'A marvel of storytelling and a masterclass in the history of the book' WALL STREET JOURNALThe Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's artists and architects. But equally important were geniuses of another kind: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars and booksellers. At a time where all books were made by hand, these people helped imagine a new and enlightened worl...

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...

From the acclaimed author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Leonardo and the Last Supper, the riveting story of how Michelangelo, against all odds, created the masterpiece that has ever since adorned the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Despite having completed his masterful statu...

The start of a thrilling and glamourous Hollywood series from million-copy bestselling author Shari Low and Strictly Come Dancing's Ross King ✨When we bury our secrets, they always come back to haunt us...Their rise was meteoric.Only a few years before, they had been three friends from Glasgow, just trying to survive tough lives of danger and dysfunction.But on one Hollywood evening in 1993, they were on the world’s biggest...

Discover the prodigious global influence of il bel paese in this star-studded retelling of Italy’s past—from a foremost author of historic Italy. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.“Each page brims with Bill Bryson-like trivia that is sure to delight.”—Booklist, starred reviewThe calendar. The Senate. The university. The piano, the heliocentric model, and the p...

The start of a thrilling and glamourous Hollywood series from multi-million copy bestselling author Shari Low and Strictly Come Dancing's Ross King ✨When we bury our secrets, they always come back to haunt us...Their rise was meteoric.Only a few years before, they had been three friends from Glasgow, just trying to survive tough lives of danger and dysfunction.But on one Hollywood evening in 1993, they were on the world’s b...

The New York Times–bestselling author of Brunelleschi's Dome captures the Renaissance spirit in this biography of "the king of the world's booksellers."During the Renaissance, Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.At the heart of this activity, which bestselling author R...

This is a comprehensive and detailed introductory Korean textbook and language learning package.Korean is now the 15th most popular language taught at American universities. This new edition of Elementary Korean, the most comprehensive and detailed introductory Korean textbook available, offers beginning learners of Korean everything they need to learn the language effectively. Perfect for a first-year university-level course use or for the independent language lea...

For more than five centuries The Last Supper has been an artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark called it 'the keystone of European art', and for a century after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. And yet there is a very human story behind this artistic 'miracle'. Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper is both a 'biography' of one of the most famous works of art ever painted and a record of Leonardo da V...

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...

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...

With a novelist's skill and the insight of an historian, bestselling author Ross King recalls a seminal period when Paris was the artistic center of the world, and the rivalry between Meissonier and Manet.The Judgment of Paris chronicles the dramatic decade between two famous exhibitions-the scandalous Salon des Refuses in 1863 and the first Impressionist showing in 1874-set against the rise and dramatic fall of Napoleon III and the Second Empire after the...