Violence

Sample

Giulio Magli

This book provides the first complete, easy to read, up-to-date account of the fascinating discipline of archaeoastronomy, in which the relationship between ancient constructions and the sky is studied in order to gain a better understanding of the ideas of the architects of the past and of their religious and symbolic worlds. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which explores the past relations between astronomy and people, power, the afterworld, architecture, and landscape. The fundamentals of archaeoastronomy are then addressed in detail, with coverage of the celestial coordinates; the apparent motion of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets; observation of celestial bodies at the horizon; the use of astronomical software in archaeoastronomy; and current methods for making and analyzing measurements. The final section reviews what archaeoastronomy can now tell us about the nature and purpose of such sites and structures as Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Giza, Chichen Itza, the Campus Martius, and the Valley of the Temples of Agrigento. In addition, a set of exercises is provided that can be performed using non-commercial free software, e.g., Google Earth or Stellarium, and will equip readers to conduct their own research. Readers will find the book an ideal introduction to what has become a wide-ranging multidisciplinary science. -- Back cover.

Sample

Andrew Lawson

GARDENING. First published in 1996, this Pimpernel Classic edition has been completely redesigned and includes a new foreword by Andrew Lawson. Using his artist's eye and scientist's training, distinguished garden photographer and writer Andrew Lawson shines a new light on using colour in the garden. This book shows myriad ways to put colours together, and demonstrates the extraordinary power of colour to change the sense of space, to suggest coolness or warmth and to evoke different moods. The basis of creating harmonizing and contrasting schemes is explained and illustrated with dramatic examples. All the major schemes are supported by keyline drawings giving full planting details. In addition, illustrated plant directories, arranged by colour and flowering season, provide cultivation details for over 850 plants, enabling you to assemble the right plants for your chosen scheme and to carry that scheme through the year.

Sample

[Ausstellung und Katalog, Guido de Werd

"The Codices Madrid drawings come from a larger group that Beuys made during 1974 for a multiple, a facsimile sketchbook to be printed in a limited edition of one thousand copies. First broached in 1972 jointly by a German art dealer and a museum director, the project was conceived as a response to the recent rediscovery, in a library in Madrid where they had long been misfiled, of two "lost" notebooks by the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci. Beuys made numerous studies and sketches in anticipation of his book, which was to be closely modeled on Leonardo's in terms of its size. Its cover, however, significantly departed from that of its predecessor, for Beuys used a design replicating an American schoolbook. With the crop marks for publication readily visible on many sheets, these drawings offer a comprehensive recapitulation and re-examination of motifs, ideas, and concepts that had centrally informed his aesthetic and practice over the previous twenty-five years." -- Excerpt from Introduction on the Dia Center for the Arts website (see link). A group of drawings, part of the "raw material" for a multiple that the German artist Joseph Beuys had produced four years earlier, was purchased by Dia Center for the Arts in 1979. One of a number of major pieces in Dia's collection by this seminal postwar German artist, it forms the object of study and documentation in this publication. Also available in German.

Sample

Steven Roger Fischer

When Lost's Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crashed, the survivors found themselves on a seemingly deserted island. In Defoe's novel, Robinson Crusoe spends twenty-eight years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, while in the movie Castaway Tom Hanks survives over four years on a South Pacific island. And Jurassic Park kept its dinosaur population confined to an island off the coast of Central America. Islands often find themselves at the center of imagined worlds, secluded and sometimes mystical locales filled with strange creatures and savage populations. The cannibals, raptors, and smoke monsters that exist on the islands of popular culture aside, the more than one million islands and islets on the planet are indeed small , geological, biological, and cultural laboratories. From Britain to Japan, from the Galapagos to Manhattan, this book roams the planet to provide the first global introduction to these waterlocked landforms. Longtime island dweller Steven Roger Fischer shows that, since time began, islands have been one of the primary birthplaces for plants, animals, and proto-humans. These eyots of stone and sand--whether in ocean, lake, or river--fostered the human race, and Fischer recounts how humanity then exploited these remarkable habitats as stepping stones to global dominion. He explores island economics, warfare, and politics, and he examines the role they have played in literature, art and psychology. At the same time, he sparks our imagination with visions of islands--from Atlantis to Tahiti, Treasure Island to Hawaii. Ultimately, he reveals, these isolated mini-worlds are a measure of humankind itself. An engaging account of the islets that have enriched, lured, terrified, and inspired us, Islands shines new light on these cradles of earth--and human--history.