In the first volume of the House Reborn, Joden, the last nobleman of the famed House Pyndayygyn, goes on one final diplomatic mission to meet with the mysterious Miyenyan Empire, settling all planetary affairs, and return to the rest of his predictable life in peace. Politics breeds turmoil, setting the stage for an impending large-scale war. Betrayed, Joden must navigate the intricacies of his new life as he seeks to restore his path of honor. Yet there is an unfolding of events, and everything is not as it appears, including himself--a house reborn!
In the first book of its kind, architectural critic Michael Webb and Esto photographer Roger Straus III examine 35 extraordinary modern houses that have been restored, enhanced, or extended by new owners who see them as timeless classics. Built in the heyday of modernism, from the 1930s through the early 1960s, these houses were designed by exceptional architects for themselves or for adventurous clients. A few were preserved as time capsules, but most endured years of neglect or abuse and might easily have been torn down. Webb explores how these houses were created-- as daring experiments or as creative responses to site and climate-- and the research and effort that went into their restoration. Included here are villas that fuse craft and invention, machines for living, and residences that embrace the landscape. Here, too, are houses inspired by the purity of classical temples, and frugal dwellings that have been sensitively enlarged. After a long eclipse, these houses and the enlightened attitudes they embody are being rediscovered by creative individuals searching for distinctive, open, light-filled places to live. Modernism is a way of living, more than a style, and this book celebrates the architects and owners who respect its character and scale. Also included are nearly 200 photographs taken by Roger Straus, all of which were specially commissioned for this book.
Winner, 2012 Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award, Society of Architectural HistoriansWinner, 2010 Publication Award, Friends of the Upper East Side Historical DistrictsWinner, 2009 New York City Book Award in Architecture, New York Society Library This fascinating study is the first to examine the transformation of residential architecture in New York City in the early 20th century. In the decades just before and after World War I, a group of architects, homeowners, and developers pioneered innovative and affordable housing alternatives. They converted the deteriorated and bleak row houses of old New York neighborhoods into modern and stylish dwellings. Stoops were removed and drab facades were enlivened with light-colored stucco, multi-colored tilework, flower boxes, shutters, and Spanish tile parapets. Designers transformed utilitarian backyards into gardens inspired by the Italian Renaissance and rearranged interior plans so that major rooms focused on the new landscapes. This movement—an early example of what has become known as "gentrification"—dramatically changed the physical character of these neighborhoods. It also profoundly altered their social makeup as change priced poor and largely immigrant households out of the area. Dolkart traces this aesthetic movement from its inception in 1908 with architect Frederick Sterner’s complete redesign of his home near Gramercy Park to a wave of projects for the wealthy on the East Side to the faux artist’s studios for young professionals in Greenwich Village. Dolkart began his study because the work of these architects was being demolished. His extensive research in city records and contemporary sources, such as newspapers and trade and popular magazines, unearths a wealth of information detailing the transformation of New York’s residential neighborhoods. This significant development in the history of housing and neighborhoods in New York has never before been investigated. The Row House Reborn will interest architectural and urban historians, as well as general readers curious about New York City architecture and neighborhood development.
Tsuna, a timid junior high student, is a failure at school, sports, and social life. But everything changes for Tsuna when Reborn, a fedora-wearing, gun-toting toddler who claims to be an Italian hit man, shows up at his house. Reborn was sent to Japan to groom Tsuna for his future life as a big mafia boss! Reborn's gun has quite an unusual effect: When Reborn shoots people in the head, they die but are then "reborn" with temporary supernatural powers that allow them to fulfill their dying wish. Reborn and Tsuna make an unlikely pair, but every day they're together, Tsuna gets reborn into a new (and better) guy!
What doctors are calling ÒCotardÕs DelusionÓÑthe disease Latoya contracted from the mysterious bookÑis beginning to spread across the Waking World, trapping the souls of its victims in the Dreaming, so that their corporeal bodies are mere husks, waiting for death to take them. Likewise, Erzulie is still trapped within the Dreaming, and her personality begins to shift, expressing fewer of her love-and -desire qualities, and developing more of her warrior persona, known as Erzulie Dantor. She may not be looking for a fight, but what function does a warrior have outside of battle?
#1 New York Times bestselling author J. R. Ward’s “different, creative, dark, violent, and flat-out amazing” (All About Romance) Black Dagger Brotherhood series continues as a vampire warrior crosses the line between life and death…into a world of dark dreams and darker desires. Ever since the death of his shellan, Tohrment has been a heartbroken shadow of the vampire leader he once was. Brought back to the Brotherhood by a self-serving fallen angel, he fights again with ruthless vengeance, unprepared for a new tragedy. Seeing his beloved in dreams—trapped in a cold, isolated netherworld—Tohr turns to the angel Lassiter to save his former mate. The only way to rescue her is for Tohr to love another. As war with the lessers rages, and a new clan of vampires vie for the Blind King’s throne, Tohr struggles between an unforgettable past and a hot, passion-filled future. But can his heart let go and set all of them free?
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The thrilling history of the Targaryens comes to life in this masterly work, the inspiration for HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon “The thrill of Fire & Blood is the thrill of all Martin’s fantasy work: familiar myths debunked, the whole trope table flipped.”—Entertainment Weekly Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen—the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria—took up residence on Dragonstone. Fire & Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart. What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why was it so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What were Maegor the Cruel’s worst crimes? What was it like in Westeros when dragons ruled the skies? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel. Readers have glimpsed small parts of this narrative in such volumes as The World of Ice & Fire, but now, for the first time, the full tapestry of Targaryen history is revealed. With all the scope and grandeur of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Fire & Blood is the first volume of the definitive two-part history of the Targaryens, giving readers a whole new appreciation for the dynamic, often bloody, and always fascinating history of Westeros. Praise for Fire & Blood “A masterpiece of popular historical fiction.”—The Sunday Times “The saga is a rich and dark one, full of both the title’s promised elements. . . . It’s hard not to thrill to the descriptions of dragons engaging in airborne combat, or the dilemma of whether defeated rulers should ‘bend the knee,’ ‘take the black’ and join the Night’s Watch, or simply meet an inventive and horrible end.”—The Guardian
The East India Company at Home, 1757–1857 explores how empire in Asia shaped British country houses, their interiors and the lives of their residents. It includes chapters from researchers based in a wide range of settings such as archives and libraries, museums, heritage organisations, the community of family historians and universities. It moves beyond conventional academic narratives and makes an important contribution to ongoing debates around how empire impacted Britain. The volume focuses on the propertied families of the East India Company at the height of Company rule. From the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to the outbreak of the Indian Uprising in 1857, objects, people and wealth flowed to Britain from Asia. As men in Company service increasingly shifted their activities from trade to military expansion and political administration, a new population of civil servants, army officers, surveyors and surgeons journeyed to India to make their fortunes. These Company men and their families acquired wealth, tastes and identities in India, which travelled home with them to Britain. Their stories, the biographies of their Indian possessions and the narratives of the stately homes in Britain that came to house them, frame our explorations of imperial culture and its British legacies.
