This book celebrates the achievements of Alice Guy Blache (1873-1968), the first woman motion picture director and producer. From 1896 to 1907, Guy Blache created films for Gaumont in Paris. In 1907, she moved to the United States and established her...

What does a library say about the mind of its owner? How do books map the intellectual interests, curiosities, tastes, and personalities of their readers? What does the collecting of books have in common with the practice of architecture? "Unpacking...

Policing Stalin's "Socialism" is one of the first books to emphasize the importance of social order repression by Stalin's Soviet regime in contrast to the traditional emphasis of historians on political repression. Based on extensive examination of...

Robert A. M. Stern is one of contemporary architecture's most influential figures, with a career encompassing every facet of the profession: he has a flourishing private practice; he is a noted authority on New York architectural history; his own arc...

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) produced a body of work that strongly appealed to his contemporaries while disconcerting them. The odd qualities of his work continue to fascinate scholars, critics, and artists today. For the most part schol...

This pioneering study is the first to show how Jews have been seen through modern Ukrainian literature. Myroslav Shkandrij uses evidence found within that literature to challenge the established view that the Ukrainian and Jewish communities were ant...

Filled with a remarkable cast of characters and set against the backdrop of imperial Russia, this tale of forbidden romance could be the stuff of a great historical novel. But in fact "The Pearl" tells a true tale, reconstructed in part from archival...

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is one of the great geniuses in the history of art, and his work has influenced a multitude of artists throughout Europe. Across the Atlantic, Cezanne's paintings had a similarly catalytic effect on artists emerging in the Un...

John Gutmann (1905-1998) was one of America's most distinctive photographers. Born in Germany where he trained as an artist and art teacher, he fled the Nazis in 1933 and settled in San Francisco, reinventing himself as a photo-reporter. Gutmann capt...

During the Ming Dynasty numerous new animal themes were created to convey political and ethical messages current at court. As the result a sophisticated language of Chinese animal painting was developed, employing both the animals' symbolic associati...