Outlandish alchemist and magician, political intelligencer, apocalyptic prophet, and converser with angels, John Dee (1527-1609) was one of the most colourful and controversial figures of the Tudor world. In this fascinating book – the first full-l...

Between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, one of the most persuasive personality cults of all times saturated Soviet public space with images of Stalin. A torrent of portraits, posters, statues, films, plays, songs, and poems galvanized the Soviet...

Edward II (1284-1327), King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine, was the object of ignominy during his lifetime and calumny since it. Conventionally viewed as worthless, incapable of sustained policy, and significant only for his spora...

Maya Plisetskaya, one of the world's foremost dancers, rose to become a prima ballerina of Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet after an early life filled with tragedy and loss. In this spirited memoir, Plisetskaya reflects on her personal and professional odysse...

In 1401, Christine de Pizan (1365-1430?), one of the most renowned and prolific woman writers of the Middle Ages, wrote a letter to the provost of Lille criticizing the highly popular and widely read "Romance of the Rose" for its blatant and unwarran...

The career of the American photographer Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916) spanned more than fifty years. It is his giant photographs of Yosemite, from the "best general view", that most effectively articulate his artistic vision. The J. Paul Getty Muse...

For sale in CIS only! "Looking out to sea I whispered a farewell prayer to the wind: Help me to be content to pass by even the most beautiful places without wanting to remain in them for long or to keep them for myself". Tientsin in north-eastern Ch...

"The Book of Disquietude" is the "factless autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of the 72 literary personae with which Fernando Pessoa created the theatre of himself. Conceived in 1916, Soares is, Pessoa declares, 'a mutilation' of his own personal...