In this wide-ranging and stimulating book, a leading authority on the history of medicine and science presents convincing evidence that Dutch commerce-not religion-inspired the rise of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harold J. Coo...

Among the many treasures of The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is its remarkable collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Flemish paintings – more than five hundred in all – including key works by Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens, Snyders...

In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and "Eine kurze Weltgeschic...

In this stimulating book, a leading authority on the Spanish master Diego Velazquez discusses this enigmatic artist and explores the mysteries presented by his paintings. The essays collected here, written over the course of Jonathan Brown's distingu...

At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, London's art world was taken by storm by a new generation of painters, whose novel approach to the depiction of everyday life critics loudly trumpeted as a sign of the nation's cultural pre-eminence. Led by the p...

This book is the first comprehensive guide to the historic heart of Brighton and Hove, the greatest of England's seaside resorts. A series of walks trace its development from late medieval fishing settlement to the "Queen of the Watering Places", wit...

"Grand Scale" brings to light rare surviving examples of mural-size prints – a Renaissance art form nearly lost from historical record. The most famous sixteenth-century woodcuts, engravings, and etchings were those done on an intimate scale. Yet art...

Fyodor Dostoevsky completed his final novel, "The Brothers Karamazov", in 1880. A work of universal appeal and significance, his exploration of good and evil immediately gained an international readership and today "remains harrowingly alive in the f...

St. Paul is generally considered the first Christian hermit, and the monastery built around his cave in Egypt is one of the very oldest. This sumptuous volume grew out of a conservation project of the monastery's superb wall paintings, which were bro...

"Chinese Grammar Made Easy" presents instructors with innovative and classroom-tested techniques for teaching 150 fundamental grammar points. Its communicative, meaning-based approach helps teachers to engage students by bringing grammar into a real-...