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Author: Frances Wood
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9780520243408
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis gorgeously illustrated oversized book brings the history and cultures of the Silk Road alive -- from its beginnings to the present day -- covering more than 5000 years.
Author: Marika Mägi
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2018-05-15
Total Pages: 511
ISBN-13: 9004363815
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWinner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2018 Book Prize Marika Mägi’s book considers the cultural, mercantile and political interaction of the Viking Age (9th-11th century), focusing on the eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea. The majority of research on Viking activity in the East has so far concentrated on the modern-day lands of Russia, while the archaeology and Viking Age history of today’s small nation states along the eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea is little known to a global audience. This study looks at the area from a trans-regional perspective, combining archaeological evidence with written sources, and offering reflections on the many different factors of climate, topography, logistics, technology, politics and trade that shaped travel in this period. The work offers a nuanced vision of Eastern Viking expansion, in which the Eastern Baltic frequently acted as buffer zone between eastern and western powers. Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2018 Book Prize for most outstanding recent scholarly monograph on pre-modern Slavdom. The work was described by the prize committee in the following terms: "The scope of this book is far broader than the title might suggest. It amounts to a substantial rethinking of the history of the eastern Baltic from the tenth to the thirteenth century, based on both archaelogical and written evidence. The author is by training an archaeologist, and she mounts a powerful criticism of historians who prioritise the written sources and then pick and choose from the archaeological evidence to suit their theories. This book foregrounds the archaeology, which is used to question and consider the written evidence. The author is also highly and rightly critical of the archaeological scholarship, for projecting back into the past the narrow concerns of the numerous nation states that now exist across the eastern and northern Baltic, or the Great Russian nationalist-materialist-imperialist interpretations of the Soviet period. The result is a detailed and fascinating account of the interactions of the worlds of Scandinavia and Rusʹ with the various peoples of the Baltic region, both Finno-Ugric and Baltic. The resulting picture of commercial, political, and cultural interaction across several cultures, and based on reading in a wide range of languages, is a tour-de-force."
Author: Michael Pye
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2021-09-07
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 1643137786
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA revelatory history of Antwerp—from its rise to a world city to its fall in the Spanish Fury—by the New York Times Notable author of The Edge of the World. Before Amsterdam, there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp. In the Age of Exploration, Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York. It was somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules—religious, sexual, intellectual. And it was a place of change—a single man cornered all the money in the city and reinvented ideas of what money meant. Another gave the city a new shape purely out of his own ambition. Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition needed Antwerp for their escape, thanks to the remarkable woman at the head of the grandest banking family in Europe. Thomas More opened Utopia there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale sheltered there and smuggled out his Bible in English until he was killed. Pieter Bruegel painted the town as The Tower of Babel. But when Antwerp rebelled with the Dutch against the Spanish and lost, all that glory was buried and its true history rewritten. The city that unsettled so many now became conformist. Mutinous troops burned the city records, trying to erase its true history. In Europe’s Babylon, Michael Pye sets out to rediscover the city that was lost and bring its wilder days to life using every kind of clue: novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters and the archives of Venice, London and the Medici. He builds a picture of a city haunted by fire, plague, and violence, but one that was learning how to be a power in its own right as it emerged from feudalism. An astounding and original narrative that illuminates this glamorous and bloody era of history and reveals how this fascinating city played its role in making the world modern.
Author: Amber Kizer
Publisher: Ember
Published: 2016-05-10
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 0385739745
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“Gripping and poignant, A Matter of Days takes readers on a heart-stopping journey of love and survival.“ — New York Times bestselling author Carrie Jones Their new reality begins in just a matter of days. On Day 56 of the Blustar Pandemic, sixteen-year-old Nadia’s mother dies, leaving Nadia to fend for herself and her younger brother, Rabbit. Both have been immunized against the virus, but they can’t be protected from what comes next. Their father taught them to “be the cockroach”—to adapt to and survive whatever comes their way. And that’s their mission. Facing a lawless world of destruction and deprivation, Nadia and Rabbit drive from Seattle to their grandfather’s compound in West Virginia. The illness, fatigue, and hunger they endure along the way will all be worth it once they reach the compound. Unless no one is waiting for them . . . “Fans of Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave, S. D. Crockett’s After the Snow, or Cormac McCarthy’s adult novel The Road will find this a satisfying read.” —SLJ “An exciting apocalyptic road trip.” —Publishers Weekly
Author: Faya Causey
Publisher: Getty Publications
Published: 2020-01-07
Total Pages: 307
ISBN-13: 1606066358
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst published in 2012, this catalogue presents fifty-six Etruscan, Greek, and Italic carved ambers from the Getty Museum's collection—the second largest body of this material in the United States and one of the most important in the world. The ambers date from about 650 to 300 BC. The catalogue offers full description of the pieces, including typology, style, chronology, condition, and iconography. Each piece is illustrated. The catalogue is preceded by a general introduction to ancient amber (which was also published in 2012 as a stand-alone print volume titled Amber and the Ancient World). Through exquisite visual examples and vivid classical texts, this book examines the myths and legends woven around amber—its employment in magic and medicine, its transport and carving, and its incorporation into jewelry, amulets, and other objects of prestige. This publication highlights a group of remarkable amber carvings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. This catalogue was first published in 2012 at museumcatalogues.getty.edu/amber/. The present online edition of this open-access publication was migrated in 2019 to www.getty.edu/publications/ambers/; it features zoomable, high-resolution photography; free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book; and JPG downloads of the catalogue images.
Author: Edmund de Waal
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015-11-10
Total Pages: 417
ISBN-13: 0374709092
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted. Extraordinary new nonfiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, The Hare with the Amber Eyes. In The White Road, bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted-and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills"-sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history. Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft, and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with the Amber Eyes, de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.
Author: Seth Kugel
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Published: 2018-11-13
Total Pages: 251
ISBN-13: 0871408511
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA revolutionary philosophy for rookie and veteran travelers alike, Rediscovering Travel “gets to the heart of why we travel” (Matt Kepnes, “Nomadic Matt”). Having captivated millions during his tenure as the New York Times’s “Frugal Traveler,” Seth Kugel is one of our most internationally beloved travel writers. With the initial publication of Rediscovering Travel, he took the corporate modern travel industry to task, determined to reignite an age- old sense of adventure that has virtually been vanquished by the spontaneity- obliterating likes of Google Maps, TripAdvisor, and Starwood points. Now in travel- friendly paperback, this “funny, inspiring and well- crafted” companion (Associated Press) reveals how to make the most of new apps and other digital technologies without being shackled to them. Writing for the tight- belted tourists and the fi rst- class fl yer, the eager student and the comfort- seeking retiree, Kugel shows all readers “not only where to look, but how” (Samantha Brown), and promises that we too can rediscover the joy of discovery. “Travel is not about the destination but the experience. . . . That’s what makes [it] so appealing, so addictive, and that’s what makes Rediscovering Travel so necessary.” — Peter Greenberg
Author: Tom Vanderbilt
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Published: 2009-08-11
Total Pages: 418
ISBN-13: 0307373177
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDriving is a fact of life. We are all spending more and more time on the road, and traffic is an issue we face everyday. This book will make you think about it in a whole new light. We have always had a passion for cars and driving. Now Traffic offers us an exceptionally rich understanding of that passion. Vanderbilt explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our attempts to engineer safety and even identifies the most common mistakes drivers make in parking lots. Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the quotidian activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological and technical factors that explain how traffic works.
Author: Michael A. Ermann
Publisher:
Published: 2011-08-24
Total Pages: 134
ISBN-13: 9781466266322
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis exam and study guide tests-and fosters-ownership of concepts in building systems, with an emphasis on the content stressed in the Architect Registration Examination (A.R.E.) Building Systems component. It is designed as a study tool, learning exercise, and confidence-builder. Questions are not reading comprehension devices that follow lessons, but rather opportunities to introduce a topic.Your time is valuable so this study guide does not treat all content that might appear on the exam equally. Rather it weights content by (1) its importance in the A.R.E. exam, and (2) its usefulness to the career of an architect. It further weights the content based on its "yield." In other words, memorizing the entire plumbing code will certainly help you on the A.R.E. exam, but it is certainly not the most efficient means of studying for it.
Author: Steven E. Sidebotham
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2019-05-07
Total Pages: 456
ISBN-13: 0520303385
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe legendary overland silk road was not the only way to reach Asia for ancient travelers from the Mediterranean. During the Roman Empire’s heyday, equally important maritime routes reached from the Egyptian Red Sea across the Indian Ocean. The ancient city of Berenike, located approximately 500 miles south of today’s Suez Canal, was a significant port among these conduits. In this book, Steven E. Sidebotham, the archaeologist who excavated Berenike, uncovers the role the city played in the regional, local, and “global” economies during the eight centuries of its existence. Sidebotham analyzes many of the artifacts, botanical and faunal remains, and hundreds of the texts he and his team found in excavations, providing a profoundly intimate glimpse of the people who lived, worked, and died in this emporium between the classical Mediterranean world and Asia.
