The idea of mixing tropical plants with perennials and hardy annuals has been around since Victorian times. It is now enjoying a newfound popularity because tropical plants are more widely available. Gardeners who want to bring the lush beauty of tropicals to an existing garden, or who want to create an authentic vintage garden, will delight in The Exotic Garden. Although tropicals are novelties in temperate climates, they can successfully be grown anywhere. Iversen shows how tropicals can easily be used as annuals to perk up a garden with color during non-blooming seasons. The author's expert advice shows how to grow tropicals in beds, borders, and containers, select and combine plants, and use the tools of color, texture, and form. Plus, there are special overwintering tips and a full color glossary of more than 100 plants.
An Instant National Bestseller! An Indie Next Pick! A Most Anticipated in 2021 Pick for Oprah Magazine | USA Today | Buzzfeed | Greatist | BookPage | PopSugar | Bustle | The Nerd Daily | Goodreads | Literary Hub | Ms. Magazine | Library Journal | Culturess | Book Riot | Parade Magazine | Kirkus | The Week | Book Bub | OverDrive | The Portalist | Publishers Weekly A Best of Summer Pick for TIME Magazine | CNN | Book Riot | The Daily Beast | Lambda Literary | The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Goodreads | Bustle | Veranda Magazine | The Week | Bookish | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Den of Geek | LGBTQ Reads | Pittsburgh City Paper | Bookstr | Tatler HK A Best of 2021 Pick for NPR “A vibrant and queer reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age classic. . . . I was captivated from the first sentence.”—NPR “A sumptuous, decadent read.”—The New York Times “Vo has crafted a retelling that, in many ways, surpasses the original.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review Immigrant. Socialite. Magician. Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how. Nghi Vo’s debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful, reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A fascinating survey of the enduring human love affair with the exotic and the strange, and its impact on Western culture Exotic explores our obsession with the lure of distant lands and their promise of the weird and wonderful, the beautiful and grotesque. Through a host of evocative images, this book shows how the absorption of 'the foreign,' through arts, design, architecture, and other cultural elements, has consistently enriched Western society, contributing to it cultural dynamism and artistic energy. Exotic's focus is especially relevant to the modern globalized world in which our engagement with cultures and traditions from around the globe is easier – and potentially more fraught – than ever before.
Exuberant Chinese-inspired drawing rooms, Persian-style boudoirs, bulbous Mogul domes, and Turkish smoking rooms were once the rage in avant-garde circles and are undergoing a resurgence in popularity today as the global economy brings attention to the styles of the Far East, India, and the Islamic world. Emmanuelle Gaillard and Marc Walter’s lavish new book traces the Asian sources of this fashion, and its transformation in late 19th- and early 20th-century Western settings. Illustrated with extraordinary vintage and contemporary interior photography, fabrics, wallpapers, patterns, decorative objects, and costumes, this volume tours the houses of writers, thinkers, business tycoons, princesses, and even the Russian empress Catherine the Great.Exotic Tasteis a rich treat for anyone drawn to the fantastic, elaborate style of Orientalism. Praise forExotic Taste: "Beginning in the 18th century, European tastemakers, chafing under the constraints of classicism, turned to the exotic East, swooning over the intricate patterns and scenes and lush, sensual colors found in the arts of China, Japan, India, and the Arabic world.Exotic Taste: Orientalist Interiors examines the craze for all things Eastern that resulted in such anomalies as English country houses with onion domes and the tiled fantasia, complete with trickling fountain and pool, that the Victorian painter Lord Leighton build in his London home." –Elle Décor "The lengths that collectors will go to, the money and legwork they will sink into exotic antiques completely unrelated to their daily lives, can make for transporting reading. [One of] the year’s five best books in the genre, Exotic Taste makes particularly good holiday reading because of Ms. Gaillard’s descriptions of jolly multicultural parties and intense shopping sprees." --The New York Times From Chinese-inspired drawing rooms and Persian-style boudoirs to graceful Mogul domes and Turkish smoking rooms, stylistic influences from the Far East, India and the Islamic world have inspired Western architects, artists and designers for nearly 400 years. Dripping with exotic colors and tiles, this sumptuous tome is a history lesson and design book packed into one." --Detroit News "In 'Exotic Taste,' Emmanuelle Gaillard and Marc Walter appeal to those interested in collecting, design, architecture and art history and take readers on an artistically historical journey by illustrating, through more than 200 images, the development of Orientalism through the 19th and 20th centuries." --Newsday "Exotic Taste: Orientalist Interiors[is] a sumptuous look at how decorative styles from the Far East, India and the Islamic world found their way to the west." -Houston Chronicle
What is it like to visit the islands of Fiji, the cliffs of Ireland, or the icy desert of Antarctica? EXOTIC! Places explores some of the most remote, beautiful, and unusual places on our planet. The Spectrum(R) Readers are the perfect Common Core aligned tool to support the development of nonfiction reading skills. Each leveled reader features high-interest informational content, exciting full-color photo images, and Common Core aligned comprehension practice focused on the development of critical thinking skills. Leveled to the respected Fountas and Pinnell and Lexile systems, these 32-page books are perfect for young readers who are ready to explore leisure reading on their own. This multilevel series is the perfect addition to any school or home library.
An exploration of acquiring real estate outside the continental U.S. Given the costly uncertainties of the domestic real estate market, buying a second home in desirable vacation areas within the United States has become nearly impossible for many. Increasingly, Americans are turning to more affordable regions overseas, some stay close-by in Mexico or Canada, while others are more adventurous, looking to parts of Central America, the Caribbean, and Pacific Islands. In Passport to Exotic Real Estate, real estate expert and travel writer Steve Bergsman offers detailed advice on the benefits and challenges of buying overseas property, including whether or not foreigners can legally own property, tax implications, availability of beachfront land, market trends, investment security, local regulations, and much more. With this book as their guide, readers will be fully prepared to overcome the obstacles of overseas property ownership and discover the benefits of living/vacationing abroad. Steve Bergsman (Mesa, Arizona) is a real estate, financial, and travel writer with more than 20 years' experience. His news stories and travel articles have been published in more than 100 publications around the world and he has appeared on local and national radio and television. Bergsman is also the author of two previous real estate books, Maverick Real Estate Financing (978-0-471-74587-7) and Maverick Real Estate Investing (978-0-471-46879-0).
Showing a wide spectrum of West Indies gardens, from a tiny garden in an urban backyard to spectacular places designed by renowned landscapers, this book provides a fascination and passion for tropical gardening with a lively touch and detailed research. The texts are lightly translated to French, making it a bilingual book for a wider audience. The gardens on display here includes the Montreal Gardens on St. Vincent, Diamond Gardens on St. Lucia, and Hunte's Gardens on Barbados. The final chapter demonstrates ideas for flower arrangements using tropical flowers and step-by-step instructions of three flower arrangements done by fine flower designers from Grenada, with their original comments.
This exquisite volume presents the best vintage exotic skin handbags by the most renowned designers of the past century and a half. Intended particularly for fashionable women, design students, collectors, dealers, and clothing historians, it outlines the fascinating history of alligator and crocodile handbags, the ultimate status symbol since the 19th century. Many prestigious designers are featured, like Coblentz, Evans, Gucci, Hermes, Judith Leiber, Lucille de Paris, Koret, Martin Van Schaak, Rosenfeld, Nettie Rosenstein, and Vassar. Illustrated with 522 colour photographs show beautiful examples of the handbags as well as international fashion ads and journals. Learn how to distinguish alligator and crocodile from turtle, ostrich, lizard, and snake. Includes tips on finding, evaluating condition, proper care, and the wearability of these special fashion accessories. Especially useful is the chapter on how to wear vintage with a modern wardrobe. Over ten years in the making, this rare study is destined to become an important guide to the luxuries market and a useful reference for smart-dressing shoppers everywhere.
The “Other”—source of fear and fascination; emblem of difference demonized and romanticized. Theories of alterity and cultural diversity abound in the contemporary academic landscape. Victor Segalen’s early attempt to theorize the exotic is a crucial reference point for all discussions of alterity, diversity, and ethnicity. Written over the course of fourteen years between 1904 and 1918, at the height of the age of imperialism, Essay on Exoticism encompasses Segalen’s attempts to define “true Exoticism.” This concept, he hoped, would not only replace nineteenth-century notions of exoticism that he considered tawdry and romantic, but also redirect his contemporaries’ propensity to reduce the exotic to the “colonial.” His critique envisions a mechanism that appreciates cultural difference—which it posits as an aesthetic and ontological value—rather than assimilating it: “Exoticism’s power is nothing other than the ability to conceive otherwise,” he writes. Segalen’s pioneering work on otherness anticipates and informs much of the current postcolonial critique of colonial discourse. As such Essay on Exoticism is essential reading for both cultural theorists or those with an interest in the politics of difference and diversity.
"A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard"--
