The sight of death

an experiment in art writing

Why do we find ourselves returning to certain pictures time and again? What is it we are looking for? How does our understanding of an image change over time? In his latest book T. J. Clark addresses these questions - and many more - in ways that ...

Medieval schools

from roman Britain to renaissance England

Children have gone to school in England since Roman times. By the end of the middle ages there were hundreds of schools, supporting a highly literate society. This book traces their history from the Romans to the Renaissance, showing how they developed, what they taught ...

Surrealism and the spanish Civil War

How might artistic practice offer unique insight into the cataclysmic debacle of war? "Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War" plumbs this provocative question through an ambitious account of a pivotal period in European cultural history. A new approach to the subject of artists' responses to ...

The renaissance hospital

healing the body and healing the soul

In this fascinating and richly illustrated book, John Henderson takes us into the Renaissance hospitals of Florence, recreating the enormous barn-like wards and exploring the lives of those who received and those who administered treatment there. Drawing on an exceptional range of visual and documentary ...

In China's shadow

the crisis of american entrepreneurship

This book begins with an eye-opening exploration of the rise of China's economy and an assessment of its potential for further rapid growth. The implications of China's new power are nothing short of profound, Reed Hundt contends, and he proceeds to paint a ...

Modernization and its political consequences

Weber, Mannheim and Schumpeter

People's capacity to give meaning and direction to social life is an essential dimension of political freedom. Yet many citizens of Western democracies believe that this freedom has become quite restricted. They feel they are at the mercy of anonymous structures and processes over ...

The myth of judicial activism

making sense of Supreme Court decisions

This carefully considered book is a welcome addition to the debate over 'judicial activism'. Constitutional scholar Kermit Roosevelt offers an elegantly simple way to resolve the heated discord between conservatives, who argue that the Constitution is immutable, and progressives, who insist it is a living ...

Not your usual Founding Father

selected readings from Benjamin Franklin

This engaging book reveals Benjamin Franklin's human side, his tastes and habits, his enthusiasms, and his devotion to democracy and the people of the United States. Three hundred years after his birth, we may remember Franklin's famous autobiography, or his status as framer ...

Liberty for all

reclaiming individual privacy in a new era of public morality

In the opening chapter of this book, Elizabeth Price Foley writes, 'The slow, steady, and silent subversion of the Constitution has been a revolution that Americans appear to have slept through, unaware that the blessings of liberty bestowed upon them by the founding generation were ...

England and the spanish armada

the necessary quarrel

Chivalry

Why globalization works

A bestseller in hardback, this book offers a powerful defence of the global market economy. Martin Wolf explains how globalization works, critiques the charges against it, argues that the biggest obstacle to global economic progress has been the failure not of the market but of ...

The world's banker

a story of failed states, financial crises and the wealth and poverty of nations

Appointed president of the World Bank in 1995, James Wolfensohn struck it like a whirlwind, determined to reinvent the institution founded by Franklin Roosevelt and his world War II allies. Wolfensohn embraced debt relief for the poorest countries, put taboo subjects such as corruption on ...

Dressed to rule

royal and court costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II

Pioneers of moder design

from William Morris to Walter Gropius

The marvel of maps

art, cartography and politics in renaissance Italy

The vexations of art

Velázquez and others

Velazquez is often considered as an artist apart - great, but isolated in a palace in Spain. This book is designed to set him in conjunction with certain conditions of painting at his time and after (the studio, war and peace, museums, Manet, and modern painting ...

Democracy and populism

fear and hatred

This interesting and troubling book is the product of a lifetime of reflection and study of democracy. In it, John Lukacs addresses the questions of how democracy has changed and why we have become vulnerable to the shallowest possible demagoguery. Lukacs contrasts the political systems ...

The Duke of Alba

Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, the third duke of Alba (1507–82), is known to history as “the butcher of Flanders.” The general who carried out Philip II’s repressive policies in the Netherlands, he was responsible for the massacre of thousands of men, women, and ...

Hitler's prisons

legal terror in nazi Germany

State prisons played an indispensable part in the terror of the Third Reich, incarcerating many hundreds of thousands of men and women during the Nazi era. This important book illuminates the previously unknown world of Nazi prisons, their victims, and the judicial and penal officials ...

Modigliani

beyond the myth

Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) is one of the greatest - and most misunderstood - artists of the twentieth century. His incisive portraits, erotically charged nudes, beautiful drawings, and primitivistic sculpture have been admired for decades. Modigliani's work, however, has typically been examined in the limited context of ...

The quiet revolution

central banking goes modern

Although little noticed, the face of central banking has changed significantly over the past ten to fifteen years, says the author of this enlightening book. Alan S. Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve System and member of President Clinton#s Council of ...