Discover the creative processes and intriguing inspirations behind the work of leading fantasy artist John Howe – conceptual designer on The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy – in this enhanced, immersive audiobook.Read by the author with an original soundscape composed and performed by lifelong Tolkien fan Jordan Rannells, this unique audiobook delivers over four and a half hours of fascinating detail on John's approach to his work, with exclusive additiona...

Discover the creative processes and intriguing inspirations behind the work of leading fantasy artist John Howe in his first-ever practical art book. From creatures and beings to atmosphere and landscapes, uncover John Howe's art of myth and legend, then create your own.

Historians typically single out the hundred-year period from about 1050 to 1150 as the pivotal moment in the history of the Latin Church, for it was then that the Gregorian Reform movement established the ecclesiastical structure that would ensure Rome's dominance throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. In Before the Gregorian Reform John Howe challenges this familiar narrative by examining earlier, "pre-Gregorian" reform efforts within the Church. He finds that th...

--What is Anglicanism and how is it distinctive? --Where did it come from and where is it ? --Which beliefs, values, and practices stand at the heart of this important, global Communion? --How can its rich heritage help it move into the future? This book is an essential guide to the Anglican tradition for anyone who has ever wondered what Anglicanism-the largest Protestant denomination in the world-is all about. Now fully updated and significantly revised, this second edition of Our Anglic...

For Marc Aug�, best-selling author of Non-Places, the prevailing idea of "the Future" rests on our present fears of the contemporary world. It is to the future that we look for redemption and progress; but it is also where we project our personal and apocalyptic anxieties. By questioning notions of certainty, truth, and totality, Aug� finds ways to separate the future from our eternal, terrified present and liberates the mind to allow it to conceptualize our possible futures afres...

R�gis Debray is one of France's leading intellectuals, whose life has intersected with key moments of the twentieth century.In this explosive memoir, Debray recounts his journey from Louis Althusser and the Parisian lecture theatres, to Cuba and the revolution of the 1960s. From Debray's torture and imprisonment in Bolivia while in search of Che Guevara, to the corridors of power in the Elys�e Palace-where he served as advisor to President Mitterrand-Praised Be Our Lords is...

The timeless Carceri etchings of Piranesi (1720–1778) represent not only spectacular artistic accomplishments but also unforgettable expressions of psychological truths. Combining the influences of Tiepolo, Bibiena, and Rembrandt, these works of architectural fantasy challenge the boundaries of perception, creating a vast system of visual provocation. Innumerable staircases, immense vaults, and other ambiguous structures are compounded with projecting beams, pulleys, rickety catwa...

Though not without its rivals, Latin stood at the apex of Western culture from the Renaissance until relatively recently. Fran�oise Waquet offers an enthralling, original history of the language's uses, its detractors and defenders, and the social hierarchies its practitioners inscribed.Granted a new lease of life by the Humanists and the Catholic Church, Latin was the form in which generations of schoolchildren were taught to read, millions of people worshipped, and an internation...

Robespierre's defense of the French Revolution remains one of the most powerful and unnerving justifications for political violence ever written, and has extraordinary resonance in a world obsessed with terrorism and appalled by the language of its proponents. Yet today, the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of Enlightenment. So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror? Zize...

How do we explain what Perry Anderson calls "the bizarre prominence of Bernard-Henri L�vy," easily the best-known "thinker" under sixty in France? "It would," he continues, "be difficult to imagine a more extraordinary reversal of national standards of taste and intelligence than the attention accorded this crass booby in France's public sphere, despite innumerable demonstrations of his inability to get a fact or an idea straight. Could such a grotesque flourish in any other major Western ...

Fully illustrated collection of rare and previously unpublished tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, retold for a new generation by leading Arthurian expert, John Matthews, introduced by Sir John Boorman, director of the classic film, Excalibur, and illustrated with paintings and drawings by Tolkien artist, John Howe.It is a time of magic and adventure, of chivalry and courtly love, when great evil must be met with heroic deeds. It is a time of King Arthur and h...

This "passionate affirmation of the simple life, and joy in simple things" explores how walking influenced history's greatest thinkers—from Henry David Thoreau and Jack Kerouac to Gandhi and Nietzsche (Observer).In this French bestseller, leading thinker and philosopher Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B—the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble—and reveals what they s...