Initially it was thought to be a `model book', used by artists for the transmission of ideas to assistants, or as a sample book to show potential customers. But, as Christopher de Hamel and Patricia Lovett show in their introductory essays, this assumption must be questioned: the Macclesfield Alphabet Book is an enigmatic album, possibly a friar's personal commonplace book. --
This is beautiful book transports you to the highest, hottest, coldest, most dramatic and most remote places on earth. Discover the icy expanse of the Baltoro Glacier in Pakistan, the bizarre and exotic wildlife of Madagascar, the searing heat of the Australian Outback and the power of the Iguassu Falls in South America.
The court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II produced nothing more amazing than the Mira colligrophioe monumenta, a flamboyant demonstration of two arts-calligraphy and miniature painting. The project began when Rudolf's predecessor commissioned the master calligrapher Georg Bocskay to create a model book of calligraphy. A preeminent scribe, Bocskay assembled a vast selection of contemporary and historic scripts. Many were intended not for practical use but for virtuosic display. Years later, at Rudolf's behest, court artist Joris Hoefnagel filled the spaces on each manuscript page with images of fruit, flowers, insects, and other natural minutiae. The combination of word and images is rare and, on its tiny scale, constitutes one of the marvels of the Central European Renaissance. The manuscript is now in the collections of the Getty Museum. Forty-eight of its pages are reproduced in this book, containing samples of classic italic hands; historical, invented, and exhibition hands; Rotunda, a classicizing humanist script based on Carolingian miniscule; classically based scripts; and Gothic blackletter and chancery.
A history of the common people and the Industrial Revolution: “A true masterpiece” and one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the twentieth century (Tribune). During the formative years of the Industrial Revolution, English workers and artisans claimed a place in society that would shape the following centuries. But the capitalist elite did not form the working class—the workers shaped their own creations, developing a shared identity in the process. Despite their lack of power and the indignity forced upon them by the upper classes, the working class emerged as England’s greatest cultural and political force. Crucial to contemporary trends in all aspects of society, at the turn of the nineteenth century, these workers united into the class that we recognize all across the Western world today. E. P. Thompson’s magnum opus, The Making of the English Working Class defined early twentieth-century English social and economic history, leading many to consider him Britain’s greatest postwar historian. Its publication in 1963 was highly controversial in academia, but the work has become a seminal text on the history of the working class. It remains incredibly relevant to the social and economic issues of current times, with the Guardian saying upon the book’s fiftieth anniversary that it “continues to delight and inspire new readers.”
There’s a baby born every minute and each one has to be named. In this book, you’ll find an insanity of nomenclature that beggars belief. Russell Ash has trawled birth, marriage, and death certificates, phone books, and censuses going back centuries to compile a compendium of breathtakingly unlikely-but-true names. Why on earth would Mr. and Mrs. O’Shea name their son Rick? What were the Fants thinking when they named their child Elle? Or Mr. and Mrs. Royd, for that matter, when naming their daughter Emma? Or how about Everard Cock, Page Turner, or Sally Forth? In this painstakingly researched, utterly true, riotously entertaining collection, readers will discover real-life examples of some of the most unusual, crude, and shocking names ever, presenting a laugh-out-loud overview of eccentricity through the ages.
