検索キーワード： 歴史・批評

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Face of Britain by Simon Schama, read by Simon Schama and Roy McMillian. Churchill and his painter locked in a struggle of stares and glares; Gainsborough watching his daughters run after a butterfly; a naked John Lennon five hours before his death. Simon Schama has written a tour de force about British portraits over the centuries.

The Tazza Farnese is one of the most admired objects from classical antiquity. A libation bowl carved from banded agate, it features Medusa's head on its outside and, inside, an assembly of Egyptian gods. For more than two millennia, these radiant figures have mesmerized emperors and artists, popes and thieves, merchants and museum goers. In this, the first book-length account of this renowned masterpiece, Marina Belozerskaya traces its fascinating journey through history. That it has survived at all is a miracle.

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom was the runaway most-discussed novel of 2010, an ambitious and searching engagement with life in America in the 21st century. Now, a new collection of Franzen’s non-fiction brings fresh demonstrations of his vivid, moral intelligence, confirming his status not only as a great American novelist but also as a master noticer, social critic, and self-investigator. In Farther Away, which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, the writer returns with renewed vigour....

From young artists trying to elbow their way in to those working hard at dropping out, White's essential audiobook offers a once-in-a-generation glimpse of the inner workings of the American art world at a moment of unparalleled ambition, uncertainty, and creative exuberance.

Two modern adventurers sought a treasure possessed by the legendary "Wild Men of Borneo". One found riches. The other vanished forever into an endless jungle. Had he shed civilization - or lost his mind? Global headlines suspected murder. Lured by these mysteries, New York Times best-selling author Carl Hoffman journeyed to find the truth, discovering that nothing is as it seems in the world's last Eden, where the lines between sinner, saint, and myth converge.

Ascolta e scopri il capolavoro del Rinascimento italiano. Tra la fine del Quattrocento e i primi anni del Cinquecento in Italia, a Milano e a Firenze, si aprì la stagione del Rinascimento maturo con l'emergere di figure straordinarie: Leonardo, Bramante, Raffaello e, naturalmente, Michelangelo Buonarroti. Michelangelo fu un artista assolutamente geniale, la cui attività spaziò dalla scultura, alla pittura, all'architettura, alla scrittura di poesie e nei primi tre campi vi lasciò un segno indelebile.

Un viaje fantástico al esplendor del Reino de los Faraones: Alejandría, Guiza, Sakkara, Dendera, Karnak, Luxor, Deir el-Bahari, Deir el-Medina, Medinet-Habu, File, Abu Simbel, Elefantina, Asuán y La tumba de Nefertari.

Ascolta e scopri il capolavoro del pittore spagnolo. Francisco Goya è una delle figure di spicco dell'arte spagnola a cavallo tra XVIII e XIX secolo. Oltre al suo dipinto più famoso, "Maja desnuda", fu autore di diversi ritratti per regnanti, duchi e nobili, ma anche di incisioni e paesaggi. Visse in un periodo di grandi cambiamenti politici e sociali e fu uno dei principali "fotografi" degli eventi dell'epoca, tra cui le rappresaglie dell'esercito francese di Napoleone sulla gente comune in Spagna.

Un voyage fantastique vers la splendeur du Royaume des Pharaons : Alexandrie, Gizeh, Saqqara, Dendéra, Karnak, Louqsor, Deir el-Bahari, Deir el-Médineh, Médinet Habou, Philae, Abou Simbel, Eléphantine, Assouan et La tombe de Néfertari.

It is one of the enduring enigmas of the human experience: many of our most iconic, creative endeavors - from Nobel Prize-winning discoveries to entrepreneurial inventions and works in the arts - are not achievements but conversions, corrections after failed attempts. The gift of failure is a riddle. Like the number zero, it will always be both a void and the start of infinite possibility. The Rise - a soulful celebration of the determination and courage of the human spirit - makes the case that many of our greatest triumphs come from understanding the importance of this mystery.

Had Hitler succeeded in conquering Europe, he would have crowned himself Holy Roman Emperor. The Nazis had in their possession priceless artifacts that would give Hitler legitimacy in his subjects' eyes: the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire including the Spear of Destiny, alleged to have pierced Christ's side at the Crucifixion. Looted from the royal treasury in Vienna, Austria, the Crown Jewels were hidden in a secret bunker deep beneath Nrnberg castle, known to few.

In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile. Inspired by Albert Camus and adapted from her own lectures for Princeton University’s Toni Morrison Lecture Series, here Danticat tells stories of artists who create despite (or because of) the horrors that drove them from their homelands. Combining memoir and essay, these moving and eloquent pieces examine what it means to be an artist from a country in crisis.

Since the publication of her prize-winning memoir, Craft for a Dry Lake, writer and artist Kim Mahood has been returning to the Tanami desert country in far north-western Australia where, as a child, she lived with her family on a remote cattle station. The land is timeless, but much has changed: the station has been handed back to its traditional owners, the mining companies have arrived and Aboriginal art has flourished.

From prehistoric Mexico to modern Istanbul, Mary Beard looks beyond the familiar canon of Western imagery to explore the history of art, religion, and humanity. Conceived as an accompaniment to How Do We Look and The Eye of Faith, the famed Civilizations shows on PBS, renowned classicist Mary Beard has created this elegant volume on how we have looked at art.

A Perfect Red recounts the colorful history of cochineal, a legendary red dye that was once one of the world's most precious commodities. Treasured by the ancient Mexicans, cochineal was sold in the great Aztec marketplaces, where it attracted the attention of the Spanish conquistadors in 1519. Shipped to Europe, the dye created a sensation, producing the brightest, strongest red the world had ever seen. Soon Spain's cochineal monopoly was worth a fortune. Desperate to find their own sources of the elusive dye, the English, French, Dutch, and other Europeans tried to crack the enigma of cochineal.

In a secret meeting in 1981, a master thief named Louis Royce gave career gangster Ralph Rossetti the tip of a lifetime. As a kid, Royce had visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made a habit of sneaking in at night to find a good place to sleep. He knew the Museum's security was lax, and he gave this information to a boss of the Boston criminal underworld. It took years before the Museum was hit. But when it finally happened, it quickly became one of the most infamous art heists in history.

The term avant-garde continues to be used, in my opinion with far too much frequency, in discussions of contemporary art. It derives, of course, from military terminology, and implies that the art to which it is applied is somehow ahead of the game. It’s worth taking a look at how this assumption works in practice. Essentially, Western and now world art has witnessed the emergence of a series of avant-gardes since just before the third quarter of the 19th century.

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 amid scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial.

Here are the two most treasured documents of American freedom together on one audiobook. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 as an act of rebellion, the Declaration of Independence powerfully expresses the political principles of an emerging nation. Ratified in 1788, the Constitution for the United States remains a shining example of patriotism and compromise.

Across time and across the world, an ancient serpent cult once dominated mankind. Then a great battle ensued and Christianity stamped its authority on the face of the planet. Now, after years of research, the real religious history of the world can be told. In Secrets of the Serpent, Philip Gardiner for the first time reveals the secret of the Holy Grail and Elixir of Life, and how the world's most mysterious places were once sacred to the serpent cult.