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A cult of anti-expertise sentiment has coincided with anti-intellectualism, resulting in massively viral yet poorly informed debates ranging from the anti-vaccination movement to attacks on GMOs. As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, there are a number of reasons why this has occurred-ranging from easy access to Internet search engines to a customer satisfaction model within higher education.
Jacopo Tintoretto (1518–94) is an ambiguous figure in the history of art. His radically unorthodox paintings are not readily classifiable, and although he was a Venetian by birth, his standing as a member of the Venetian school is constantly contested. But he was also a formidable maverick, abandoning the humanist narratives and sensuous color palette typical of the great Venetian master, Titian, in favor of a renewed concentration on core Christian subjects painted in a rough and abbreviated chiaroscuro style. This generously illustrated book offers an extensive analysis of Tintoretto’s greatest paintings, charting his life and work in the context of Venetian art and the culture of the Cinquecento. Tom Nichols shows that Tintoretto was an extraordinarily innovative artist who created a new manner of painting, which, for all of its originality and sophistication, was still able to appeal to the shared emotions of the widest possible audience. This compact, pocket edition features sixteen additional illustrations and a new afterword by the author, and it will continue to be one of the definitive treatments of this once grossly overlooked master.
For more than forty years, the United States has maintained a public commitment to nuclear disarmament, and every president from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama has gradually reduced the size of America's nuclear forces. Yet even now, over two decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States maintains a huge nuclear arsenal on high alert and ready for war. The Americans, like the Russians, the Chinese, and other major nuclear powers, continue to retain a deep faith in the political and military value of nuclear force, and this belief remains enshrined at the center of U.S. defense policy regardless of the radical changes that have taken place in international politics. In No Use, natio...
This book examines how sustainability has the potential to transform both the fashion system and the innovators who work within it. Sustainability is arguably the defining theme of the twenty-first century. The issues in fashion are broad-ranging and include labour abuses, toxic chemicals use and conspicuous consumption, giving rise to an undeniable tension between fashion and sustainability. The book is organized in three parts. The first part is concerned with transforming fashion products across the garment's lifecycle and includes innovation in materials, manufacture, distribution, use and re-use. The second part looks at ideas that are transforming the fashion system at root into something more sustainable, including new business models that reduce material throughput. The third section is concerned with transforming the role of fashion designers and looks to examples where the designer changes from a stylist or creator into a communicator, activist or facilitator.
The Art of Poverty is the first book in English to analyze depictions of beggars in 16th-century European art. Featuring works from Germany, the Low Countries, Britain, France, and Italy, it discusses a diverse body of imagery from crude woodcuts to monumental church altarpieces. It argues that these works largely conformed to two paradoxical, though mutually supportive, representational approaches. The book tracks the emergence of a trenchantly negative approach in Northern art, in which beggars are shown as vagabonds, alongside the other predominant visual mode, where beggars are exalted as examples of sacred purity. The Art of Poverty's progressive approach and cross-disciplinary theme makes it vital reading for those concerned with the development of early modern European culture.
Titian is best known for paintings that embodied the tradition of the Venetian Renaissance—but how Venetian was the artist himself? In this study, Tom Nichols probes the tensions between the individualism of Titian’s work and the conservative mores of the city, showing how his art undermined the traditional self-suppressing approach to painting in Venice and reflected his engagement with the individualistic cultures emerging in the courts of early modern Europe. Ranging widely across Titian’s long career and varied works, Titian and the End of the Venetian Renaissance outlines his radical innovations to the traditional Venetian altarpiece; his transformation of portraits into artistic creations; and his meteoric breakout from the confines of artistic culture in Venice. Nichols explores how Titian challenged the city’s communal values with his competitive professional identity, contending that his intensely personalized way of painting resulted in a departure that effectively brought an end to the Renaissance tradition of painting. Packed with 170 illustrations, this groundbreaking book will change the way people look at Titian and Venetian art history.
The 15th century saw the evolution of a distinct and powerfully influential European culture. But what does the familiar phrase "Renaissance Art" actually describe? Through engaging discussion of timeless works by artists such as Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, Nichols produces a masterpiece of his own as he explores the truly original and diverse character of the artistic Renaissance. Tom Nichols is a lecturer in Renaissance Art History at the University of Aberdeen, UK.
David Nicholls brings the wit and intelligence that graced his international bestseller One Day to a compellingly human, deftly humorous new novel about what holds marriages and families together—and what happens when everything threatens to fall apart. Douglas Petersen may be mild mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humour that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date . . . and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody seventeen-year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells Douglas she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be ...
The Cold War dominated international relations for forty-five years. It shaped the foreign policies of the United States and the Soviet Union and deeply affected their societies, domestic situations and their government institutions. Hardly any part of the world escaped its influence. David Painter provides a compact and analytical study that examines the origins, course, and end of the Cold War. His overview is global in perspective, with an emphasis on the Third World as well as the contested regions of Asia and Central America, and a strong consideration of economic issues. He includes discussion of: the global distribution of power the arms race the world economy. The Cold War gives a concise, original and interdisciplinary introduction to this international state of affairs, covering the years between 1945 and 1990.
In an age of new threats to international security, the old rules of war are rapidly being discarded. The great powers are moving toward norms less restrictive of intervention, preemption, and preventive war. This evolution is taking place not only in the United States but also in many of the world's most powerful nations, including Russia, France, and Japan, among others. As centuries of tradition and law are overturned, will preventive warfare push the world into chaos? Eve of Destruction is a provocative contribution to a growing international debate over the acceptance of preventive military action. In the first work to identify the trends that have led to a coming age of preventive war,...