The Second Crusade (1145-1149) was an extraordinarily bold attempt to overcome unbelievers on no less than three fronts. Crusader armies set out to defeat Muslims in the Holy Land and in Iberia as well as pagans in northeastern Europe. But, to the sh...

Understanding Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) is crucial to reading the history of art of the late nineteenth century and the development of modernism. Internationally heralded yet sometimes scorned, much exhibited, respected and emulated, an artist's...

According to sacred texts, the historical Buddha encouraged his disciples to make pilgrimages to sites associated with his life. As sacred images of the Buddha proliferated over time, it is said that his relics were divided among 84,000 South Asian s...

"Property Outlaws" puts forth the intriguingly counterintuitive proposition that, in the case of both tangible and intellectual property law, disobedience can often lead to an improvement in legal regulation. The authors argue that in property law th...

Poetry doesn't matter to most people, observes Jay Parini at the opening of this book. Undeterred, he commences a deeply felt meditation on poetry, its language and meaning, and its power to open minds and transform lives. By the end of the book, Par...

Diamonds are not for ever – nor necessarily are they a girl's best friend. Ranging from precious stones as raw wealth to the symbolic properties of gems whether in Antiquity and the Bible or in Victorian art and literature, this book examines how sma...

More than a generation before the invention of Gutenberg's celebrated press, the new technology of image printing emerged. In this book, a distinguished group of scholars treats the earliest manifestations of printing in all aspects: technical experi...

Perhaps no other great modern architect has been linked to a native country as closely as Alvar Aalto. Critics have argued that the essence of Finland flows, as if naturally, into his quasi-organic forms, ranging from such buildings as the Baker Hous...

The Yale Center for British Art stands as the final architectural masterpiece of the great twentieth-century American architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974). It received the 2005 American Institute of Architects Twenty-Five Year Award honoring "signific...

The kings of Aksum formally became Christian during the second quarter of the fourth century, making Ethiopia the second country in the world (after Armenia) officially to adopt the new faith. This landmark book is the first to integrate historical,...