Histories of the immediate present

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Algis Valiunas

"In this study, Algis Valiunas breaks new ground by examining Churchill's intentions in writing his military histories. In clear and eloquent prose, Valiunas shows that Churchill's many volumes of military history, written throughout his lifetime, teach readers the prudence needed for self-government in a democratic age. Valiunas argues that the defining feature of Churchill's histories is the way in which they maintain an aristocratic perspective on democratic times without losing their democratic sympathies. Churchill's histories are largely tales of war, and they delineate the actions of great captains and political men, but they also honor the heroism of ordinary men, individually and on masse.". "Valiunas offers readers an engaging interpretation of Churchill's military histories and demonstrates that Churchill knew war as few men do. From the cavalry charge at Omdurman to the defeat of Hitler, Churchill's achievements as a soldier and statesman were equaled only by his powers as a historian."--BOOK JACKET.

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Yves Draussin

Décrire la ville, la rendre sensible, perceptible, en démontrer les formes, les évolutions, la complexité visible et invisible ; et en expliquer les échecs. Mais ce récit entend également replacer la conception dans son contexte évènementiel, redonnant aux acteurs la paternité de leurs décisions et de leur influence sur le présent et le futur de la ville. Ainsi, l'identité de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines s'est forgée, principalement dans l'urbanisme, l'architecture et l'art public de son centre.(Ouvrage comportant 85 photos)

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Witold Rybczynski

"Before Andrea Palladio began designing his simple, gracious, perfectly proportioned villas, architectural genius was reserved for temples and palaces. Palladio elevated the architecture of the private house into an art form, and he not only designed and built, he wrote. His late-sixteenth-century architectural treatises were read and studied by great thinkers as diverse as Thomas Jefferson and Inigo Jones, profoundly influencing the design of Monticello, the tidewater plantation houses of Virginia, and the White House. All across America today, Palladio's influence is evident in ample porches and columned porticoes, in grand ceiling heights and front-door pediments.". "In The Perfect House, Witold Rybczynski, whose books on domestic and landscape architecture have transformed our understanding of parks and buildings, looks at Palladio's famous villas, not with the eye of an art historian but with the eye of an architect. He wanted to know why a handful of houses in an obscure corner of the Venetian Republic should have made their presence felt hundreds of years later and halfway across the globe."--BOOK JACKET.

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Patrick F. Cannon

"Original photographs and essays on more than forty Chicago-area residences, religious institutions, and public and commercial buildings, focusing on the structures' interiors and the stories behind them"--