From ornament to object

Sample

Theophilus

The work is divided into three books. The first covers the production and use of painting and drawing materials (painting techniques, paints, and ink), especially for illumination of texts and painting of walls. The second deals with the production of stained glass and techniques of glass painting, while the last deals with various techniques of goldsmithing and other metalwork. It also includes an introduction into the building of organs. Theophilus contains perhaps the earliest reference to oil paint.

Sample

Thomas Schmidt and Jeremy Schmidt

Follows explorers Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition to seek out -- and stake out -- the fabled Northwest Passage. They traveled from Missouri through uncharted territory to Oregon, fighting rivers, suffering sunstroke, befriending Indians, and surviving hunger, fatigue, and sickness. Includes excerpts from the original journals, the first written account of the area west of the Mississippi.

Sample

Bernard DeVoto

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize. Across the Wide Missouri tells the compelling story of the climax and decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the 1830s. More than a history, it portrays the mountain fur trade as a way of business and a way of life, vividly illustrating how it shaped the expansion of the American West.

Sample

Robin Middleton and David Watkin

This volume offers a complete survey of European architecture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, examining in particular the influence of the cultural trends of the period on the architects' works. The first section of the book deals with the history of eighteenth-century architecture in France and England, countries where Cartesian-school philosophical speculation and Anglo-Saxon philosophical empiricism wielded a determining influence. After analyzing the developments of the classical tradition and its propagation throughout Europe, the book studies in depth the history of architectural movements, comprising neo-classicism, neo-Renaissance and neo-Gothic architecture. The outstanding, fore-running personalities of this brilliant artistic period who, in the course of the nineteenth century, offered fecund theoretic and stylistic contributions, include Gottfried Semper, John Ruskin and Eugene Viollet-le Duc.