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Inspired by the process of creating a library for his 15th-century home near the Loire, in France, Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries in this captivating meditation on their meaning and significance.
The first ever global history of luxury, from Roman villas to Russian oligarchs: a sparkling story of novelty, excess, extravagance, and indulgence through the centuries.
"Recent years have witnessed a surge in interest the Pacific world as a hub for the global trade in art objects. Yet, the history of art and architecture has seldom reckoned with another profound aspect of the region's history: its exposure to global conflict. Art and War in the Pacific World provides a new view of the Pacific world, and of global artistic interaction, by exploring how the making, alteration, looting, and destruction of images, objects, buildings, and landscapes intersected with the exercise of force during the British and U.S. military incursions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.
Despite William Hunter's stature as one of the most important collectors and men of science of the eighteenth century, and the fact that his collection is the foundation of Scotland's oldest public museum, The Hunterian, until now there has been no comprehensive examination in a single volume of all his collections in their diversity. This volume restores Hunter to a rightful position of prominence among the medical men whose research and amassing of specimens transformed our understanding of the natural world and man's position within it. This volume comprises essays by international specialists and are as diverse as Hunter's collections themselves, dealing as they do with material that ran...
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Pagodas in Play analyzes the treatment of China in the imaginative and spectacular world of eighteenth-century Italian opera. It shows how Italians used perceptions of Chinese culture to address local and transnational developments, particularly Enlightenment and secular reform initiatives. Its focus on the texts and performance practices of opera, an entertainment form accessible to a wide public, reveals cultural operations and identities harder to detect in non-fictional reformist writings, the texts traditionally privileged to explain Italian mediations of Enlightenment ideas. In its close reading of nine libretti of the most salient Settecento operas treating China (opere serie and oper...
Alexander I was a ruler with high aspirations for the people of Russia. Cosseted as a young grand duke by Catherine the Great, he ascended to the throne in 1801 after the brutal assassination of his father. In this magisterial biography, Marie-Pierre Rey illuminates the complex forces that shaped Alexander's tumultuous reign and sheds brilliant new light on the handsome ruler known to his people as "the Sphinx." Despite an early and ambitious commitment to sweeping political reforms, Alexander saw his liberal aspirations overwhelmed by civil unrest in his own country and by costly confrontations with Napoleon, which culminated in the French invasion of Russia and the burning of Moscow in 181...
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This catalogue of pre-Han pottery presents a variety of regional ancient cultures and reveals China's early civilizations through 63 fine examples of ceramic artworks from the Neolithic period through the Western Zhou dynasty drawn from the renowned Meiyintang Collection. Clearly outlining the different regions and charateristics of the ceramic-producing cultures of ancient China, this volume includes information on newly excavated materials and discussion on how these Neolithic and Bronze age cultures laid the foundations for China's later artistic and cultural achievements.
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