While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris: The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amidst scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas, would at times resemble a battlefield...

From New York Times–bestselling author Ross King, the storied rise and reign of the greatest empire and most influential civilization of the ancient Western world“For who is so indifferent or indolent as not to wish to know by what means the Romans succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history?”—Polybius, second century BCEAncient Rome gave rise to the Roman Empire, one ...

This is a complete and effective intermediate-level Korean textbook and Korean language learning packageIt is the next book in the Elementary Korean series and takes student's abilities to read comprehend Korean, speak Korean, read Korean, and write Korean to the next level. Continuing Korean is designed for learners who have achieved basic proficiency and wish to progress to the more complex structures of the Korean language. It offers a full ran...

In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The thirty-three-year-old Michelangelo had very little experience of the physically and technically taxing art of fresco; and, at twelve thousand square feet, the ceiling represented one of the largest such projects ever attempted.Nevertheless, for the next four years he and a hand-picked team of assistants laboured over the vast ceiling, making thousands of drawings and spending back-brea...

'King's supreme ability is to imagine himself into the past. The scope of his knowledge is staggering' JOHN CAREY, SUNDAY TIMES At its largest extent, the Roman Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Irish Sea, from North Africa to central Europe. A fifth of the world's population were Roman citizens. Even after the empire's dramatic decline and fall, its legacy continued to shape politics and laws, language and numerals, calendars and architecture. But what was Rome, who were the R...

Even in an age of soaring skyscrapers and cavernous sports stadiums, the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence still retains a rare power to astonish. Yet the elegance of the building belies the tremendous labour, technical ingenuity and bitter personal strife involved in its creation. For over a century after work on the cathedral began in 1296, the proposed dome was regarded as all but impossible to build because of its enormous size. The greatest architectural puzzle of its age...

New York Times bestselling author Ross King's biography Machiavelli is "a convincing portrait of one of the most misunderstood thinkers of all time."*The author of The Prince—his controversial handbook on power, which is one of the most influential books ever written—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was no prince himself. Born to an established middle-class family, Machiavelli worked as a courtier and diplomat for the Republic of Florence a...

The thrilling second instalment in the gripping Hollywood series from multi-million copy bestselling author Shari Low and TV's Ross King.They’ve made it to the top but someone is determined to make them pay...At a glittering after-party on the night of the Academy Awards, author Mirren McLean celebrates her win with her childhood friends Davie Johnston and Zander Leith by her side.Three kids from a tough street in Glasgow, the dazzling trio rose f...

A concise, star-studded retelling of Italy's past, from Caesar and Augustus to da Vinci and Michelangelo, tracing the story of a country with prodigious global influence—from a foremost author of historic Italy.The calendar. The Senate. The university. The piano, the heliocentric model, and the pizzeria. It's hard to imagine a world without Italian influence—and easy to assume that inventions like these could only come from a strong, stable peninsula, sure of its p...

Seoul is a colossus both in its physical presence and the demand it places on any intellectual effort to understand it. How did it come to be? How can a city this immense work? Underlying its spectacle and incongruities is a city that might be described as ill at ease with its own past. The bitter rifts of Japanese colonization persist, as does the troubled aftermath of the Korean War and its divisions; the economic “Miracle on the Han” that followed is crosscut by memories of the violent ...

By the author of the acclaimed Brunelleschi's Dome.After meeting the mysterious and beautiful Lady Beauclair at a society ball, George Cautley, a hapless young artist adrift in the gilded world of 1770s London, paints her portrait. She, in turn, tells him the scandalous story of Tristano, a castrato singer in Handel's opera company fifty years before. But Cautley also meets the eminent painter Sir Endymion Starker that same evening and his mistress, Eleanora, who has anoth...

Advanced Korean offers a complete, systematic, and streamlined third-year course in Korean.It is ideal for university students and adult learners with plentiful reading texts and written exercises, all in Korean Hangul. Concise Korean grammar notes in English, extensive glossaries, and an answer key make this book suitable for those studying alone, as well as for classroom use.There are 20 comprehensive lessons, each with a reading text in which new languag...