The history of mountaineering has long served as a metaphor for civilization triumphant. Once upon a time, the Alps were an inaccessible habitat of specters and dragons, until heroic men—pioneers of enlightenment—scaled their summits, classified their strata and flora, and banished the phantoms forever. A fascinating interdisciplinary study of the first ascents of the major Alpine peaks and Mount Everest, The Summits of Modern Man surveys the far-ranging significance of our encoun...

From the Roman Emperor Julian, who waxed rhapsodic about Parisian wine and figs, to Henry Miller, who relished its seductive bohemia, Paris has been a perennial source of fascination for 2,000 years. In this definitive and illuminating history, Colin Jones walks us through the city that was a plague-infested charnel house during the Middle Ages, the bloody epicenter of the French Revolution, the muse of nineteenth-century Impressionist painters, and much more. Jones’s masterful narrative i...

"Visionary, often brilliant." —Los Angeles TimesFrom the assembly halls of Athens to the Turkish baths of New York's Lower East Side, from eighteenth-century English gardens to the housing projects of Harlem—a study of the physical fabric of the city as a mirror of Western society and culture.

The Paris we know today, with its grand boulevards, its bridges and parks, its monumental beauty, was essentially built in only seventeen years, in the middle of the nineteenth century. In this brief period, whole neighborhoods of medieval and revolutionary Paris -- over-crowded, dangerous, and filthy -- were razed, and from the rubble a modern city of light and air emerged. This triumphant rebuilding was chiefly the work of one man, Baron Georges Haussmann, Napoleon III's Prefect of the S...

Edmund White has just met you at a party and he's going to tell you about a friend. But his 'friend' is one of the greatest cities in the world, beloved by many and yet really known by only a few. And he is one of those few. -Alexander CheeEdmund White's New York Times bestselling guided sojourn through the streets of Paris, with a new foreword by Alexander Chee.Legendary paterfamilias of queer literature Edmund White lived in Paris for si...

This vivid history of the city in Western civilization tells the story of urban life through bodily experience.Flesh and Stone is the story of the deepest parts of life—how women and men moved in public and private spaces, what they saw and heard, the smells that assailed them, where they ate, how they dressed, the mores of bathing and of making love—all in the architecture of stone and space from ancient Athens to modern New York.Early in Flesh and Stone,...

"A rich and entertaining history of the French capital's predominant myths and 'image-making' from the nineteenth century to the present." —Roxanne Panchasi, H-France ReviewHow did Paris become the world favorite it is today? Charles Rearick argues that we can best understand Paris as several cities in one, each with its own history and its own imaginary shaped by dream and memory. Paris has long been at once a cosmopolitan City of Light and of modernity, a...

Using the tools of the "new" art history (feminism, Marxism, social context, etc.) An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Art offers a richly textured, yet clear and logical, introduction to nineteenth-century art and culture. This textbook will provide readers with a basic historical framework of the period and the critical tools for interpreting and situating new and unfamiliar works of art.Michelle Facos goes beyond existing histories of nineteenth-century art, which oft...

Reveals the change in Western man's conception and acceptance of death as evidenced in customs, literature, and art since medieval times.

Celebrated by writers from Petrarch to Peter Mayle, Provence's rugged mountains, wild maquis and lavender-filled meadows are world-famous. Historic cities like Arles, Avignon and Aix contain Roman amphitheatres, papal palaces and royal residences, while market towns and picturesque villages maintain age-old traditions of wine producing and agriculture. From the highland towns of Digne and Sisteron to the marshy expanse of the Camargue, Provence encompasses a rich variety of landscapes.Mart...

Paris, in many people’s view, is the epitome of the perfect city – beautiful, romantic and imbued with vitality and culture. It is a wonderful place to visit and to live. A ‘pride of place’ mentality has characterised Parisians for centuries: ‘To be in Paris, is to be’ enthused an anonymous correspondent as early as 1323. Packed with fact, anecdote and insight, <I>A Traveller’s History of Paris</I&g...

In January 2006, a man tried to break Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain sculpture with a small hammer. The sculpted foot of Michelangelo’s David was damaged in 1991 by a purportedly mentally-ill artist. With each incident, artists and intellectuals must confront the unsettling dynamic between destruction and art. Renowned art historian Dario Gamboni is the first to tackle this weighty issue in depth, exploring spectres of censorship, iconoclasm and vandalism that surround such ac...