Download or read book Rarities of These Lands written by Claudia Swan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid account of Dutch seventeenth-century art and material culture against the backdrop of the geopolitics of the early modern world The seventeenth century witnessed a great flourishing of Dutch trade and culture. Over the course of the first half of the century, the northern Netherlands secured independence from the Spanish crown, and the nascent republic sought to establish its might in global trade, often by way of diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim powers. Central to the political and cultural identity of the Dutch Republic were curious foreign goods the Dutch called "rarities." Rarities of These Lands explores how these rarities were obtained, exchanged, stolen, valued, and collected, tracing their global trajectories and considering their role within the politics of the new state. Claudia Swan’s insightful, engaging analysis offers a novel and compelling account of how the Dutch Republic turned foreign objects into expressions of its national self-conception. Rarities of These Lands traces key elements of the formation of the Dutch Republic—artistic and colonialist ventures alike—offering new perspectives on this momentous period in the history of the Netherlands and its material culture.
Download or read book Rarities of These Lands written by Claudia Swan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The early years of the seventeenth century saw a great flourishing of Dutch culture. In the arts, this was the era of Vermeer and Rembrandt, as well as the development of a local art market. Commerce extended around the world, with state-sponsored trading companies importing foreign goods. Politically, the Netherlands became the first nation-state in Europe, in 1648. In this book, Claudia Swan considers all these aspects together, examining the material culture of the period-the designed, manufactured, and hand-crafted materials and wares-to show how the Dutch encounter with so-called "exotic" goods played a fundamental role in the country's political formation"--
Download or read book Conchophilia written by Marisa Anne Bass and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A history of shells in early modern Europe, and their rich cultural and artistic significance"--
Download or read book Natural Histories written by American Museum of Natural History and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlights 40 masterworks of illustrated scientific art from the Rare Book Collection of the American Museum of Natural History.
Download or read book A Library of Misremembered Books written by Marina Luz and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you find a book when you can't recall the title...or the author? This homage to a common reader's dilemma is a gift the booklover in your life won't soon forget. Readers know all too well the comedy and tragedy of forgetting the name of a must-find book. Inspired by this torturous predicament, artist Marina Luz creates paintings of books based on the descriptions we use when we can't remember their titles—mining Internet book-search forums for the quirky, vague, and often hilarious language we come up with in these moments. This volume collects dozens of these imaginary books into a library all their own: Titles like "Cat, Possibly Named Henry," "It Was All a Dream," or "Something-Something, Beverly Hills" inspire dreaming up their contents, often as entertaining as trying to guess the real book behind them. A celebration of book love unlike any other, this petite book is a clever gift for bibliophiles that will spark knowing smiles. PERFECT GIFT FOR BOOKLOVERS: The collection will spark recognition for everyone who has encountered this phenomenon (so, virtually every reader) and especially those who have worked in a bookstore, who know intimately well how often this dilemma arises. This impulse-priced delight is an excellent way to make book-loving friends feel seen. A UNIQUE APPRECIATION OF BOOK LOVE: This is a loving tribute to the wonderful and bizarre ways that books leave impressions on our souls, if not always perfectly in our memories. It's a fun and fresh appreciation of bibliophilia that still delivers long after the first read. Perfect for: • Bibliophiles • Booksellers • People seeking gifts for the booklovers in their life
Download or read book Rare Birds of North America written by Steve N. G. Howell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-16 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive illustrated guide to North America's vagrant birds Rare Birds of North America is the first comprehensive illustrated guide to the vagrant birds that occur throughout the United States and Canada. Featuring 275 stunning color plates, this book covers 262 species originating from three very different regions—the Old World, the New World tropics, and the world's oceans. It explains the causes of avian vagrancy and breaks down patterns of occurrence by region and season, enabling readers to see where, when, and why each species occurs in North America. Detailed species accounts describe key identification features, taxonomy, age, sex, distribution, and status. Rare Birds of North America provides unparalleled insights into vagrancy and avian migration, and will enrich the birding experience of anyone interested in finding and observing rare birds. Covers 262 species of vagrant birds found in the United States and Canada Features 275 stunning color plates that depict every species Explains patterns of occurrence by region and season Provides an invaluable overview of vagrancy patterns and migration Includes detailed species accounts and cutting-edge identification tips
Download or read book A Land of Aching Hearts written by Leila Tarazi Fawaz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century after the Great War, the experiences of civilians and soldiers in the Middle East during those years have faded from memory. A Land of Aching Hearts traverses ethnic, class, and national borders to recover the personal stories of those who endured this cataclysmic event, and their profound sense of sacrifices made in vain.
Download or read book The World s First Spaceship Shuttle written by Robert M. Powers and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join the crew of space shuttle Enterprise as they prepare to take the first step into the twenty-first century. Step aboard the world’s first reusable space vehicle with science writer Robert M. Powers for a cockpit view of a launch, orbit, re-entry, and return to earth. Preview the scheduled NASA shuttle missions in hundreds of line drawings and photographs of the crew at work in orbit. The shuttle system is the key to unlocking the next era of technology and the forerunner of space transportation systems of tomorrow: The world’s first spaceship, the Enterprise, is here!
Download or read book Barkskins written by Annie Proulx and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-11 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Magnificent.” (Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See) From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, marvelously dramatic novel about the destruction of the world’s forests. In the late seventeenth century, two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in Canada, then known as New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a seigneur, for three years in exchange for land, they become woodcutters—barkskins. Sel suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman, and their descendants live trapped between two hostile cultures. Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years—their travels across North America, to Europe, China and New Zealand under stunningly brutal conditions—the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence and cultural annihilation. Again and again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face-to-face with possible ecological collapse. Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid—in their greed, lust, vengefulness or their compassion and hope—that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a superb marriage of history and imagination.
Download or read book Endangered Words written by Simon Hertnon and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afterwit, agathism, ambsace, anacampserote, antepenultimate, antimony, and more! “When a word perfectly captures a human truth, humans respond to it in the same way that they respond to a beautiful melody. They smile. They nod their heads. They tell others of their discovery.” So says Simon Hertnon in his introduction to Endangered Words, and after wrapping your tongue around the lexical rarities he offers up to his readers, you’ll have to agree! Hertnon provides one hundred hand-selected rarities, and, in a virtuoso display of concinnity, breathes life into them with his lucid descriptions of their meaning and engaging examples of their usage. Perhaps you are an arriviste enjoying a newfound sense of nikhedonia as you demonstrate your sprezzatura in a given subject. Or maybe you are a desipientplutomaniac destined to a life of poshlost. If this doesn’t describe you, then take your pick of the many wonderful words in this book: Omnistrain Trilemma Aporia Or maybe these are all schlimmbesserungs! Thanks to Endangered Words, you no longer have to be at a loss for words or reach for the clichéd and commonplace. The English language is brimming with ambrosial alternatives, and this compendium offers the cream of the crop. Filled with words to be treasured for their elegant precision, from apophenia to zemblanity, Endangered Words is the perfect handbook for writers, an excellent resource for communicators, and an entertaining read for anyone with an appetite for the very brightest gems of the English language.
Download or read book Foundations of Macroecology written by Felisa A. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-08-22 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Macroecology is an approach to science that emphasizes the description and explanation of patterns and processes at large spatial and temporal scales. Some scientists liken it to seeing the forest through the trees, giving the proverbial phrase an ecological twist. The term itself was first introduced to the modern literature by James H. Brown and Brian A. Maurer in a 1989 paper, and it is Brown’s classic 1995 study, Macroecology, that is credited with inspiring the broad-scale subfield of ecology. But as with all subfields, many modern-day elements of macroecology are implicit in earlier works dating back decades, even centuries. Foundations of Macroecology charts the evolutionary trajectory of these concepts—from the species-area relationship and the latitudinal gradient of species richness to the relationship between body size and metabolic rate—through forty-six landmark papers originally published between 1920 and 1998. Divided into two parts—“Macroecology before Macroecology” and “Dimensions of Macroecology”—the collection also takes the long view, with each paper accompanied by an original commentary from a contemporary expert in the field that places it in a broader context and explains its foundational role. Providing a solid, coherent assessment of the history, current state, and potential future of the field, Foundations of Macroecology will be an essential text for students and teachers of ecology alike.
Download or read book The Iron Dragon s Daughter written by Michael Swanwick and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book: “Combining cyberpunk’s grit with dystopic fantasy, this iconoclastic hybrid is a standout piece of storytelling” (Library Journal). Jane is trapped as a changeling in an industrialized Faerie ruled by aristocratic high elves and populated by ogres, dwarves, night-gaunts, and hags. She is the only human in a factory where underage forced labor builds cybernetic, magical dragons that are weaponized and sent off to war. When the damaged dragon Melanchthon tempts Jane with promises of freedom, the stage is set for a daring escape that will shake the foundations of existence. Combining alchemy and technology, a coming-of-age story like no other, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter takes place against a dystopic mindscape of dark challenges and class struggles that force Jane to make costly decisions at every turn. A finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 1994 Locus Award, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter a is one-of-a-kind melding of grimdark fantasy and cyberpunk grit from the Nebula Award–winning author of Stations of the Tide. It engages the reader in a nihilistic world in which nothing is as it seems and everything comes at a steep and often horrific price.
Download or read book The Wonderful Wizards of Art written by Caren Marsh-Doll and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-25 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A coffee table art book on the various authors and illustrators of the Wizard of Oz book, film productions with original artwork shown throughout the book. This is a limited-edition signed and numbered print run of 515 numbered and signed copies.
Download or read book Relics written by and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-10-31 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-renowned zoologist and photographer Naskrecki leads readers on a time-lapse tour that renders Earth's colossal age comprehensible, visible in creatures and habitats that have persisted, nearly untouched, for hundreds of millions of years.
Download or read book New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East written by Roger Owen and published by Harvard CMES. This book was released on 2000 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land was the major economic resource in the pre-modern Middle East. Questions of ownership, of access, of management and of control occupied a central role in administration, in law, and in rural practice over many centuries. Nevertheless, the subject of land and property relations is still not well understood.
Download or read book Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age written by Julie Hochstrasser and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original and provocative view of Golden Age still life paintings and the exotic commodities they depict
Download or read book Salvage and Demolition written by Tim Powers and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Richard Blanzac, a San Francisco-based rare book dealer, opens a box of consignment items and encounters the unexpected. There, among an assortment of literary rarities, he discovers a manuscript in verse, an Ace Double Novel, and a scattering of very old cigarette butts. These commonplace objects serve as catalysts for an extraordinary-- and unpredictable-- adventure. Without warning, Blanzac finds himself traversing a 'circle of discontinuity' that leads from the present day to the San Francisco of 1957. Caught up in that circle are an ancient Sumerian deity, a forgotten Beat-era poet named Sophie Greenwald, and an apocalyptic cult in search of the key to absolute non-existence" -- from publisher's web site.