Medieval prayer books held not only the devotions and meditations of Christianity, but also housed, slipped between pages, sundry notes, reminders, and ephemera, such as pilgrims' badges, sworn oaths, and small painted images. Many of these last item...

Information is power. For more than five hundred years the success or failure of nations has been determined by a country's ability to acquire knowledge and technical skill and transform them into strength and prosperity. Leading historian Jeremy Bla...

A leading architect of the Italian Renaissance, Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481-1536) has, until now, been a little-known, enigmatic figure. A paucity of biographical documentation and a modest number of surviving buildings, coupled with an undeservedly cr...

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) was one of the leading British landscape painters of the 19th century. Inspired by his mentor, the artist and poet William Blake, Palmer brought a new spiritual intensity to his interpretation of nature, producing works of u...

Drawing on cutting-edge historical and archaeological research, author Michael Satlow provides a grand, sweeping exploration of the true origins of the Holy Bible. Originally cobbled together from a diverse assortment of ancient Middle Eastern texts...

Perhaps the world's most distinctive tree, ginkgo has remained stubbornly unchanged for more than two hundred million years. A living link to the age of dinosaurs, it survived the great ice ages as a relic in China, but it earned its reprieve when pe...

Originated in 1919 to showcase the works of exceptional American poets under the age of forty, the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize is the oldest annual literary award presented in the United States. Ansel Elkins's poetry collection, "Blue Yodel",...

In this provocative study, Hazel Hutchison takes a fresh look at the roles of American writers in helping to shape national opinion and policy during the First World War. From the war's opening salvos in Europe, American writers recognized the impact...

Almost without our noticing, dragonflies dart through our world, flying, seeing, hunting, mating. Their lives are as mysterious as their gossamer wings are beautiful. In this book Pieter van Dokkum reveals many of the dragonfly's secrets, capturing t...

Turn on the tap, and water pours out. Pull out the plug, and the dirty water disappears. Most of us give little thought to the hidden systems that bring us water and take it away when we're done with it. But these underappreciated marvels of engineer...