Arts, Architecture & Design Books

Lennon on Lennon is an authoritative, anthology of some of Lennon's most illuminating interviews, spanning the years 1964 to 1980. The majority have not been previously available in print, and several of the most important have not been widely available...

This intellectual history chronicles the processes of compromise and negotiation between high and low art, federal and local interests, and the Progressive Era and New Deal. Victoria Grieve examines how intellectual trends in the early twentieth century...

The story of the night club impresario whose wildly successful interracial club, Cafe Society, changed the American artistic landscape forever.Set against the drama of the Great Depression, the conflict of American race relations, and the inquisitions of...

Songs for the Spirits is the first in-depth study of the Vietnamese practice of communing with spirits through music and performance. During rituals dedicated to a large pantheon of indigenous spirits, a band of musicians perform an elaborate sequence of...

An in-depth analysis of photography during the Japanese American incarceration during World War IIWhen the American government began impounding Japanese American citizens after Pearl Harbor, photography became a battleground. The control of the means of...

The Illinois River flows through the heart of Illinois, beginning in the northeast of the state at the confluence of the Kankakee River and the Des Plaines River in Grundy County and extending 270 miles to the southwest, where it joins the Mississippi...

Most people associate Georgia O'Keeffe with New Mexico, painted cow skulls, and her flower paintings. She was revered for so long-born in 1887, died at age ninety-eight in 1986-that we forget how young, restless, passionate, searching, striking, even...

Until recently, most scholarly work on Chinese music in both Chinese and Western languages has focused on genres, musical structure, and general history and concepts, rather than on the musicians themselves. This volume breaks new ground by focusing on...

The major historians of ancient Rome wrote their works in the firm belief that the exalted history of the Roman Empire provided plentiful lessons about individual behavior, inspiration for great souls, and warnings against evil ambitions, not to mention...

This volume is an encyclopedia of country music performers who have used comedy as a central component of their presentation. Loyal Jones offers a conversational and informative biographical sketch of each performer, often including a sample of the...

The career of F. Samuel Janzow (1913-2001) was marked by roles as pastor, professor, and scholar. In all of these he served with great humility, from shepherding a small congregation in London during the blitz, to teaching countless college students, to...

From its trademark row houses to Benjamin Henry Latrobe's landmark Cathedral (now Basilica) of the Assumption, Baltimore architecture can rightly claim to be as eclectic, exciting, and inspiring as that of any American city. Many of its important...

One of the most visible consequences of our society's breakneck level of production and consumption is the increasing amount of land designated as landfill and other waste disposal and processing sites. Often located in marginal areas or adjacent to...

At the close of World War II, Americans became increasingly concerned about the problem of housing for returning veterans, relocated defense workers, and their families. Designs such as the garden city that dated from the turn of the twentieth century or...

Between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, technology transformed the entertainment industry as much as it did such heavy industries as coal and steel. Among those most directly affected were musicians, who had to adapt to successive...

By using the right elements, outdoor spaces that were previously underutilized can become more inviting, functional, and well-used. Case studies, 3D animated examples, diagrams, and sketches in this informative DVD show how to transform existing areas by...

The first DVD in this educational video series demonstrates the importance of having people, policies, and programs that support outdoor usage by residents in senior housing settings. Experts in environmental psychology, design, and gerontology explore...

Whether you are a planning a new community or remodeling an existing one, the second DVD in the Access to Nature series illustrates a variety of ways the building layout can encourage residents to go outdoors. Case studies, sketches, and models show how...

A marriage of photography and criticism, this elegant volume celebrates details of Baltimore's fine architectural heritage and explores both familiar and unnoticed places.

Explores the life, career, and intellectual debates of art historian Meyer Schapiro, who worked at the nexus of artistic and intellectual practice and from there confronted some of the twentieth century’s most abiding questions. 

In Disarming the Prairie, noted landscape photographer Terry Evans offers haunting and hopeful images of the impact of America's military-industrial complex on the environment and the transformation of a former military base into a unique nature preserve...

Sound and statuary have had a complicated relationship in Western aesthetic thought since antiquity. Taking as its focus the sounding statue - a type of anthropocentric statue that invites the viewer to imagine any sounds the statue might make - Sculpted...

Sound and statuary have had a complicated relationship in Western aesthetic thought since antiquity. Taking as its focus the sounding statue - a type of anthropocentric statue that invites the viewer to imagine any sounds the statue might make - Sculpted...

What does the study of iconography entail for scholars active today? How does it intersect with the broad array of methodological and theoretical approaches now at the disposal of art historians? Do we still dare to use the term “iconography”...

Since its construction, Notre Dame Cathedral has played a central role in French cultural identity. In the wake of the tragic fire of 2019, questions of how to restore the fabric of this quintessential French monument are once more at the forefront. This...

Alexander Gardner is best known for his innovative photographic history of the Civil War; what is less known is the extent to which he was involved in the international worker’s rights movement. Tying Gardner’s photographic storytelling to...

The United States possesses extraordinary holdings of seventeenth-century Flemish paintings. In this pioneering and richly illustrated volume, twelve scholars and museum curators reveal the origins of these collections by examining the American approach...

A critical analysis of the art and career of African American painter Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998). Examines Jones’s engagement with African and Afrodiasporic themes as well as the challenges she faced as a black woman artist. 

A critical analysis of the art and career of African American painter Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998). Examines Jones’s engagement with African and Afrodiasporic themes as well as the challenges she faced as a black woman artist. 

During the nineteenth century, Albrecht Dürer’s art, piety, and personal character were held up as models to inspire contemporary artists and—it was hoped—to return Germany to international artistic eminence. In this book, Jeffrey...

Gothic Architecture and Sexuality in the Circle of Horace Walpole shows that the Gothic style in architecture and the decorative arts and the tradition of medievalist research associated with Horace Walpole (1717–1797) and his circle cannot be understood...

Examines a series of powerful artifacts traditionally associated with King Solomon, largely via extra-canonical textual sources--Solomon’s ring, bottles to contain evil forces, the so-called Solomon’s knot, a shamir, and a flying carpet--and...

Decorative handcrafts are commonly associated with traditional femininity and unthreatening docility. However, the artists connected with interwar Vienna's “female Secession created craft-based artworks that may be understood as sites of feminist...

Titian, one of the most successful painters of the Italian Renaissance, was credited by his contemporaries with painting a miracle-working image, the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross. Taking this unusual circumstance as a point of departure,...

The Hungarian-born French painter Simon Hantaï (1922–2008) is best known for abstract, large-format works produced using pliage: the painting of a crumpled, gathered, or systematically pleated canvas that the artist then unfolds and stretches for...

In his best-selling travel memoir, The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain punningly refers to the black man who introduces him to Venetian Renaissance painting as a “contraband guide, a term coined to describe fugitive slaves who assisted Union armies during...

Why does a society seek out images of violence? What can the consumption of violent imagery teach us about the history of violence and the ways it has been represented and understood? This book addresses these questions within the context of the...

This book challenges the notion that Michelangelo, renowned for his magnificent portrayals of the human body, was merely concerned with “superficial anatomy—that is, the parts of the body that can be seen from the outside. Christian K. Kleinbub provides...

Demonstrates the crucial role that art-writing played as a tool of historical analysis in the work of the Romantic historian Jules Michelet’s work, decisively influencing his most important historical concepts, his idea of history, and his view of...

Pushed to the height of its illusionistic powers during the first centuries of the Roman Empire, sculpture was largely abandoned with the ascendency of Christianity, as the apparent animation of the material image and practices associated with sculpture...

Framing the Church takes a nontraditional approach to the study of the hallmark of French Gothic architecture: the buttress. In a series of case studies spanning approximately five hundred years and incorporating some of Gothic France's most significant...

Explores how certain educated northern Europeans in the first half of the sixteenth century increasingly saw their world as disharmonious and inclusive of mutual contradiction. Examines how early modern writers grappled with the problem of cultural,...

Investigates the origins of Maya veneration of the Virgin Mary and the processes of religious transformation during the first two hundred years of Spanish colonization in Yucatán.

“The Spanish Element in Our Nationality” delves beneath the traditional “English-only” narrative of U.S. history, using Spain’s participation in a series of international exhibitions to illuminate more fully the close and...

Examines seventeenth-century sculpture in Rome. Focuses on questions of historical context and criticism, including the interaction of theory and practice, the creative roles of sculptors and patrons, the relationship of sculpture to antique models and...

Examines seventeenth-century sculpture in Rome. Focuses on questions of historical context and criticism, including the interaction of theory and practice, the creative roles of sculptors and patrons, the relationship of sculpture to antique models and...

Analyzes the emergence and development of art history as a discipline in Austria-Hungary. Focuses on the ways in which ideas about art and its history became intertwined with political and social identity, and on the cultural politics that shaped the...

Analyzes the emergence and development of art history as a discipline in Austria-Hungary. Focuses on the ways in which ideas about art and its history became intertwined with political and social identity, and on the cultural politics that shaped the...