Battles & weapons
Caroline Chapman
"Period paintings from ancient times through World War II are used as a vehicle for introducing battles and weapons and discussing how they have changed over the centuries"--Provided by publisher.

by Sven A. Kirsten (2000)
After World War II, US soldiers stationed in the South Pacific returned home with tales of trees loaded with exotic fruits, sleepy lagoons, white-sand beaches, and gorgeous people wearing grass and feathers as they danced half-naked during all-night orgies of food and music. The American imagination seized on this exotic version of island culture, and it exerted a massive influence on Fashion, pop music, eating and drinking, and even architecture. Everything from bars to bowling alleys adopted elements of Polynesian design. Tikis, the carved wooden and stone statues from across the Pacific, found their way into every hotel lounge and suburban living room. But as the fad was reaching it's peak, the big generation gap of the late 60s put a sudden end to Polynesian escapism as the children of the Tiki revellers decided to seek their own Nirvana in sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. The 90s have seen a revitalised interest in this kitsch anomaly of post-war America -- lounge bars and the sound of "exotica" are back in. This enlightening and hilarious guide casts the reader as an "urban archaeologist" exploring the lost remnants of Tiki culture across the States -- discovering relics from this forgotten civilisation in thrift stores, yard sales, and used book and record emporia. A combination of nostalgia and fascinating pop cultural study, this volume is a long overdue investigation into the cult of the Tiki.
Caroline Chapman
"Period paintings from ancient times through World War II are used as a vehicle for introducing battles and weapons and discussing how they have changed over the centuries"--Provided by publisher.
Ian Buruma
Theater of Cruelty has three main themes that frequently overlap: war, film, and the visual arts. Many of the movies discussed are about war and violence, often related to World War II, and more specifically deal with the two nations that unleashed the war, Germany and Japan: why they did what they did, and how they came to terms with it afterward or didn't. Other essays in the collection, about the diaries of Harry Kessler and Anne Frank, the bombing of German cities, Japan's kamikaze pilots further explore these themes. Many of the artists discussed by Buruma were German or Japanese, including Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Tsuguharu Foujita, as were the filmmakers Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, all of whom were affected in one way or another by fascism and its terrible consequences. Theater of Cruelty is less about war itself than the way people deal with violence and cruelty, in the arts and in life.--Amazon.com.
H. Paul Varley
A survey of the history of cultural life in Japan from the earliest times to the present. Beginning with the first glimmerings of civilised life in the remote past, the author traces the development through the ages of religion, thought, literature, theatre, the visual arts, and other forms of culture and art. He also provides a discussion of Japan in the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the cultural consequences of Japan's defeat in World War II, the postwar development of arts and literature, and Japanese adaptation of Western forms and technology in architecture and films.
David Underwood
Oscar Niemeyer, born in 1907, is widely considered this century's leading Latin American architect, as well as one of the pioneers of modern architecture. This volume explores the major themes and sources of the most important works from all phases of Niemeyer's career, from the early collaborations of the 1930s and 1940s with Lucio Costa, the spiritual father of Brazilian modernism, to the 1989 Memorial da America Latina in Sao Paulo, a complex that reveals the maturation of Niemeyer's free-form style in the service of his utopian vision. A central theme of Niemeyer's work has been its reflection of the Brazilian jeito, a sinuous and improvisational style manifested in everything from the country's sensual, undulating landscape to its attraction to spontaneous impulses, best known through its vibrant music and dance. The jeito and the milieu of Rio de Janeiro lie at the heart of Niemeyer's free-form style, which emphasizes the inherent plasticity of the native curve over the rigid rectilinearity of the International Style in Europe. A second theme treats the influence on Niemeyer of the poetic style of Le Corbusier. Also considered are Niemeyer's attraction to surrealist biomorphic forms and his desire to express a sense of the fantastic in architecture. A final theme is Niemeyer's search for an aesthetic utopia that would resolve social dilemmas by wishing them away through architecture. Herein lies Niemeyer's strength, for as his architecture reflects the multiple dichotomies of the Brazilian experience, it projects an emotive universality that few architects have been able to achieve.