Arts / Architecture / History

The Borgias (Celebrated Crimes, Vol. 1)

by Alexandre Dumas

There are many dreadful -- and perhaps scurrilous -- rumors about the Borgia family of renaissance Italy, and Alexandre Dumas (author of "The Three Musketeers" and many other period classics) reveals one possible...

British Architectural Styles

by Trevor Yorke

Here is a compact and useful guide, filled with detailed and original drawings, to help put a date to the variety of period buildings we see around us. It covers an immense range of structures and styles from...

Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination

by Marsha Meskimmon

Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination offers a challenging new direction in the current literature on cosmopolitanism, globalisation and art.

For the Record

by Joan Grierson

A fascinating illustrated history that profiles of the women who graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Toronto, 1920-60.

Lessons in Likeness

by Estill Pennington

From 1802, when the young artist William Edward West began painting portraits on a downriver trip to New Orleans, to 1918, when John Alberts, the last of Frank Duveneck's students, worked in Louisville, a wide...

Modigliani

by Meryle Secrest

“People like us . . . have different rights, different values than do ordinary people because we have different needs which put us . . . above their moral standards.” —Modigliani

Amedeo (“Beloved of God”)...

Lives of the Artists

by Giorgio Vasari & George Bull

‘In this painting of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human’ Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) was an accomplished painter and architect, but it is for his illuminating...

Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres

by Henry Adams & Raymond Carney

This evocative work uses the architecture, sculpture and stained glass of Mont Saint Michel and Chartres as a take-off point for an exploration of the medieval imagination. By considering all aspects of medieval...

The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful--and Their Architects--Shape the World

by Deyan Sudjic

A provocative look at architecture-"exceptionally intelligent and original" (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World)

Deyan Sudjic-"probably the most influential figure in architecture you've never...

High Steel

by Jim Rasenberger

A powerful first-hand account of the many generations and ethnic groups of men who have built America's skyscrapers.

From the early days of steel construction in Chicago, through the great boom years of New York...

The Genius in the Design

by Jake Morrissey

The rivalry between the brilliant seventeenth-century Italian architects Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini is the stuff of legend. Enormously talented and ambitious artists, they met as contemporaries...

The Next Thing: Art in the Twenty-first Century

by Pablo Baler

The Next Thing: Art in the Twenty-first Century is an illustrated collection of commissioned essays that attempt to anticipate, through current artistic productions, the aesthetic sensibility that will define...

American Architecture and Urbanism

by Vincent Scully

A classic book authored by the foremost architectural historian in America, this fully illustrated history of American architecture and city planning is based on Vincent Scully's conviction that architecture...

What is Architectural History

by Andrew Leach

What is Architectural History? considers the questions and problems posed by architectural historians since the rise of the discipline in the late nineteenth century. How do historians of architecture organise...

Scotland, CEMA and the Arts Council, 1919-1967: Background, Politics and Visual Art Policy

by Euan McArthur

As a case study of the relationship between arts and cultural policy and nationalism, this book examines the overlooked significance of Scotland in the development of British arts policy and institutions. Euan...

Architecture Re-Assembled: The Use (and Abuse) of History

by Trevor Garnham

Beginning from the rise of modern history in the eighteenth century, this book examines how changing ideas in the discipline of history itself has affected architecture from the beginning of modernity up to...

Shapely Bodies: The Image of Porcelain in Eighteenth-Century France

by Christine A. Jones

French artisans began trials to reproduce fine Chinese porcelain in the 1660s. That challenge proved impossible, but inspired radical forms of experimentation. Potters invented artificial alternatives to Chinese...

Julien-David Leroy and the Making of Architectural History

by Christopher Drew Armstrong

This book examines the career and publications of the French architect Julien-David Leroy (1724-1803) and his impact on architectural theory and pedagogy.

Despite not leaving any built work, Leroy is a major...

The Roman Remains of Northern and Eastern France: A Guidebook

by James Bromwich

This book provides a thorough, area by area companion to the region's wealth of monuments, excavations and artefacts, from Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer to Strasbourg and Lyon. Over ninety sites are treated in...

Rome: A New Planning Strategy

by Franco Archibugi

Rome: A New Planning Strategy looks at the problems of a city over the last century and suggests a totally new planning strategy. The book examines the stages that have marked the increase of population and...