The modernist parks and gardens of Brazilian landscape architect and garden designer Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) earned him awards, widespread acclaim, and international fame. Over a 60-year career, he designed more than 2000 gardens worldwide, th...

The second largest city in 17th-century Europe, Naples constituted a vital Mediterranean center in which the Spanish Habsburgs, the clergy, and Neapolitan aristocracy, together with the resident merchants, and other members of the growing professiona...

Alberto Manguel praises the Hungarian writer Laszlo Foldenyi as "one of the most brilliant essayists of our time". Foldenyi's extraordinary Melancholy, with its profusion of literary, ecclesiastical, artistic, and historical insights, gives proof to...

From his first visit to Berlin in 1916, Hitler was preoccupied and fascinated by Germany's great capital city. In this vivid and entirely new account of Hitler's relationship with Berlin, Thomas Friedrich explores how Hitler identified with the city,...

The Russian Canvas charts the remarkable rise of Russian painting in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the nature of its relationship with other European schools. Starting with the foundation of the Imperial Academy of the Arts in 1757 and culminating...

At a crucial point midway through his career, American painter and printmaker Jasper Johns (b. 1930) looked to the art of Norwegian Expressionist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) for inspiration. Munch's innovative working methods and defining themes of love...

Since cities emerged ten thousand years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear-cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their ve...

Design has always prided itself on being relevant to the world it serves, but interest in design was once limited to a small community of design professionals. Today, books on "design thinking" are best sellers, and computer and Web-based tools have...

In this unique and unprecedented study of birding in Africa, historian Nancy Jacobs reconstructs the collaborations between well-known ornithologists and the largely forgotten guides, hunters, and taxidermists who worked with them. Drawing on ethnogr...

Jane Dawson has written the definitive life of John Knox, a leader of the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth-century Scotland. Based in large part on previously unavailable sources, including the recently discovered papers of Knox's close friend and...