Arts, Architecture & Design Books

Worship Space Acoustics is a unique guide to the design, construction, and use of religious facilities for optimum acoustics. The book is divided into two parts: Part 1 discusses methods and techniques of room optimization - how the acoustics of large...

Although in 2000 he became the first sideman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, "King Curtis" Ousley never lived to accept his award. Tragically, he was murdered outside his New York City home in 1971. At that moment, thirty-seven-year-old King...

After he died, Townes Van Zandt found the success that he sabotaged throughout his short life despite the release of sixteen brilliant albums. Since his death, numerous albums both by and in honor of him have been released and many critical articles...

Ana Mendieta, a Cuban-born artist who lived in exile in the United States, was one of the most provocative and complex personalities of the 1970s' artworld. In Where Is Ana Mendieta? art historian Jane Blocker provides an in-depth critical analysis of...

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November 1891, the heart of Gilded Age Manhattan. Thousands filled the streets surrounding Madison Square, fingers pointing, mouths agape. After countless struggles, Stanford White-the country's most celebrated architect was about to dedicate America's...

Tataki Zome is the enchanting art of pounding flowers and plants onto fabric to create stunning botanical prints. With just a few simple tools, you can transform natural materials into beautiful wall hangings, linens, tablecloths, and more. This...

Through the Garden Gate is a collection of 144 of the popular weekly articles that Elizabeth Lawrence wrote for The Charlotte Observer from 1957 to 1971. With those columns, a delightful blend of gardening lore, horticultural expertise, and personal...

On two separate days in August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the seventy-fifth anniversary of these cataclysmic bombings draws near, American and Japanese citizens are seeking new ways...

This book analyzes contemporary visual art produced in the context of conflict and trauma from a range of countries, including Colombia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Australia. It focuses on what makes visual language unique, arguing that the...

Preaching Magazine Book of the Year (2022) Hearts & Minds Best Books List (2022) Christianity Today Award of Merit in Church & Pastoral Leadership (2023) It's time to give pastors permission to read books besides the Bible. Six months into his first...

How do the arts in worship form individuals and communities? Every choice of art in worship opens up and closes down possibilities for the formation of our humanity. Every practice of music, every decision about language, every use of our bodies, every...

No single figure has been featured with greater frequency in Western art than Jesus Christ. Sculptures, particularly - though they have received less notice than paintings - provide some of the most moving representations in their capacity to show Christ...

What would you do if you were brought back to life to fight for the worlds entertainment? Would you comply? The Xtreme Champion Tournament or XCT is set in the year 2069, where through secret archaeological digs, the remains of heroes, villains, monsters...

Grace is a form of resilience. It is love in action. It holds us as we encounter difficulties and trauma. In recent years Australia has faced flood, drought, fire and the COVID-19 pandemic and these have challenged us deeply as as individuals as well as...

Where are the limits of medieval art as a field of study? What happens when conventionally trained art historians disregard the chronological, geographical, or cultural parameters that both direct and protect their scholarship? Beginning with Thelma K...

Sculptors Against the State considers the relation of anarchist ideology to avant-garde sculpture through an examination of three iconic artists whose work transformed European modernism: Umberto Boccioni, Jacob Epstein, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska...

In the late '90s, third-wave ska broke across the American alternative music scene like a tsunami. In sweaty clubs across the nation, kids danced themselves dehydrated to the peppy rhythms and punchy horns of bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and...

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For most of human history, all pottery was what we would now consider traditional folk pottery. Not all artifacts go beyond the basic requirements of utility in pursuit of beauty, but Beautiful Clay considers those that do. In Beautiful Clay, noted...

Music is powerful and transformational, but can it spur actual social change? A strong collection of essays, At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice studies the meaning of music within a community to investigate the intersections of sound and race,...

How and when does music become possible? Is it a matter of biology, or culture, or an interaction between the two? Revolutionizing the way we think about the core values of music and human exceptionalism, Hollis Taylor takes us on an outback road trip to...

Between 1941 and 1963, Aaron Copland made four government-sponsored tours of Latin America that drew extensive attention at home and abroad. Interviews with eyewitnesses, previously untapped Latin American press accounts, and Copland's diaries inform...

Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida opened in Orlando at the dawn of the Disney Renaissance. As a member of the crew, Mary E. Lescher witnessed the small studio's rise and fall during a transformative era in company and movie history. Her in-depth...

The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Realis in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the...

Representing a historical cross-section of performance and training in Western music since the seventeenth century, Five Lives in Music brings to light the private and performance lives of five remarkable women musicians and composers. Elegantly guiding...

This book is the first full biography of George Szell, one of the greatest orchestra and opera conductors of the twentieth century. From child prodigy pianist and composer to world-renowned conductor, Szell's career spanned seven decades, and he led most...

One of the pioneers of gender studies in music, Ellen Koskoff edited the foundational text Women and Music in Cross Cultural Perspective, and her career evolved in tandem with the emergence and development of the field. In this intellectual memoir,...

The first book devoted entirely to women in bluegrass, Pretty Good for a Girl documents the lives of more than seventy women whose vibrant contributions to the development of bluegrass have been, for the most part, overlooked. Accessibly written and...

The music of Alec Wilder (1907-1980) blends several American musical traditions, such as jazz and the American popular song, with classical European forms and techniques. Stylish and accessible, Wilder's musical oeuvre ranged from sonatas, suites,...

Attracting passionate fans primarily among African American listeners in the South, Southern Soul draws on such diverse influences as the blues, 1960s-era Deep Soul, contemporary R & B, neosoul, rap, hip-hop, and gospel. Aggressively danceable,...

This dynamic collection explores the life, work, and persona of saxophonist Fred Ho, an unabashedly revolutionary artist whose illuminating and daring work redefines the relationship between art and politics. Scholars, artists, and friends give their...

This is the first full-length introduction to the life and works of significant American composer Marga Richter (born 1926), who has written more than one hundred works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, dance, opera, voice, chorus, piano, organ, and...

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A pivotal member of the hugely successful bluegrass band Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, Dobro pioneer Josh Graves (1927-2006) was a living link between bluegrass music and the blues. In Bluegrass Bluesman, this influential performer...

Negotiating identity in hip-hop cultureThis multilayered study of the representation of black masculinity in musical and cultural performance takes aim at the reduction of African American male culture to stereotypes of deviance, misogyny, and excess...

This compact introduction to the life and works of composer Elliott Carter provides a fresh perspective on one of the most significant American composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A leading voice of the American classical music...

This volume is an engaging and exceptional history of the independent rock 'n' roll record industry from its raw regional beginnings in the 1940s with R & B and hillbilly music through its peak in the 1950s and decline in the 1960s. John Broven combines...

This collection assembles the best interviews from Steve Cushing's long-running radio program Blues Before Sunrise, the nationally syndicated, award-winning program focusing on vintage blues and R&B. As both an observer and performer, Cushing has been...

An analysis of black women's involvement in the ''women's music'' scene from the 1970s to todayDrawing on fieldwork conducted at eight women's music festivals, Eileen M. Hayes shows how studying these festivals--attended by predominately white...

This incomparable anthology collects articles, interviews, fiction, and poetry from the Original Chicago Blues Annual, one of music history's most significant periodical blues publications. Founded and operated from 1989 to 1995 by African American...

Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of ''Crazy Blues'' is commonly thought to signify the beginning of commercial attention to blues music and culture, but by that year more than 450 other blues titles had already appeared in sheet music and on recordings. In...

Framing timely and pressing questions concerning music and cultural rights, this collection illustrates the ways in which music--as a cultural practice, a commercial product, and an aesthetic form--has become enmeshed in debates about human rights,...

The magnum opus of one of America's most respected military historians, The Art of War in the Western World has earned its place as the standard work on how the three major operational components of war--tactics, logistics, and strategy--have evolved and...

A classic in gender studies in music, Marcia J. Citron's comprehensive, balanced work lays a broad foundation for the study of women composers and their music. Drawing on a diverse body of feminist and interdisciplinary theory, Citron shows how the...

Chicago River Bridges presents the untold history and development of Chicago's iconic bridges, from the first wood footbridge built by a tavern owner in 1832 to the fantastic marvels of steel, concrete, and machinery of today. It is the story of Chicago...

One of the first significant apprentices of Frank Lloyd Wright, Barry Byrne (1883–1967) was a radical architect who sought basic principles as fervently as his mentor Wright and his inspiration Louis Sullivan. From these roots he developed a design...

A portrait of the artist and his influence on American popular cultureBest remembered as an influential illustrator and teacher, Howard Pyle (1853–1911) produced magnificent artwork and engrossing books and magazine stories about King Arthur, Robin Hood,...