Art history encompasses the study of the history and development of painting, sculpture, and the other visual arts. In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Dana Arnold presents an introduction to the issues, debates, and artifacts that make up art history. Beginning with a consideration of what art history is, she explains what makes the subject distinctive from other fields of study and also explores the emergence of social histories of art (such as feminist art history and queer art history).

What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities from eras of history utterly remote from ourselves? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age: religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, to the revolutionary years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the artist has acted as a mirror to the ideals and conflicts of the human mind.

An idiom is a group of words with a special meaning of its own that is not clear from the meanings of the individual words. Idioms such as "think out of the box" and "a long shot" are used extensively in English in e-mail, newspapers, and conversations. When you don't understand idioms, you can feel left out of a conversation or miss the point of a story. This audiobook focuses on 100 frequently used idioms.

Linguistics falls in the gap between arts and science, on the edges of which the most fascinating discoveries and the most important problems are found. Rather than following the conventional organization of many contemporary introductions to the subject, the author of this stimulating guide begins his discussion with the oldest, "arts" end of the subject and moves chronologically through to the newest research - the "science" aspects.

名作はどのように生まれたのだろうか？　本書は，西洋絵画の本質について一歩進んで理解したいとする人びとの願いに応えて執筆された，西洋美術鑑賞の手引きである．一枚の絵に隠された芸術家の意図，精神性を探りながら歴史を一望する．