A generously illustrated look at the intricate narrative threads of three of the artist's earliest works, and their continued resonance today Celebrated for works blending performance, video, and sculpture, Matthew Barney has created complex narrativ...

A fresh account of the life of Martin Luther. The sixteenth-century German friar whose public conflict with the medieval Roman Church triggered the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther was neither an unblemished saint nor a single-minded religious...

An up close and personal look at the life and work of a major 20th-century artist. The prominent German Expressionist painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) is known for allegorical, autobiographical works that capture the doom and grotesquerie of World Wa...

Personal letters reveal the quandary of a prominent German physicist during the Nazi years and the strength he shared with his loving wife Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg lived far from his wife, Elisabeth, during most of the Second W...

The brightly colored tin-enameled earthenware called maiolica was among the major accomplishments of decorative arts in 16th-century Italy. This in-depth look at the history of maiolica, told through 140 exemplary pieces from the world-class collecti...

The co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, Ralph J. Gleason was among the most respected journalists, interviewers, and critics writing about popular music in the latter half of the twentieth century. As a longtime contributor to the San Francisco Chr...

Alberto Manguel praises the Hungarian writer Laszlo Foldenyi as "one of the most brilliant essayists of our time". Foldenyi's extraordinary Melancholy, with its profusion of literary, ecclesiastical, artistic, and historical insights, gives proof to...

The complex and often ambiguous relationship between the hand crafted and the machine made is examined in this intriguing look at the ever-changing world of fashion and taste. "Manus Machina" traces styles of dress from one-of-a-kind works and haute...

Mark Rothko was not only one of the most influential American painters of the twentieth century; he was a scholar, an educator, and a deeply spiritual human being. Born Marcus Yakovlevich Rotkovitch, he emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United...

For the first time a noted historian of Christianity explores the full story of the emergence and development of the Marian cult in the early Christian centuries. The means by which Mary, mother of Jesus, came to prominence have long remained strange...