Carpets made in the "Rug Belt" – an area that includes Morocco, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and northern India – have been a source of fascination and collecting since the 13th century. This engaging and accessible book explores the...

The Art Institute of Chicago's opportunity to host the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, in 1913 set a radical new course for modern and contemporary art in the United States. This monumental exhibition introduc...

Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver's Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major politi...

"Sculpture Victorious "highlights the diversity, originality and ubiquity of sculptural production during the reign of Queen Victoria. This lavishly illustrated book examines how colourful marbles, bronzes, finely wrought silver, and exquisitely deta...

Eminent political theorist John Dunn argues that democracy is not synonymous with good government in this timely and important work. The author explores the labyrinthine reality behind the basic concept of democracy, demonstrating how the political s...

You cannot call to mind the name of a man you have known for 30 years. You walk into a room and forget what you came for. What is the name of that famous film you've watched so many times? These are common experiences, and as we grow older we tend to...

Little is known about the early childhood of Jesus Christ. But in the decades after his death, stories began circulating about his origins. One collection of such tales was the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas, known in antiquity as the Paidika, or...

What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, "What Art Is challenges" the popular interpretation that art is an...

After several million years of jostling for ecological space, only one survivor from a host of hominid species remains standing: us. Human beings are extraordinary creatures, and it is the unprecedented human brain that makes them so. In this delight...

Kiki Dimoula's poetry – the most praised and prized in contemporary Greek literature – is a paradox, both mysteriously intricate and widely popular. Her magic lens defamiliarizes all that is familiar, compressing distances between far-flung realms, c...