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Clearly written and fascinatingly illustrated, Tourists at the Taj describes the conflicting narratives which surround the site. For some the Taj is an evocative symbol of the colonial past. For others it is a symbolic centre of Islamic power. For many of the thousands of tourists that visit it each year it is simply a monument of love. The author shows how tourism can be seen as a performance and the tourist site as a stage on which tourists are directed and rehearsed but also able to improvise their own cultural rituals.
Coco Chanel, without question probably the most famous fashion designer of all time, was named by TimeÊ magazine one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Her life was filled with trauma, romance, intrigue, and scandal, but her business acumen and groundbreaking talent (along with funding by her paramours) took her far beyond her humble beginnings. Chanel understood how to get what she wanted from life and never hesitated to pursue the grandest of visions. Her designs broke numerous barriers, and her influence on style and aesthetic forever changed the world, especially for women. WomenÕs liberation took a major step forward when Chanel made it acceptable and stylish for women to throw away their corsets and pull on pants! Moving beyond tangible style to the intangible, Chanel broke new ground when she introduced her own scent, N¡5. She was the first designer to do so. Today most fashion houses have their own fragrance line, but it was Chanel who started the trend. This was but one of many trendsÑnow considered classicsÑthat were born of ChanelÕs brilliant design mien: ropes of pearls, cardigans, jewelry cuffs, slinky jersey fabric, and more. Vive la Chanel!
Why shoot a revolver when a modern semi-automatic carries more rounds, reloads faster, is flatter and slimmer, and is no more costly? Revolvers are no-problem guns. Because it has a relatively straightforward design, a revolver is very reliable. A semiautomatic is sensitive to cartridges, and stories about jammed actions because of insufficiently powerful rounds are numerous. Revolvers do not jam. If a revolver misfires or a case is underpowered, the shooter simply pulls the trigger again. The complexity of a semi-autoÍs mechanics compared to a revolver gives the revolver an edge in durability. A revolver can take a great deal of punishment and still shoot a tight group. The final point in favor of revolvers is their ability to accept powerful loads. No semiautos can withstand the power of loads such as .454 Casull or .475 Linebaugh. In short, revolvers still rock!
When his queen, Arjumand Banu - Mumtaz-i-Mahal, the Chosen One of the Palace - died, Shah Jahan wanted to build a monument that was the image of his perfect love for her. For twenty-two years, twenty thousand men laboured day and night to fulfil the emperors obsession. The result was the Taj Mahal, a marble mausoleum lined with gold, silver and precious jewels. This powerful novel narrates the story of the Taj on two parallel levels. The first one tells the passionate love story of Shah Jahan and Arjumand till her death through the voices of three main characters - Arjumand, Shah Jahan and Isa, Arjumands favourite eunuch. The second recounts the later years of Shah Jahans reign, the building...
Why shoot a revolver when a modern semi-automatic carries more rounds, reloads faster, is flatter and slimmer, and is no more costly? Revolvers are no-problem guns. Because it has a relatively straightforward design, a revolver is very reliable. A semiautomatic is sensitive to cartridges, and stories about jammed actions because of insufficiently powerful rounds are numerous. Revolvers do not jam. If a revolver misfires or a case is underpowered, the shooter simply pulls the trigger again. The complexity of a semi-autoÍs mechanics compared to a revolver gives the revolver an edge in durability. A revolver can take a great deal of punishment and still shoot a tight group. The final point in favor of revolvers is their ability to accept powerful loads. No semiautos can withstand the power of loads such as .454 Casull or .475 Linebaugh. In short, revolvers still rock!
The earliest known decks of tarot cards created in Italy in the late 15th century were used as a game. The tarotÕs association with fortune telling and gypsies did not come about until the late 1700s. The first decks were hand painted for wealthy families who had the money to commission the decks as well as the time to play with them. After the advent of lithography, the easy replication through printing made tarot decks much more accessible to the everyday man and woman. In todayÕs world, the tarot has numerous uses, most of which have the purpose of encouraging self-knowledge and reflection. The beauty and lyricism of hundreds, and even thousands, of tarot decks illustrated throughout the last 600 years, as well as those currently in circulation and those yet to be designed and published, make them a unique art form. This book celebrates that art form.
Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, is one of the best-loved movie stars and sex goddesses of all time, although she died much too young at the age of thirty-six. Marilyn overcame multiple foster homes and an early, war-time marriage to become the wife of two of Americas most famous men: first, the baseball all-star Joe DiMaggio, and then the playwright Arthur Miller. Not surprisingly, she even caught the eye of President John F. Kennedy to whom she famously sang Happy Birthday in 1962 in front of an overflow crowd at New York Citys Madison Square Garden. A life-time struggle with self-confidence, tumultous marriages, ill health, and drug and alcohol addiction...
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as simply Sandro Botticelli, was born in Florence, Italy, probably in or around 1445. Serendipitously winning a high-profile commission from the Florentine court, he was catapulted to notoriety as wealthy patrons, in particular the Medici family, hired him to create works that celebrated their lives and their familyÍs lives and marked important events such as weddings. BotticelliÍs range was wide: he embellished the walls of the Sistine Chapel with three frescoes, illustrated DanteÍs The Divine Comedy (just under100 drawings still exist), and painted both mythological and religious scenesPrimavera and The Birth of Venus, and Adoration of the Magi, being respective examples of his excellence in the genre. Botticelli never wed, possibly due to his unrequited love for the married Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, who died very young. By the end of 15th century, Botticelli came to believe that Humanisma philosophy embraced by the Medici familywas amoral. His reaction was to burn many of his paintings and thereafter to produce only religious-themed works.
Piet Mondrian pioneered the de Stijl movementDutch for ñThe Styleîthat emerged in the early 20th century and which served as an important transition from a focus on Symbolism and Realism to a new and growing focus on abstraction. The evolution of MondrianÍs initial, traditional style, akin to that of The Hague School, through to his much later works in primary colors and geometric forms, which he called Neo-plasticism, is marked by rather sharp deviations in stylistic form and experimentation along the way, including Cubism and Fauvism. Much of MondrianÍs work was greatly influenced by Theosophy, a movement considered to be the genesis of ñNew Ageî beliefs, begun by the Russian occ...
Eugne Delacroix was highly influential in the 19th-century Romanticism art movement and is considered by many art historians to be the most important of the Romantic painters. Delacroix is often attributed with refining Romanticism, not only aesthetically but philosophically, as his work influenced not only art, but also literature. One of DelacroixÍs best-known paintings, completed in 1830 and on the cover of this book, is Liberty Leading the People, which represents the Parisian people in their search for liberty, fraternity, and equality, a subject of great importance to the French nation on the heels of their revolution, which in turn followed closely and was inspired by the American ...