam War, Vietnam's history remains significantly under-studied. In this comprehensive book, Vu Hong Lien and Peter Sharrock chronicle the vast sweep of the region's tumultuous past, from the Bronze Age to the present d…
The notion of taking a seaside holiday has only existed since the 18th century, when it was slowly becoming accepted that fresh air and sea water are good for health. Since then, a vast array of seaside resorts to suit all budgets has been developed…
"Synthetic Worlds" considers the remarkable alliance between chemistry and art, taking us from the late eighteenth century to the period immediately following the Second World War. Esther Leslie offers fascinating new insights into the place of the…
'To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day' wrote William Somerset Maugham, but what exactly is breakfast? It varies greatly from family to family and region to region, even though individuals tend to eat the same thing ever…
The small but mighty shrimp, or prawn, has lured diners to the table for centuries. These primordial-looking creatures spend their short lives out of sight, deep on the ocean floor, yet they have inspired an immense passion among many cultures. They…
From the Greek myth of Prometheus to the counter-cultural Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, fire has always sparked our imagination. Like knowledge in the Garden of Eden, fire is at once essential to life and a threat to it. We…
Although this monograph begins by probing modernism's surfaces and subjects, its public and private meanings, in order to establish Jasper Johns's importance as "the" modern allegorical artist in the years after abstract expressionism, it is not an…
"China to Chinatown" tells the story of one of the most notable examples of the globalization of food: the spread of Chinese recipes, ingredients and cooking styles to the Western world. Beginning with the accounts of Marco Polo and Franciscan missi…
We live in an electronic world. Electronic sounds and electronic music have long permeated our sonic landscape. What began as the otherworldly sounds of the film score for the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and the rarefied, new timbres of Stockhausen's…
Art in Ireland since 1910 is the first book to examine Irish art from the early twentieth century to the present day. In this highly illustrated volume Fionna Barber looks at the work of a wide range of artists from Yeats and le Brocquy to Cross and…
Arthur Munby (1828-1910) was a Victorian gentleman from a respected family of Yorkshire lawyers. He left behind diaries that record his life-long obsession with working-class Victorian women, whom he interviewed, photographed and wrote about. This o…
The story of salmon takes readers on a culinary journey from the coast of Alaska to the rivers of Scotland. Salmon: A Global History traces salmon's history from the earliest known records to the present, telling the story of how the salmon was tran…
Gravenstein, Coe's Golden Drop, Cox's Orange Pippin: the names sound like something from Tolkien or the ingredients of a magic potion. But as befits their magical appellations, apples have transfixed and beguiled humans for thousands of years. Erika…
Sometimes referred to as the "Father of Biogeography," Alfred Russel Wallace has come to be known as the co-originator of the theory of evolution through natural selection, and he also wrote extensively on zoology, botany, anthropology, politics, as…
At the age of fifty Stephane Mallarme (1842-98) spoke of his published work as very precise reference points on my mind's journey. In "Stephane Mallarme", Roger Pearson charts that journey for the first time, blending a biographical account of the p…
This title is presented with essays by Kasia Boddy, Michael Bravo, Peter Burke, Melissa Calaresu, Jesus Maria Carillo Castillo, Peter Hansen, Edward James, Nigel Leask, Joan-Pau Rubies and Wes Williams. A much-needed contribution to the expanding in…
In "Unintended Consequences", Ian J. Bickerton and Kenneth J. Hagan describe and analyse the unintended consequences of ten major wars fought by the United States, pointing out critical turning points in the conflicts and the remarkable similarity o…
Victor Hugo (1802-85) is an icon of French culture. He achieved immense success as a poet, dramatist, and novelist, and he was also elected to both houses of the French Parliament. Leading the Romantic campaign against artistic tradition and defying…
Central Asia is likely to become a new arena of international interest in the twenty-first century, not least because of its volatile cocktail of abundant oil and gas, Islamic Jehadist groups, dictatorial regimes and the political and economic rival…
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes Jimi Hendrix as 'arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music'. He played at a time when electric amplification extended the scope of the instrument to three-dimensional, urban space. Bo…
The European city was transformed when public lighting was introduced in the last century and "night life" was made possible for the first time. This is an investigation of the various aspects of Paris, Berlin, London and their inhabitants at night…
Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honour', wrote Ernest Hemingway in "Death in the Afternoon". Art? Ritual? Sport? Cruelty? Though…
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born on 30 November 1835 in Monroe County, Missouri, was never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story. A natural-born storyteller, Mark Twain freely adapted the incidents of his life and the stories he heard as…
Having visited Ireland regularly during the 1930s, Ludwig Wittgenstein resigned his Cambridge philosophy professorship in 1947 and moved there, living in a fishing village on the Atlantic coast and hotels in Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains. This bo…
The spicy tang of kimchi, the richness of Korean barbecue, the hearty flavours of bibimbap: Korean cuisine is savoured the world over for its diversity of ingredients and flavours. Michael J. Pettid offers here an illustrated historical account of K…
Icons are among the most elusive subjects in the history of art, but at the same time their study constitutes possibly its fastest expanding field, and with the opening-up of the former Soviet Union many new objects are being discovered, studied and…
Since the dawn of mankind, humans have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for violence, deceit and mayhem. With the advent of civilization and the creation of laws to uphold our sense of security and retribution, the notions of crime and punishment…
In this book Gay Watson offers an alternative view of emptiness via a tour of early and non-Western philosophy, taking us from Buddhism, Taoism and religious mysticism to the contemporary world of philosophy, science and art practice. While traditio…
In blood-soaked lore handed down the centuries, the vampire is a monster of endless fascination: from Bram Stoker's "Dracula" to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", this seductive lover of blood haunts popular culture and inhabits our darkest imaginings. Th…
The 'boxes' and collages constructed by Joseph Cornell (1903-72) are among the most intriguing and beguiling works of art made this century. Old toys, photos, magazine illustrations, bits of electrical wiring anything in fact more usually left to mo…
From the first barbecues of ancient Africa to Fijian pig and Chinese char siu, meat that's been slowly roasted over a smoky fire is enjoyed around the globe - and with an infinite variety of spices, sauces and sides. A muscular, sinewy account of th…
The medieval Christian attitude towards Jews included a pervasive fear of violence enacted against Christians. Many Christians believed that Jews committed crimes against Christian children, Christ's body and the Eucharist, leading them to conclude…
