Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice
Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Author: Arie Wallert

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 1995-08-24

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0892363223

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Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.

El Vino Y la Viña
El Vino Y la Viña

Author: P. T. H. Unwin

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0415031206

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Provides an introduction to the historical geography of viticulture and the wine trade from prehistory to the present, considering wine as a symbol, rich in meaning and a commercial product of great economic importance to specific regions.

Antifragile
Antifragile

Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2014-01-28

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 0812979680

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Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile “Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist “A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek

When Scotland Was Jewish
When Scotland Was Jewish

Author: Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-05-07

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0786455225

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The popular image of Scotland is dominated by widely recognized elements of Celtic culture. But a significant non-Celtic influence on Scotland's history has been largely ignored for centuries? This book argues that much of Scotland's history and culture from 1100 forward is Jewish. The authors provide evidence that many of the national heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and ministers of Scotland were of Jewish descent, their ancestors originating in France and Spain. Much of the traditional historical account of Scotland, it is proposed, rests on fundamental interpretive errors, perpetuated in order to affirm Scotland's identity as a Celtic, Christian society. A more accurate and profound understanding of Scottish history has thus been buried. The authors' wide-ranging research includes examination of census records, archaeological artifacts, castle carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls, noble genealogies, family crests, portraiture, and geographic place names.

Hal Wallis
Hal Wallis

Author: Bernard F. Dick

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-10-17

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0813159512

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Hal Wallis (1898-1986) might not be as well known as David O. Selznick or Samuel Goldwyn, but the films he produced—Casablanca, Jezebel, Now, Voyager, The Life of Emile Zola, Becket, True Grit, and many other classics (as well as scores of Elvis movies)—have certainly endured. As producer of numerous films, Wallis made an indelible mark on the course of America's film industry, but his contributions are often overlooked. Bernard Dick offers the first comprehensive assessment of the producer's incredible career. A former office boy and salesman, Wallis first engaged with the film business as the manager of a Los Angeles movie theater in 1922. He attracted the notice of the Warner brothers, who hired him as a publicity assistant. Within three months he was director of the department, and appointments to studio manager and production executive quickly followed. Wallis went on to oversee dozens of productions and formed his own production company in 1944. Dick draws on numerous sources such as Wallis's personal production files and exclusive interviews with many of his contemporaries to finally tell the full story of his illustrious career. Dick combines his knowledge of behind-the-scenes Hollywood with fascinating anecdotes to create a portrait of one of Hollywood's early power players.

The Handbook of Mummy Studies
The Handbook of Mummy Studies

Author: Dong Hoon Shin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 1171

ISBN-13: 9789811533532

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Owing to their unique state of preservation, mummies provide us with significant historical and scientific knowledge of humankind’s past. This handbook, written by prominent international experts in mummy studies, offers readers a comprehensive guide to new understandings of the field’s most recent trends and developments. It provides invaluable information on the health states and pathologies of historic populations and civilizations, as well as their socio-cultural and religious characteristics. Addressing the developments in mummy studies that have taken place over the past two decades – which have been neglected for as long a time – the authors excavate the ground-breaking research that has transformed scientific and cultural knowledge of our ancient predecessors. The handbook investigates the many new biotechnological tools that are routinely applied in mummy studies, ranging from morphological inspection and endoscopy to minimally invasive radiological techniques that are used to assess states of preservation. It also looks at the paleoparasitological and pathological approaches that have been employed to reconstruct the lifestyles and pathologic conditions of ancient populations, and considers the techniques that have been applied to enhance biomedical knowledge, such as craniofacial reconstruction, chemical analysis, stable isotope analysis and ancient DNA analysis. This interdisciplinary handbook will appeal to academics in historical, anthropological, archaeological and biological sciences, and will serve as an indispensable companion to researchers and students interested in worldwide mummy studies.

The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests
The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests

Author: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources

Publisher: Macmillan Reference USA

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13:

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Africa's forests are being depleted at a faster rate than of any other continent. A major increase in the population growth rate began after World War II and it is now running at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent, resulting in massive demands for agricultural land, water, fuelwood and other products. There is no simple answer to environmental degradation and forest conservation must be part of a broader process of managing the landscape. Here to address this topic is the new Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Africa, the first authoritative reference work on this subject. The second in a series this Conservation Atlas follows the format of the acclaimed Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Asia and the Pacific (1991). Part I describes the issues, history of forests and climate, biological diversity, conservation of large mammals, and the peoples of the forests. Included are discussions of the links between population, environment and agriculture, the timber trade, protected areas system and the future for Africa's forests. Part II of the Atlas is a country by country survey of the forests of Africa. Stunning four-color maps, in a 9 x 12 format, have been compiled from satellite and radar imagery, aerial photography, and the latest information provided by forestry departments and development agencies. Both maps and text have been prepared and reviewed by a broad spectrum of specialists. The Atlas also includes four-color photographs and sketch maps. They represent the best visual portfolio available of Africa's forests today. For anyone interested in environmental issues, geography, forestry, development, economics, and the African region, this Atlas will be an essential resource.