In a fleeting fourteen year period, sandwiched between two world wars, Germany’s Bauhaus school of art and design changed the face of modernity. With utopian ideals for the future, the school...
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 1610) was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of the Italian Baroque, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial, violent in temper...
Though numbering just 35 known works, the oeuvre of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is hailed as one of the most important and inspiring portfolios in art history. His paintings have prompted a New Yo...
Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas. He is angry that people are not working. Then, he meets the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley. Can Scrooge be a good person before it is too late?...
Alec Leamas, a British spy, is worn out and ready to stop working. But his boss wants him to do one final job: to spread false information about an important man in East Germany. Can Alec end his c...
We all use a lot of plastic every day. It is cheap and strong, and plastic things last. But where does plastic come from? And what can we do to recycle all the plastic in our world?Peng...
The neglected champions of ImpressionismIt was a dappled and daubed harbor scene that gave Impressionism its name. When Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet was exhibited in April 1874, critic...
This book is about sweet shops, school days and summer holidays! It is the story of the famous writer Roald Dahl when he was a boy. These tales are exciting, funny and sometimes frightening. All of...
Originally published in France between 1876 and 1888, Auguste Racinet's Le Costume historique was in its day the most wide-ranging and incisive study of clothing ever attempted. Covering the world ...
No other artist, apart from J. M. W. Turner, tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840-1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cezanne called "only an eye,...
George Eastman's career developed in a particularly American way. The founder of Kodak progressed from a delivery boy to one of the most important industrialists in American history, and a crucial ...
Whether it's Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, or The Big Sleep, roam a screen world of dark and brooding elegance with this essential handbook to Film Noir. From private eyes and perfect crimes to...
Until his death at age 104, Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) was something of an unstoppable architectural force. Over seven decades of work, he designed approximately 600 buildings, transforming s...
Modernist aesthetics in architecture, art, and product design are familiar to many. In soaring glass structures or minimalist canvases, we recognize a time of vast technological advance which affir...
Through ancient wonders, world capitals, and tiny places with infectious personalities, Europe packs some serious travel punches. The world’s second-smallest continent makes up for size with ...
Andy Warhol was a relentless chronicler of life and its encounters. Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, he amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of frien...
From 1979 to 1989 Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed thousands of casualties on both sides. While the Soviet Union talked about a 'peace-keeping' mission, the de...
For generations now, Edward W. Said's Orientalism has defined our understanding of colonialism and empire, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition contains a preface written by Said shortly before...
We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation'James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller...
The history of nude photography is the history of people’s fascination with the topic. Indeed, the photographic depiction of the human body is the only subject that has enthralled photographe...