History

The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings—the dazzling handiwork of the city’s skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence’s...

The Little Book of Gucci tells the story of this historic yet flourishing house, and the visionary looks that have cemented its place in fashion history.   One of the oldest Italian fashion brands in existence today, Gucci was founded in Florence in 1921...

Little Book of Prada is the pocket-sized and beautifully illustrated story of the legendary fashion house. Understated elegance and luxury, technologically advanced fabrics and sublime originality of design are all hallmarks of the House of Prada. In...

"A woman can carry a bag, but it is the shoe that carries the woman" - Christian Louboutin   Among designers of luxury shoes, there is one whose designs are instantly recognizable: Christian Louboutin. His iconic red soles can be seen everywhere from the...

Little Book of Yves Saint Laurent is the pocket-sized and exquisitely illustrated story of 60 years of innovative fashion design.   An enigmatic, daring and astonishingly creative designer, Yves Saint Laurent is credited with the elevation of haute...

Audrey Hepburn’s star quality, fashion sense, and elegance made her an icon for women of all ages. Filled with stunning photographs, this fascinating tribute illustrates and illuminates Hepburn's life. From her early years as an ingénue to her status as...

'A veritable tome of sneaker history...backed by nearly a decade of research and discovery.' - Hypebeast A riotous, 720-page celebration of sneaker culture and sporting legends, as told through the medium of vintage print advertising More than a decade...

From a distinguished art historian, a dramatic reappraisal of Renaissance master Hans Holbein, whose art shaped politics and immortalized the TudorsHans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realized portraiture, which...

A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR AN OBSERVER BEST ART BOOK OF 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022In 1520, Albrecht Dürer, the most celebrated artist in Northern Europe, sailed to Zeeland to see a whale. A central figure of the...

As suspenseful as a thriller and incredibly moving, Pauline Baer de Perignon’s stunningly crafted memoir traces what happened to her great-grandfather’s precious art collection after it was stolen from his Paris apartment during by the Gestapo in 1942...

The acclaimed artist and illustrator of Children's Gift of the Year Julia and the Shark recounts his fascination with Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa, translating the painting's themes of suffering and trauma to both his own troubled family history...

During the course of a day we meet 24 Athenians from all strata of society—from the slave to the politician, the fishmonger to the philosopher, the soldier to the vase painter—and get to know what the real Athens was like by spending an hour in their...

Spend 24 hours with the ancient Egyptians. Ancient Egypt wasn’t all pyramids, sphinxes and gold sarcophagi. For your average Egyptian, life was tough, and work was hard, conducted under the burning gaze of the sun god Ra. During the course of a day in...

(Available after October 30th, 2022)World-renowned folklorist Maria Tatar reveals an astonishing but long-buried history of heroines, taking us from Cassandra and Scheherazade to Nancy Drew and Wonder Woman.   The Heroine with 1,001 Faces dismantles the...

Mermaids are blessed with one tail or two, are as happy in freshwater as salt, and boast an ancestry that stretches from the classical world to the present, pre-dating Homer's sirens and which will outlive the blood-thirsty nymphs of Pirates of the...

(Available after 3-20 days)Now a documentary on CBS All Access.    Following the success of The Accidental Billionaires and Moneyball comes Console Wars—a mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming...

In the second and more controversial, albeit optimistic, volume of The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler deals with the world historical perspectives of his comparative cultural morphology. The periodical calm surrounding the constant and eternally...

The Origins and History of Consciousness draws on a full range of world mythology to show how individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as human consciousness as a whole. Erich Neumann was one of C. G. Jung's most...

'It is I think the most radical Book that has been written in these late centuries . . . and will give pleasure and displeasure, one may expect, to almost all classes of persons.' -- CarlyleThomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution opens with the...

Reflections on the Revolution in France offers provocative political commentary from the British statesman Edmund Burke, that examines the early stages of the French Revolution. It’s a searing criticism of those in and outside formal government who...