Mexican painting did not come to be internationally recognised until the early 20th century. It was the muralist movement, starting in the 1920s and strongly connected to the Mexican Revolution of the previous decade, from which such great artists as José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), and Diego Rivera (1886-1957) emerged. Rarely has art been more political. Thus, what Mexican muralists of the time put up on the walls of the most diverse buildings also tells the story of this ever so restless nation.

Mexican Painting

“Father Pissarro”, as his friends liked to call him, was the most restrained of the artists of the Impressionist movement. Perhaps it was his age, being older than his fellow artists Monet, Sisley, Bazille, and Renoir, or rather his maturity, which resulted in his works having such serene and sober subjects and compositions. A man of simple tastes, he enjoyed painting peasants going about their daily lives. However, Pissarro owes his belated fame to his urban landscapes, which he treated with the same passion he used to paint beautiful stormy skies and frost-whitened mornings.

Pissarro

A painter of the Impressionist movement, Alfred Sisley was born on October 30th 1839 in Paris but was of British origin. He died on January 29th 1899 in Moret-sur-Loing. Growing up in a musical family, he chose to pursue painting rather than the field of business. In 1862 he enrolled in Gleyre’s studio where he encountered Renoir, Monet, and Bazille. The four friends left their master’s studio in March 1863 to work outdoors, setting their easels to paint the forest scenes of Fontainebleau. Sisley tirelessly chose the sky and water as subjects for his paintings, animated as they were by the changing reflections of light, for his landscapes of the regions surrounding Paris, Louveciennes, and Marly-le-Roi. This was in keeping with the painting styles of Constable, Bonington, and Turnet. Even if he had been influenced by Monet’s work at some point, Sisley drew away from his friend’s style due to his own desire for his work to follow the structure of forms. Sensitive to the changing seasons, he liked to portray spring with its blooming orchards, but it was the wintry and snowy countryside which Sisley was particularly attracted to. His reserved temperament preferred mystery and silence to the splendour of Renoir’s sunny landscapes.

Sisley

The eclectic art of which the Carracci family dreamed was realised by Rubens with the ease of genius. However, the problem was much more complicated for a man of the north, who wished to add to it a fusion of the Flemish and Latin spirits, of which the rather pedantic attempts of Romanism had illustrated the difficulties. He achieved it without losing anything of his overflowing personality, his questing imagination, and the enchanting discoveries of the greatest colourist known to painting. Rubens, the greatest master of Baroque painting’s exuberance, took from the Italian Renaissance what could be of use to him, and then built upon it a style of his own. It is distinguished by a wonderful mastery of the human form and an amazing wealth of splendidly lighted colour. He was a man of much intellectual poise and was accustomed to court life, travelling from court to court, with pomp, as a trusted envoy. Rubens was one of those rare mortals who do real honour to humanity. He was handsome, good and generous, and he loved virtue. His laborious life was well ordered. The creator of so many delightful pagan feasts went each morning to mass before proceeding to his studio. He was the most illustrious type of happy and perfectly balanced genius, and combined in his personage passion and science, ardour and reflection. Rubens expressed drama as well as joy, since nothing human was foreign to him, and he could command at will the pathos of colour and expression which he required in his religious masterpieces. It might be said that he was as prolific in the representation of the joy and exuberance of life as Michelangelo was in the representation of passionate emotions.

Rubens

“I am not interested in myself as a subject for painting, but in others, particularly women…”Beautiful, sensuous and above all erotic, Gustav Klimt’s paintings speak of a world of opulence and leisure, which seems aeons away from the harsh, post-modern environment we live in now. The subjects he treats – allegories, portraits, landscapes and erotic figures – contain virtually no reference to external events, but strive rather to create a world where beauty, above everything else, is dominant. His use of colour and pattern was profoundly influenced by the art of Japan, ancient Egypt, and Byzantium. Ravenne, the flat, two-dimensional perspective of his paintings, and the frequently stylised quality of his images form an oeuvre imbued with a profound sensuality and one where the figure of woman, above all, reigns supreme. Klimt’s very first works brought him success at an unusually young age. Gustav, born in 1862, obtained a state grant to study at Kunstgewerbeschule (the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts) at the age of fourteen. His talents as a draughtsman and painter were quickly noticed, and in 1879 he formed the Künstlercompagnie (Artists’ Company) with his brother Ernst and another student, Franz Matsch. The latter part of the nineteenth century was a period of great architectural activity in Vienna. In 1857, the Emperor Franz Joseph had ordered the destruction of the fortifications that had surrounded the medieval city centre. The Ringstrasse was the result, a budding new district with magnificent buildings and beautiful parks, all paid for by public expenses. Therefore the young Klimt and his partners had ample opportunities to show off their talents, and they received early commissions to contribute to the decorations for the pageant organised to celebrate the silver wedding anniversary of the Emperor Franz Joseph and the Empress Elisabeth. In 1894, Matsch moved out of their communal studio, and in 1897 Klimt, together with his closest friends, resigned from the Künstlerhausgenossenschaft (the Cooperative Society of Austrian Artists) to form a new movement known as the Secession, of which he was immediately elected president. The Secession was a great success, holding both a first and second exhibition in 1898. The movement made enough money to commission its very own building, designed for it by the architect Joseph Maria Olbrich. Above the entrance was its motto: “To each age its art, to art its freedom.” From around 1897 onward, Klimt spent almost every summer on the Attersee with the Flöge family. These were periods of peace and tranquillity in which he produced the landscape paintings constituting almost a quarter of his entire oeuvre. Klimt made sketches for virtually everything he did. Sometimes there were over a hundred drawings for one painting, each showing a different detail – a piece of clothing or jewellery, or a simple gesture. Just how exceptional Gustav Klimt was is perhaps reflected in the fact that he had no predecessors and no real followers. He admired Rodin and Whistler without slavishly copying them, and was admired in turn by the younger Viennese painters Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, both of whom were greatly influenced by Klimt.

Klimt

Edvard Munch, born in 1863, was Norway's most popular artist. His brooding and anguished paintings, based on personal grief and obsessions, were instrumental in the development of Expressionism. During his childhood, the death of his parents, his brother and sister, and the mental illness of another sister, were of great influence on his convulsed and tortuous art. In his works, Munch turned again and again to the memory of illness, death and grief. During his career, Munch changed his idiom many times. At first, influenced by Impressionism and Post-impressionism, he turned to a highly personal style and content, increasingly concerned with images of illness and death. In the 1892s, his style developed a ‘Synthetist' idiom as seen in The Scream (1893) which is regarded as an icon and the portrayal of modern humanity's spiritual and existential anguish. He painted different versions of it. During the 1890s Munch favoured a shallow pictorial space, and used it in his frequently frontal pictures. His work often included the symbolic portrayal of such themes as misery, sickness, and death. and the poses of his figures in many of his portraits were chosen in order to capture their state of mind and psychological condition. It also lends a monumental, static quality to the paintings. In 1892, the Union of Berlin Artists invited Munch to exhibit at its November exhibition. His paintings invoked bitter controversy at the show, and after one week the exhibition closed. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis labeled his work “degenerate art”, and removed his works from German museums. This deeply hurt the anti-fascist Munch, who had come to feel Germany was his second homeland. In 1908 Munch's anxiety became acute and he was hospitalized. He returned to Norway in 1909 and died in Oslo in 1944.

Munch

Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842) was not only the rare woman of her time who integrated herself into the French Royal Academy of Painting, but also beloved portraitist to the aristocracy. Her paintings are testament to a key period of history: she was appointed painter and friend to Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution, and took flight across Europe before returning under the reign of Napoleon, all the while continuing to paint. Self-taught, Vigée-Lebrun knew how to get the best from her models, mastering painting effects to perfection and making use of a delicate and refined style.

Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun

Vincent van Gogh’s life and work are so intertwined that it is hardly possible to observe one without thinking of the other. Van Gogh has indeed become the incarnation of the suffering, misunderstood martyr of modern art, the emblem of the artist as an outsider. An article, published in 1890, gave details about van Gogh’s illness. The author of the article saw the painter as “a terrible and demented genius, often sublime, sometimes grotesque, always at the brink of the pathological.” Very little is known about Vincent’s childhood. At the age of eleven he had to leave “the human nest”, as he called it himself, for various boarding schools. The first portrait shows us van Gogh as an earnest nineteen year old. At that time he had already been at work for three years in The Hague and, later, in London in the gallery Goupil & Co. In 1874 his love for Ursula Loyer ended in disaster and a year later he was transferred to Paris, against his will. After a particularly heated argument during Christmas holidays in 1881, his father, a pastor, ordered Vincent to leave. With this final break, he abandoned his family name and signed his canvases simply “Vincent”. He left for Paris and never returned to Holland. In Paris he came to know Paul Gauguin, whose paintings he greatly admired. The self-portrait was the main subject of Vincent’s work from 1886c88. In February 1888 Vincent left Paris for Arles and tried to persuade Gauguin to join him. The months of waiting for Gauguin were the most productive time in van Gogh’s life. He wanted to show his friend as many pictures as possible and decorate the Yellow House. But Gauguin did not share his views on art and finally returned to Paris. On 7 January, 1889, fourteen days after his famous self-mutilation, Vincent left the hospital where he was convalescing. Although he hoped to recover from and to forget his madness, but he actually came back twice more in the same year. During his last stay in hospital, Vincent painted landscapes in which he recreated the world of his childhood. It is said that Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the side in a field but decided to return to the inn and went to bed. The landlord informed Dr Gachet and his brother Theo, who described the last moments of his life which ended on 29 July, 1890: “I wanted to die. While I was sitting next to him promising that we would try to heal him. [...], he answered, ‘La tristesse durera toujours (The sadness will last forever).’”

Van Gogh

Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open up cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary – in drastic contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times. Full of rich changes in all of the various art forms (architecture, sculpture, painting, etc.), Gothic art paved the way for the Italian Renaissance and International Gothic movement.

Gothic Art

Mantegna; humanist, geometrist, archaeologist, of great scholastic and imaginative intelligence, dominated the whole of northern Italy by virtue of his imperious personality. Aiming at optical illusion, he mastered perspective. He trained in painting at the Padua School where Donatello and Paolo Uccello had previously attended. Even at a young age commissions for Andrea’s work flooded in, for example the frescos of the Ovetari Chapel of Padua. In a short space of time Mantegna found his niche as a modernist due to his highly original ideas and the use of perspective in his works. His marriage with Nicolosia Bellini, the sister of Giovanni, paved the way for his entree into Venice. Mantegna reached an artistic maturity with his Pala San Zeno. He remained in Mantova and became the artist for one of the most prestigious courts in Italy – the Court of Gonzaga. Classical art was born. Despite his links with Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna refused to adopt their innovative use of colour or leave behind his own technique of engraving.

Andrea Mantegna and the Italian Renaissance

This book explains and celebrates the richness of Englishchurches and cathedrals, which have a major place inmedieval architecture. The English Gothic style developedsomewhat later than in France, but rapidly developed itsown architectural and ornamental codes. The author, John Shannon Hendrix, classifies English Gothic architecture in four principal stages: the early English Gothic, the decorated, the curvilinear, and the perpendicular Gothic. Several photographs of these architectural testimonies allow us to understand the whole originality of Britain during the Gothic era: in Canterbury, Wells, Lincoln, York, and Salisbury. The English Gothic architecture is a poetic one, speaking both to the senses and spirit. churches and cathedrals, which have a major place in medieval architecture. The English Gothic style developed somewhat later than in France, but rapidly developed its own architectural and ornamental codes. The author, John Shannon Hendrix, classifies English Gothic architecture in four principal stages: the early English Gothic, the decorated, the curvilinear, and the perpendicular Gothic. Several photographs of these architectural testimonies allow us to understand the whole originality of Britain during the Gothic era: in Canterbury, Wells, Lincoln, York, and Salisbury. The English Gothic architecture is a poetic one, speaking both to the senses and spirit.

The Splendor of English Gothic Architecture

William Hogarth wrote his Analysis of Beauty in 1753, during the Age of Enlightenment. Through this captivating text, he tends to define the notion of beauty in painting and states that it is linked, per se, to the use of the serpentine lines in pictorial compositions. He calls it the line of beauty . His essay is thus dedicated to the study of the composition of paintings, depending on the correct use of the pictorial lines, light, colour, and the figure's attitudes. These timeless concepts have been applied by several artists through the centuries. Paintings from every period have here been chosen to support this demonstration. They allow us to explore the various manners in which beauty can be expressed in painting.

Aestheticism in Art

Men’s fashion, particularly the trends involving undergarments, was once reserved for the elite; today it has become democratised, clear proof of social progress. The aestheticism of the body so highly valued by the Greeks seems to have regained a prominent place in the masculine world. Mirroring the evolution of society’s values, the history of underwear also highlights the continuous, dancing exchange that exists between women’s styles and men’s fashion. Undergarments are concealed, flaunted, stretched or shortened, establishing a game between yesterday’s illicit and today’s chic and thereby denouncing the sense of disgrace that these simple pieces of clothing used to betray. In this work, Shaun Cole endeavours to re-establish for the first time, through well-researched socio-economic analysis, the importance of men’s underwear in the history of costume from ancient times to today. A reflection of technological progress, this study is full of surprises and powerful reflections on man’s relationship with his body.

The Story of Men’s Underwear

Since the mythical Tower of Babel, humans have continuously tried to erect monuments to match their oversized egos. With ancient ziggurats, the Taj Mahal or the Empire State Building, man has for centuries demonstrated his force by raising structures for purposes both religious and profane. As international cultural statements without words, symbols of a peoples values  devotion, patriotism, power  symbols of a civilisationÊs grandeur, these monuments still fascinate and attract an ever-growing public who is captivated by the createvity and ingenuity of these architects and stonemasons. Their historical message goes far beyond mere art history, for they tell us of the lives and evolution of the peoples of the past, as does the Parthenon in Athens, many times destroyed, rebuilt, reused, attacked, pillaged, and restored once again today. This work, featuring 1000 monuments chosen from around the globe, retraces human history, the techniques, styles, and philosophies necessary for the construction of so many splendours over the centuries, providing a panorama of the most celebrated monuments while evoking the passion of their makers. The reader can explore the changing values of humanity through the edifices it has built and understand these structures as triumphs of humankind

1000 Monuments of Genius

The strict prohibition on the representation of the human form has channeled artistic creation into architecture and architectural decoration. This book is a magical tour through Central Asia - Khirgizia, Tadjikistan, Turkmenia, and Uzbekistan - a cradle of Ancient civilisations and are pository of the Oriental arts inspired by Buddhism and Islam. There are magnificent, full-colour photographs of the abandoned cities of Mervand Urgench, Khiva, the capital of the Kharezm, with its mausoleum of Sheikh Seid Allahuddin,and, the Golden Road to Samarkand, the Blue City, a center of civilisation for 2,500 years.

Central Asian Art

Michelangelo, like Leonardo, was a man of many talents; sculptor, architect, painter and poet, he made the apotheosis of muscular movement, which to him was the physical manifestation of passion. He moulded his draughtsmanship, bent it, twisted it, and stretched it to the extreme limits of possibility. There are not any landscapes in Michelangelo's painting. All the emotions, all the passions, all the thoughts of humanity were personified in his eyes in the naked bodies of men and women. He rarely conceived his human forms in attitudes of immobility or repose. Michelangelo became a painter so that he could express in a more malleable material what his titanesque soul felt, what his sculptor's imagination saw, but what sculpture refused him. Thus this admirable sculptor became the creator, at the Vatican, of the most lyrical and epic decoration ever seen: the Sistine Chapel. The profusion of his invention is spread over this vast area of over 900 square metres. There are 343 principal figures of prodigious variety of expression, many of colossal size, and in addition a great number of subsidiary ones introduced for decorative effect. The creator of this vast scheme was only thirty-four when he began his work. Michelangelo compels us to enlarge our conception of what is beautiful. To the Greeks it was physical perfection; but Michelangelo cared little for physical beauty, except in a few instances, such as his painting of Adam on the Sistine ceiling, and his sculptures of the Pietà. Though a master of anatomy and of the laws of composition, he dared to disregard both if it were necessary to express his concept: to exaggerate the muscles of his figures, and even put them in positions the human body could not naturally assume. In his later painting, The Last Judgment on the end wall of the Sistine, he poured out his soul like a torrent. Michelangelo was the first to make the human form express a variety of emotions. In his hands emotion became an instrument upon which he played, extracting themes and harmonies of infinite variety. His figures carry our imagination far beyond the personal meaning of the names attached to them.

Michelangelo

Long thought of as the neglected stepchild of painting, the art of drawing has recently begun to enjoy a place in the sun. With major museums around the world, from the Met to the Uffizi, mounting exhibitions focused on the art of draughtsmanship, drawing is receiving more critical and academic attention than ever before. This captivating text gives readers a sweeping analysis of the history of drawing, from Renaissance greats like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, to Modernist masters like M.C. Escher, Pablo Picasso, and everyone in between.

1000 Drawings of Genius

Pierre Bonnard was the leader of a group of post-impressionist painters who called themselves the Nabis, from the Hebrew word meaning ‘prophet’. Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel and Denis, the most distinguished of the Nabis, revolutionized the spirit of decorative techniques during one of the richest periods in the history of French painting. Influenced by Odilon Redon and Puvis de Chavanne, by popular imagery and Japanese etchings, this post-impressionist group was above all a close circle of friends who shared the same cultural background and interests. An increasing individualism in their art often threatened the group’s unity and although tied together by a common philosophy their work clearly diverged. This publication lets us compare and put into perspective the artists within this fascinating group. The works presented in this collection offer a palette of extraordinary poetic expressions: candid in Bonnard, ornamental and mysterious in Vuillard, gently dream-like in Denis, grim and almost bitter in Vallotton, the author shares with us the lives of these artists to the very source of their creative gifts.

Bonnard and the Nabis

“I paint what I see and not what it pleases others to see.” What other words than these of Édouard Manet, seemingly so different from the sentiments of Monet or Renoir, could best define the Impressionist movement? Without a doubt, this singularity was explained when, shortly before his death, Claude Monet wrote: “I remain sorry to have been the cause of the name given to a group the majority of which did not have anything Impressionist.” In this work, Nathalia Brodskaïa examines the contradictions of this late 19th-century movement through the paradox of a group who, while forming a coherent ensemble, favoured the affirmation of artistic individuals. Between academic art and the birth of modern, non-figurative painting, the road to recognition was long. Analysing the founding elements of the movement, the author follows, through the works of each of the artists, how the demand for individuality gave rise to modern painting.

Impressionism

It was in 1946 that the world first came to hear of a coral atoll in the Marshall Islands called Bikini. The following year, French couturier Louis Réard borrowed the name and applied it to a bathing costume for women. Breaking from decades of conformity, Réard dared to ‘undress’ women’s bodies in order to better emphasize what remained clothed - albeit in tiny wisps of material. By taking up the bikini as popular beachwear, women also found themselves thinking differently about their bodies. An ideal of perfection was reinforced by the appearance on the cinema screen of stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and Ursula Andress, all of whom were featured in bikinis that accentuated their own curvaceous contours. More than a bathing costume, the bikini made its own contribution during the 1970s to the sexual revolution and to the changing relationship between men and women in general. This book investigates the history of the bikini and its effect on the evolution in the perception of women in society, as women regained responsibility for the way they look and laid claim once more to full sexual equality. A collection of images throughout this book illustrates this progression step-by-step over a period of more than 50 years.

Bikini Story

Naive art first became popular at the end of the 19th century. Until that time, this form of expression, created by untrained artists and characterised by spontaneity and simplicity, enjoyed little recognition from professional artists and art critics. Influenced by primitive arts, naive painting is distinguished by the fluidity of its lines, vivacity, and joyful colours, as well as by its rather clean-cut, simple shapes. Naive art counts among it artists: Henri Rousseau, Séraphine de Senlis, André Bauchant, and Camille Bombois. This movement has also found adherents abroad, including such prominent artists as Joan Miró, Guido Vedovato, Niko Pirosmani, and Ivan Generalic.

Naive Art

The English school of painting was officially recognised at the beginning of the 18th century through the work of William Hogarth. It includes works by the most famous English artists, such as Thomas Gainsborough, Joseph Mallord William Turner, John Constable, Edward Burne-Jones, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This subject is introduced with a very unique text, published in 1882: a French study of English pictorial art. The author, Ernest Chesneau, was highly-cultured, an art historian and inspector of Fine Arts. He explains the beginnings of this school which excels in portraiture and landscapes, and reminds us of the English brilliance regarding watercolours, not forgetting to include the work of the Pre-Raphaelites.

English Painting

Dealing not only with architecture, sculpture, and painting, but also with bronze and ceramics, this text offers a complete panorama of Chinese arts and civilisation. In his text, the author Bushell stresses the importance of knowing the society to understand the arts.

Chinese Art

After staying in Milan for his apprenticeship, Michelangelo da Caravaggio arrived in Rome in 1592. There he started to paint with both realism and psychological analysis of the sitters. Caravaggio was as temperamental in his painting as in his wild life. As he also responded to prestigious Church commissions, his dramatic style and his realism were seen as unacceptable. Chiaroscuro had existed well before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique definitive, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light. His influence was immense, firstly through those who were more or less directly his disciples. Famous during his lifetime, Caravaggio had a great influence upon Baroque art. The Genoese and Neapolitan Schools derived lessons from him, and the great movement of Spanish painting in the seventeenth century was connected with these schools. In the following generations the best endowed painters oscillated between the lessons of Caravaggio and the Carracci.

Caravaggio

From the Antiquity to the 20th century, this sculpture collection offers a truly original vision of Western art. Here are the most sensual and harmonious masterworks to the most provocative and minimalist sculptures. Sculpture shapes the world and our concept of beauty, leaving everlasting silhouettes and always creating new intriguing ones. These masterworks are the mirror of an era, of an artist and his public and through this sculpture gallery, one visits not only the history of art, but history as a whole. Between the acclaimed ideals of beauty and the most controversial works, 1000 Sculptures of Genius will give you a true panoramic view of Western sculpture. Along with numerous references, comments on masterworks, and biographies, this work enables the reader to rediscover the Western world heritage and is the perfect guide for art students and statuary lovers.

1000 Sculptures of Genius

The lighthouse, an indefatigable watchman, ceaselessly guides boats to their ports.This beacon of maritime signalisation has guided sailors since antiquity.The first known lighthouse appeared on the island of Pharos, and was the remarkable Lighthouse of Alexandria; however, it seems that volcanoes like Stromboli and its frequent eruptions were possibly at the origin of this invention, as the fires guided boats to their shores. Faced with the increasing development of modern navigational aids, these lone sentinels do not hold the same functional importance today. However, this work emphasises not only their role as a major architectural development, but also the place that they hold in the cultural heritage of the world. From the Lighthouse of the Whales (France) to the Lighthouse at the End of the World (Tierra del Fuego,Argentina), and passing by the Lighthouse of Green Island (Canada) and the Bell Rock Lighthouse (Scotland), this work invites the reader to rediscover the richness of these witnesses of other times.

Lighthouses

‘Another terrific book by Rob Eastaway’ SIMON SINGH ‘A delightfully accessible guide to how to play with numbers’ HANNAH FRY How many cats are there in the world? What's the chance of winning the lottery twice? And just how long does it take to count to a million? Learn how to tackle tricky maths problems with nothing but the back of an envelope, a pencil and some good old-fashioned brain power. Join Rob Eastaway as he takes an entertaining look at how to figure without a calculator. Packed with amusing anecdotes, quizzes, and handy calculation tips for every situation, Maths on the Back of an Envelope is an invaluable introduction to the art of estimation, and a welcome reminder that sometimes our own brain is the best tool we have to deal with numbers.

Maths on the Back of an Envelope

‘A gripping and compelling account…. The peaceful ending of the Cold War between West and East remains one of the greatest achievements of modern statecraft’ CHRISTOPHER ANDREW, Literary Review This landmark global study makes us rethink what happened when the Cold War ended and our present era was born. The world changed dramatically as the Berlin Wall fell and protest turned to massacre in Tiananmen Square. Now, with deft analysis and a wealth of newly declassified archival sources, historian Kristina Spohr offers a bold and novel interpretation of the revolutionary upheaval of 1989 and, how in its aftermath, a new world order was forged without major conflict. The Post-Wall world, Spohr argues, was brought about in significant measure through the determined diplomacy of a small cohort of international leaders. They engaged in tough but cooperative negotiation and worked together to reinvent the institutions of the Cold War. Exploring this extraordinary historical moment, Spohr offers a major reappraisal of US President George H. W. Bush and innovative assessments of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and President François Mitterrand of France. But the transformation of Europe must be understood in global context. Spohr elegantly weaves together the Western and Asian timelines to revelatory effect, by contrasting events in Berlin and Moscow with the story in Beijing, where the pro-democracy movement was brutally suppressed by Deng Xiaoping. Post Square, he pushed through China’s very different Communist reinvention. Meticulously researched and brilliantly original, Post Wall, Post Square provides an authoritative contemporary history of those crucial hinge years of 1989-1992 and their implications for our times. The world of Putin, Trump and Xi, with a fractious European Union, rogue states and the crisis of mass migration has its roots in the global exit from the Cold War.

Post Wall, Post Square

A dramatic narrative account of the life of William Juneboy Outlaw III, whose journey from housing-project youth to ruthless gangland kingpin to change-making community advocate represents a vital next chapter in the ongoing conversation about race and social justice in America. When he was in his early twenties, William Juneboy Outlaw III was sentenced to eighty-five years in prison for homicide and armed assault. The sentence brought his brief but prolific criminal career as the head of a forty-member cocaine gang in New Haven, Connecticut, to a close. But behind bars, Outlaw quickly became a feared prison “shot caller” with 150 men under his sway. Then everything changed: his original sentence was reduced by sixty years. At the same time, he was shipped to a series of the most notorious federal prisons in the country, where he endured long stints in solitary confinement—and where transformational relationships with a fellow inmate and a prison therapist made him realize that he wanted more for himself. Upon his release, Outlaw took a job at Dunkin’ Donuts, volunteered in the New Haven community, and started to rebuild his life. He now is an award-winning community advocate, leading a team of former felons who negotiate truces between gangs on the very streets that he once terrorized. The homicide rate in New Haven has dropped 70 percent in the decade that he’s run the team—a drop as dramatic as in any city in the country. Written with exclusive access to Outlaw himself, Charles Barber’s Citizen Outlaw is the unforgettable story of how a gang leader became the catalyst for one of the greatest civic crime reductions in America, and an inspiring argument for love and compassion in the face of insurmountable odds.

Citizen Outlaw

The European Fall is an anthology that charts the mental consequences of the economic and political crisis that Europe is going through. It consists of 28 essays - one from each EU-country, written by leading intellectuals of the continent. Agnes Heller (Hungary), Gazmend Kapplani (Greece), Marlene Streeruwitz (Austria), Jose-Ignacio Torresblanca (Spain), Varia Vike-Freiberga (Latvia), Tariq Ali (GB), Slavenka Draculic (Kroatia), Stefano Benni (Italy), Martin Simecka (Slovakia), Olga Tocarczuk (Poland), Marju Lauristin (Estonia), Landsbergis (Lithuania), Janne Teller (Denmark), Tuomas Nevanlinna (Finland), Nina Bjørk (Sweeden), Stojan Pelko (Slovenia), Ivan Krastev (Bulgaria), Geert van Istendael (Belgium), Christine Ockrant (France), Claude Frisoni (Luxembourg), Colm Tobin (Ireland), Andreas Theophanous (Cypres), Vanni Xuereb (Malta), Claes Vreese (Holland), Ioana Pavulescu (Rumania), Radka Danimarkova (Czech Republic), Almeida Faria (Portugal)

The European Fall

The student edition of the popular A Practical Guide to Culture by John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle delivers a hopeful message to listeners ages fifteen through twenty-five who live every day with increasing cultural pressure. These young people struggle to navigate contemporary challenges to their Christian faith and values but are encouraged to emerge as leaders. In A Student’s Guide to Culture, Stonestreet and Kunkle write in a highly relatable style, sharing insight and experience. Jumping off from the original version, this guide includes all-new discussion questions and stories that remind young listeners that they can live differently and be a light in a culture that sometimes feels overwhelming.

A Student's Guide to Culture

THE MULTIMILLION COPY BESTSELLER THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SURVIVING ANYWHERE The SAS Survival Guide is an essential companion for adventurers everywhere. From making camp and finding food in the wild to security and self-defence in the streets, be prepared on land or sea. This unrivalled guide from SAS legend John ‘Lofty’ Wiseman’s will cover Camp Craft – making shelter, preparing and maintaining a fire, tying knots, preserving food, and creating tools.

SAS Survival Guide – Camp Craft

The Honey Bus: A Girl Raised by Bees is a memoir about a girl’s journey into the heart of a beehive to find herself.When she was five years old, Meredith May was abandoned by both parents. Her father left for the other side of the country. Her mother disappeared into herself. But when Meredith discovered the rusted old bus where her grandpa kept bees, her world changed forever. Family duty. Compassion and sacrifice. Unconditional love. The life of a honeybee displays it all. As her grandpa showed her the sacrifices bees make for their colony and the bonds they form with their keeper, Meredith discovered what family really means. A rich and lyrical coming-of-age story, combined with spellbinding nature writing, The Honey Bus is the extraordinary story of a girl who journeyed into the hive – and found herself.

The Honey Bus

Only three students had access to a teacher’s racy photos before they went viral. There’s Mouse, a brainy overachiever so desperate to escape his father and go to MIT that he would do almost anything, legal or not. Then there’s Drew, the star athlete who can get any girl’s number—and private photos—with his charm but has a history of passing those photos around. And finally, there’s Jenna, a good girl turned rebel after her own shocking photos made the rounds at school last year, who is still waiting for justice. All three deny leaking the photos, but someone has to take the fall. This edgy whodunit tackles hot-button issues of sexting and gossip and will have listeners eagerly awaiting the final reveal.

Easy Prey

Blackline masters for use with junior high school students with special needs. The sheets give students the tools to be able to talk about and understand language development. The activities will help students to deconstruct language, and through this, to improve their own use of language. Students will practise: building sentences; identifying the subject and predicate of sentences; picking out verbs; getting the tense right; writing adjectives, adverbs, nouns, prepositions and pronouns; using idioms; asking questions; using speech marks; putting words in the right order; using commas in lists.

Brilliant how to ...

How to Dazzle at Grammar

Healthy Cooking for Primary Schools, Book 1 contains 12 easy-to-follow, photocopiable recipes to encourage pupils to become lifelong healthy eaters. The recipes are presented in both a traditional recipe format and in a visual, step-by-step format, to suit pupils of differing reading abilities. All the recipes have been tried, tested and enjoyed by pupils in the author's school. The recipes include Fruit Salad, Pitta Bread Filling, Chinese Noodle Soup, and Welsh Rarebit.

Healthy Cooking for Primary Schools

Healthy Cooking for Primary Schools: Book 1

This invaluable, time-saving resource provides intercultural ideas for every month of the year. For each festival and tradition you will find background information, key vocabulary, detailed lists of possible teaching activities and optional pupil sheets. Ideas range from making cards and reading/writing poems to playing game and cooking traditional recipes.

A Brilliant Education

Spanish Festivals and Traditions

Contains over 60 stories written by an experienced primary school teacher and natural storyteller. The stories are divided into 4 categories: cultural stories from around the world; religious stories from the 6 main religions; moral stories including bullying, birth of a sibling, racism and disability; and historical stories. They can be used at specific times of the year or whenever issues arise. Each story ends with suggested questions.

Brilliant Stories for Assemblies

Wouldn’t you love your pupils to have meaningful conversations with each other in French? French Speaking Activities contains 60 time-saving photocopiable activities for promoting oral communication. Activities range from role plays and surveys to quizzes, presentations and games. All encourage pupils to practise speaking autonomously, leading to more pupil-speaking time and less teacher-speaking time. These tried-and-tested activities provide a fun and enjoyable way of supplementing, consolidating and revising your language work, whatever scheme you are using.

French Speaking Activities (KS3)

Colours: Activities for 3-5 Year Olds contains enjoyable activities to help develop children's essential skills. Recognizing, identifying and being able to name colours are essential steps in the early education of all children. Colour knowledge is an important means of helping children to make comparisons and observe and explore their environment. The practical activities in Colours include: Fun ways of teaching colour recognition and identification, Sorting and matching games, Unusual art and craft ideas and Suggestions for exploring colours in the environment. All the books in the Activities for 3-5 Year Olds Series contain  tried-and-tested activities, linked to the six key areas of learning. They are an invaluable resource of fun, easy-to-use ideas for all early years settings, from preschools and nurseries to reception classes and day nurseries.

Activities for 3–5 Year Olds

Colours (Activities for 3–5 Year Olds)

German Festivals and Traditions KS3

Weather: Activities for 3–5 Year Olds contains enjoyable activities to help develop children's essential skills. Weather is with us all the time, every minute of every day, all around the world. Weather provides ideas for helping to raise children's awareness of the weather throughout the year, whatever the conditions outside. The practical activities include: Enjoying and responding to weather poems, Creating foggy night pictures, Choosing the right clothes for the weather, Measuring puddles, Making simple weather vanes and Various ways of charting the weather. All the books in the Activities for 3–5 Year Olds series contain  tried-and-tested activities, linked to the six key areas of learning. They are an invaluable resource of fun, easy-to-use ideas for all early years settings, from preschools and nurseries to reception classes and day nurseries.

Weather (Activities for 3–5 Year Olds)

Help to develop your pupils' investigation skills using the attractively laid out worksheets in How to Sparkle at Science Investigations. Using familiar contexts, the sheets provide opportunities for children to develop their observational skills, make measurements, plan and carry out investigations, and draw conclusions from their results. Worksheet themes include: Mr Happy and Healthy; what do plants need to grow?; is it see through?; which hat for Teddy?; we're going on a materials hunt; which magnet is the strongest?; making a circuit; and investigating sails.

How to Sparkle at Science Investigations

Did you watch British driver Jensen Button win the world championship title in 2009? Have you followed his Formula 1 career on the circuit? Would you like to know more about the popular McLaren driver? If so, you are certain to enjoy this fun and informative quiz book. Where in the UK was Jenson Button born? At what age did he begin karting, before later progressing to motor racing? What is the name of his model girlfriend? Find out the answers to all those questions you have always wanted to ask in The Jenson Button Quiz Book. You will need to be on top form to attempt the 100 challenging questions in this book, covering Jenson’s early life, career highlights, appearances on the podium, wins and losses as well as many personal details right up to the current day. This tribute to the English motor racing ace will appeal to Jensen Button fans the word over. If you enjoy motor racing, you won’t want to be without this quiz book.

The Jenson Button Quiz Book

Maths Problem Solving - Year 2 is the second of six books in the Maths Problem Solving series. The books have been written for teachers to use during the numeracy lesson. They cover the 'solving problem' objectives from the numeracy framework. This first book contains four chapters; Making decisions, Reasoning about numbers or shapes, Problems involving 'real life', money or measures and Organizing and using data. The books are designed in such a way that each section has six stages of questions to be worked through. Every stage is split into three levels, for example 1a, 1b or 1c, based on achievement. Each corresponding question from these levels follow the same line of questioning, so that when the teacher talks about a certain question, the solution process is the same for each level but the complexity of the sum varies.

Maths Problem Solving

Maths Problem Solving Year 2

These activities will stimulate children's interest in language and how it works and help them to become confident and positive spellers. The activities include: learning the vowels and consonants; the four step method; spotting the mistake; 'y' for 'i' and 'ee'; regular and irregular plurals; growing new words from roots; spelling puzzling w-words; learning the 'ough' pattern.

How to be Brilliant at Spelling

In a career that spanned six decades, Eric Rohmer (1920-2010) earned a reputation as one of France’s most incisive, eloquent, and free-spirited film directors. A leading light of the French New Wave, he crafted films of immense beauty and poetry: throughout his career, his work demonstrated a consistency of style and theme, yet retained a freshness and youthful vigour. His first full-length film, The Sign of Leo, was released in 1959, the same year that Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut had their filmmaking débuts. Soon after, Rohmer began a project that was to take over ten years to complete - his celebrated series of films, Six Moral Tales, outstanding among which are My Night at Maud’s (1969) and Claire’s Knee (1970). After a brief foray into historical drama, Rohmer began another series of films, Comedies and Proverbs, which occupied him for much of the 1980s. Within this series, Pauline at the Beach (1983) and The Green Ray (1986) took a lighthearted look at the French middle class, broaching subjects such as infidelity and promiscuity in the search for everlasting love. The Comedies and Proverbs were followed in the 1990s by Tales of the Four Seasons, each of the four films dealing with emotional isolation, as the central character tries to cope with a recent crisis. The director’s final three films - The Lady and the Duke (2001), Triple Agent (2004), and The Romance of Astrée and Céladon (2007) - show a surprising diversity in technique, although each is fundamentally concerned with the recurring Rohmeresque themes of love and fidelity. Eric Rohmer’s films, modest as they are, are certain to outlive many of today’s mainstream successes, if only because of the love and wisdom with which they were crafted. Rohmer’s own words, preserved in these interviews that span from 1970 to 2009, reveal a critical, reflective sensibility that thoroughly complements the authorial one visualised in his films.

Interviews with Eric Rohmer

Maths Problem Solving - Year 5 is the fifth book in the Maths Problem Solving series. The books have been written for teachers to use during the numeracy lesson. They cover the 'solving problem' objectives from the numeracy framework. This book contains three chapters; Making decisions, Reasoning about numbers or shapes and Problems involving 'real life', money or measures. The books are designed in such a way that each section has six stages of questions to be worked through. Every stage is split into three levels, for example 1a, 1b or 1c, based on achievement. Each corresponding question from these levels follow the same line of questioning, so that when the teacher talks about a certain question, the solution process is the same for each level but the complexity of the sum varies.

Maths Problem Solving Year 5

Gardening: Activities for 3–5 Year Olds contains enjoyable activities to help foundation stage children develop essential skills. Gardening gives children a wealth of knowledge, skills and experiences. It offers opportunities to grow and care for seeds and plants, to observe and record how they grow and to discover, perhaps, why they didn't grow! An outdoor area is not a prerequisite - many of the activities can be carried out inside. The practical activities include: Growing gardens in jars, Creating miniature gardens, Investigating how much different types of soil weigh, Making leaf prints and Pressing flowers. All the books in the Activities for 3–5 Year Olds Series contain tried-and-tested activities, linked to the six key areas of learning. They are an invaluable resource of fun, easy-to-use ideas for all early years settings, from preschools and nurseries to reception classes and day nurseries.

Gardening (Activities for 3–5 Year Olds)

Danny Boyle is one of contemporary filmmaking’s most exciting talents. Since the early 1990s he has steadily created a body of work that crosses genres and defies easy categorisation, from black humour (Shallow Grave), gritty realism (Trainspotting), screwball comedy (A Life Less Ordinary), cult adaptations (The Beach), and horror (28 Days Later), to science fiction (Sunshine), children’s drama (Millions), love stories (Slumdog Millionaire) and tales of personal redemption (127 Hours). Unlike many of his peers, Boyle seems most comfortable when working with modest budgets, relying on acting ability rather than special effects, and surrounding himself with a trusted team of writers, cinematographers and production designers. His restless energy, vitality and drive find their expression in the celebratory tone of his films – their lust for life. In this book, Mark Browning provides a rigorous but highly accessible analysis of Boyle’s work, discussing the processes by which he absorbs generic and literary influences, the way he gains powerful performances both from inexperienced casts and A-list stars, his portrayal of regional identity, his use of moral dilemmas as a narrative trigger, and the religious undercurrents that permeate his films.

Danny Boyle - Lust for Life

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