Throughout her long and prolific career American artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) developed innovative sculptures in wire, a medium she explored through increasingly complex forms using craft-based techniques she learned while traveling in Mexico in 194...

Born Julius Marx in 1890, the brilliant comic actor who would later be known as Groucho was the most verbal of the famed comedy team, the Marx Brothers, his broad slapstick portrayals elevated by ingenious wordplay and double entendre. In his spirite...

Richly illustrated with images from Jan Tschichold's little-known private collection of design ephemera, this important book explores a legendary figure in the history of modern graphic design through the artists, ideas, and texts from the Bauhaus th...

From personal ornamentation to funerary practice, from palace decoration to private devotion, jade has played a major role in Chinese social, cultural, and political life for millennia. Exploring the history of this revered stone through the esteemed...

Originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges is India's most important and sacred river. In this unprecedented work, historian Sudipta Sen tells the story of the Ganges, from the communities that arose on its banks to t...

Cuban artist Zilia Sanchez (b. 1926) often says, "Soy isla" ("I am an island"), expressing her desire for solitary, uncompromising practice. It also serves as a metaphor for her experience as an islander – connected to and disconnected from both the...

This intimate portrait examines the tracks, journeys, and experiences of child runaways in northern India. Jonah Steinberg situates children's decisions to leave home and flee for the city in their larger cultural, social, and historical contexts, an...

One of the country's leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society – economic, cultural, and political – and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of...

The Jewish nation-state has often been thought of as Zionism's end goal. In this bracing history of the idea of the Jewish state in modern Zionism, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century until the establishment of the state of Israel, Dmi...

This original and relevant book investigates the relationship between intellectual property and the visual arts in France from the 16th century to the French Revolution. It charts the early history of privilege legislation (today's copyright and pate...