This groundbreaking collection presents for the first time in English a substantial body of poetry from the world of Jewish mysticism. Taking up Gershom Scholem's call to plumb the "tremendous poetic potential concealed" in the Kabbalistic tradition,...

While comparative literature is a well-recognized field of study, the notion of comparative arts remains unfamiliar to many. In this fascinating book, Daniel Albright addresses the fundamental question of comparative arts: are there many different ar...

This book tells the story of Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca (1411/13-1492) by focusing on four paintings he created over the span of his career. It also provides the first study of his small-scale devotional paintings, including the...

Friars transformed the relationship of the church to laymen by taking religion outside to public and domestic spaces. Mendicant commitment to apostolic poverty bound friars to donors in an exchange of donations in return for intercessory prayers and...

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875) was an extraordinarily gifted sculptor – the greatest in 19th-century France before Rodin – and embodied the emotionally charged artistic climate of his era. The passionate Carpeaux comes alive in this handsome new...

Lee Friedlander first visited the birthplace of jazz in 1957 and immediately set about photographing the aging pioneers of the art form. His love of the music and the people of New Orleans drew him back to the city, and the relationships he formed ov...

Stories of plots, sham plots, and the citizen-informers who discovered them are at the centre of Rachel Weil's compelling study of the turbulent decade following the Revolution of 1688. Most studies of the Glorious Revolution focus on its causes or l...

In 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, he was one of only...

Why has mankind developed so differently from other animals? How and why did language, culture, religion and the arts come into being? In this wide-ranging and ambitious essay, Christoph Turcke offers a new answer to these timeworn questions by scrut...

Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) is a painter engaged with "figuration", using imagery that he reworks in a critical or self-critical way. He combines images from various sources – photographs, film stills, even mirror images – with a spare palette, unexpected...