World Art History

En un oscuro rincón del mundo del arte, oculto tras la majestuosidad de las pinturas más famosas, se tejió una trama épica que desafiaría los límites de la creatividad y la astucia humana. En 1960, una denuncia por una estafa aparentemente insignificante desencadenó una revelación que dejaría al descubierto un entramado de plagios perfectos de los maestros consagrados: Velázquez, Zurbarán, El Greco, Mengs, Picasso, Ribera y muchos más.

Walden is a work by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and to some degree a manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond amid woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.

The 1960s were a time of huge transformation, sustained and amplified by the music of that era: Rock and Roll. During the 19th and 20th centuries visionary and esoteric spiritual traditions influenced first literature, then film. In the 1960s they entered the realm of popular music, catalyzing the ecstatic experiences that empowered a generation. Exploring how 1960s rock and roll music became a school of visionary art, Christopher Hill shows how music raised consciousness on both the individual and collective levels to bring about a transformation of the planet.

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from about the fifth century BCE. The work contains a detailed explanation and analysis of the Chinese military, from weapons and strategy to rank and discipline. It also stresses the importance of intelligence operatives and espionage to the war effort.

Catherine the Great ushered in the Russian Enlightenment. She had an unmatched passion for the arts, and she began a private art collection that would eventually evolve into galleries upon galleries of historical treasures shipped in from all over the world. This fabled museum was none other than the Hermitage, located in the heart of Saint Petersburg, a city founded by the imperial empire's very own Peter the Great.

The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the greatest turning point in Dickens' career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives and develops a new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the world is becoming.

Shahan Mufti’s family history, which he can trace back 1,400 years to the inner circle of the prophet Muhammad, offers an enlightened perspective on the mystifying history of Pakistan. Mufti uses the stories of his ancestors, many of whom served as judges and jurists in Muslim sharia courts of South Asia for many centuries, to reveal the deepest roots - real and imagined - of Islamic civilization in Pakistan.

From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. The war caused carnage on an industrial scale and the nature of trench warfare meant that thousands sustained facial injuries. In The Facemaker, award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris tells the true story of the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to restoring the faces of a brutalised generation.

Britain’s Culture Minister, David Lammy, recently suggested that the history of slavery should be made a compulsory part of the nation’s school curriculum. Mick Hume, a columnist in The Times, promptly retorted, “Slavery and the Holocaust are now likely to be taught as little chunks of history, removed from any proper context. They become simplistic parables of good and evil, over which children are encouraged to emote and empathise...." How well founded was this criticism?

As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London's museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation's highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation's greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures.

The purpose of this insider's account is to provide an answer to all these questions and more. Andrew Marr's brilliant, and brilliantly funny, book is a guide to those of us who read newspapers, or who listen to and watch news bulletins but want to know more. Andrew Marr tells the story of modern journalism through his own experience.

Acclaimed historian Edward J. Renehan, Jr., author of The Lion's Pride, focuses on the World War II era to craft a welcome addition to the Kennedy literature. Renehan shows how family patriarch Joseph was an ambitious but occasionally embarrassing diplomat, while wartime disaster elevated second son John to great heights. Sisters Kathleen and Rosemary also emerge as strong individuals in this compelling glimpse at the great American dynasty.

Eine Jugend in Deutschland, voller Hoffnung und voller Enttäuschung: Als Freiwilliger zieht Ernst Toller begeistert in den Ersten Weltkrieg und kehrt, für kriegsuntauglich erklärt, als bekennender Pazifist zurück. In München schlägt er sich im November 1918 auf die Seite der Revolution, wird zum Anführer der Räterepublik und erlebt deren tragisches Scheitern. Er wird geächtet, festgenommen und zu fünf Jahren Festungshaft verurteilt. Als er im Juli 1924 das Gefängnis verlässt, ist Ernst Toller eine internationale Berühmtheit.

Celebrate the impact women have made in our culture: This feminist book is a beacon of brilliance. It is the perfect gift for artists, intellectuals, and anyone who seeks to be inspired by words and profound lives. Most of all, it is a celebration of the journeys and accomplishments of women who have worked to have their voices heard in black and white letters across the world.

There were talented and dexterous people living in what is now Southern Iraq during the time of Sumer. Humankind's first known civilization arose in the fertile plain irrigated by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers some 6,000 years ago "suddenly", "unexpectedly", and "with stunning abruptness", according to researchers. It was a society to which we owe virtually every "first" of what we consider essential to an advanced society.

Forever England explores Rupert Brooke’s life, from schooldays to the Great War, and in so doing builds a remarkable picture of a long-lost England and a generation’s descent into war. Brooke’s poems emerge dramatically from a tangled web of love, friendship, mental illness and politics. He reveals also the existence of a previously unrecorded love child from a South Seas romance. The WW1 legend was largely brought about by the words of one of his sonnets: "If I should die, think only this of me/That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England".

William Wordsworth wrote the first great poetic autobiography. We owe to him the idea that places of outstanding natural beauty should become what he called ‘a sort of national property’. He changed forever the way we think about childhood, about the sense of the self, about our connection to the natural environment and about the purpose of poetry. He was born among the mountains of the English Lake District. He walked into the French Revolution and had a love affair and an illegitimate child before witnessing horrific violence in Paris.

Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times's most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals.

منذ زمن طويل كان يراودنى حلم إصدار موسوعة عن العظماء والروَّاد، ولكنى كنت أتردد، ذلك بسبب انشغالى فى إنجاز مؤلفاتى التى صدرت تباعاً فى علم النفس والتربىة، وعندما أراد الله بدأت.

It’s harder than it seems – after all, it’s only human to thirst after the juicy updates, jaw-dropping stories, and idle chatter that we typically collect over drinks with friends. No one knows this better than journalist Kelsey McKinney, whose Normal Gossip podcast has accrued a listenership of millions. In YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling.