Divine forms: The heavenly grace and human grandeur of a supreme Renaissance master In art history, we tend to be on first name terms only with the most revered of masters. The Renaissance painter ...
There are over 1,000 catalogued works by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the 16th-century flag bearer for Baroque drama, movement, and sensuality. This essential introduction takes in the most i...
Immerse yourself in the rich shades and textures of Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1490–1576), commonly known as Titian, and the figurehead of 16th-century Venetian painting. With his bold approach to ...
Sharp angles, strange forms, lurid colors, and distorted perspectives are classic hallmarks of Expressionism, the twentieth century movement that prioritized emotion over objective reality. Though ...
Filling notebook after notebook with sketches, inventions, and theories, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) not only stands as one of the most exceptional draftsmen of art history, but also as a m...
Lucian Freud (1922 2011) was interested in the telling of truth. Always operating outside the main currents of 20th-century art, the esteemed portrait painter observed his subjects with the regimen...
The great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/31-1569) was an astoundingly inventive painter and draftsman, who made his art historical mark with beautiful, evocative landscapes as we...
First published on the anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new writings - a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the ...
In twenty-one bite-sized lessons, Yuval Noah Harari explores what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment.How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and...
An exploration of the invisible connections sustaining the entire natural world from the bestselling author of The Hidden Life of TreesDid you know that trees can influence the rotation...
Brilliant and disturbing' Yuval Noah HarariThe past is another country, the old saying goes. The same might be said of the future. But which country? For Europeans and Americans today, ...
‘Why is there so much inequality?’ Xenia asks her father, the world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis.Drawing on memories of her childhood and a variety of well-known tales ...
Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it. Us. We are the most advanced and most destructive animals ever to have l...
The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a ReturnThe intelligent and outspoken child of radical Marxists, and the great-grandaughter of Iran's last emperor, Satrapi bears witness to a ...
Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe?In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the con...
Why do human beings behave as they do?We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other?
How did money come to be invented? Why does it now have such significance in our lives? Does it make us happier or unhappier? And what does the future hold for it? With brilliant clarity and insigh...
WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR The West's domination of world politics is coming to a close. The flow of wealth and power is turning from West to East and a new era of global instability has begu...
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to...
Could drugs offer a new way of seeing the world? In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. W...