The Lure of Dresden
The Lure of Dresden

Author: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Dresden, Germany)

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783954984497

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Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780) is one of the most famous vedute painters of the 18th century. His views and prospects of town and country are so rich in detail, so precisely and meticulously painted that historic places come to life again before the viewer's eyes. But far from being simply faithful reproductions of sights, his vedute are rather carefully planned compositions, the result of the artist availing himself of all the technical know-how of his age. During his time in Dresden, Bellotto created some of his most important works, which now form part of the collection at the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister. These vedute still influence the way Dresden is perceived today, at home and abroad. They present a wonderful panorama of the old Augustan city, on which two of the greatest art collectors in German history - Augustus the Strong and his son Augustus III - left their mark. Thanks to these two electors, who simultaneously held the crown of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Dresden art collections flourished, becoming some of the most important in the world. This volume traces the various stages of Bellotto's career, focussing in detail on the canvases of his Dresden period. It also examines the history of the world-famous picture gallery, the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, and the era of Baroque collection-building in Dresden.

The Lure of Long Distances
The Lure of Long Distances

Author: Robin Harvie

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2011-04-26

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1610390229

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Robin Harvie was a fairly ordinary runner. He ran his first marathon after a bet. Then he found that although he couldn't run fast, he could run long distances -- very long. A casual hobby turned into a 120-miles-a-week obsession, and a training route along the River Thames morphed into a promise to himself that he would tackle the oldest and toughest footrace on earth: the Spartathlon from Athens to Sparta. This race, a recreation of Pheidippides's legendary journey, is 150 miles long, crosses two mountain ranges, and is the toughest race on the ultradistance runner's calendar. It isn't at all ordinary. Harvie's experience -- from the mundanity of daily training routes to the extreme tests of the desert's scorching heat and the darkest hours of the night -- reveals the profoundly intoxicating experience of running, and the ways in which every mile taken is both a step further into the unknown and a pace deeper into the self.

The Lure of the East
The Lure of the East

Author: Marilyn Jenkins-Madina

Publisher: Rodin Books + ORM

Published: 2024-05-21

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1957588276

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The remarkable journey of one of the first women to become a curator of Islamic art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and an internationally recognized scholar in the field. As a girl growing up in Frenchtown, New Jersey, Marilyn Jenkins-Madina recalls first learning about the Egyptian pyramids in sixth grade. That discovery opened her mind to the possibility of not only learning more about worlds far removed from her small-town existence, but of actually experiencing them and living them. Throughout her life, opportunities to follow uncharted roads have presented themselves in ways that she has not dismissed. It has been the driving force in her career and her life. She became a curator of Islamic art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and an internationally recognized scholar in the field. She took more than 50 international trips, most of which were to the Middle East, at times and in locations where women were not exactly respected or welcomed in a capacity of authority. She came to enjoy an enduring friendship with Kuwaiti royalty. And, last but certainly not least, she became the wife and partner-in-adventure of a wonderful gentleman from Damascus who was a professor at Columbia University and also a Kurdish agha. From the banks of the Delaware to the shores of the Arabian Gulf and beyond, The Lure of the East: A Curator's Fascinating Journey is the story of her remarkable journey. Dr. Jenkins-Madina began her long curatorial career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1964. Having received her B.A. from Brown University in 1962, she continued to pursue her education while working at The Metropolitan Museum, earning both her M.A. and Ph.D. during this time. From her initial appointment as Curatorial Assistant, she rose through the ranks during her forty-year tenure as curator in the Department of Islamic Art and was named Curator Emerita upon her retirement in 2004. This memoir is meant to inspire others to dare to take their own road less traveled.

Double Cross
Double Cross

Author: Diane L. Kowalyshyn

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press Inc

Published: 2021-08-02

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1509237127

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Attorney Susan Dante has spent her life championing lost-causes, even after landing a job at Lucas and Devine, a prestigious law firm in Boston's Beacon Hill. Despite working twelve-hour days, she serves paperwork on her latest pro-bono case, a copyright dispute with Torrence Publishing. Aiden Torrence, owner of Torrence Publishing, is impressed by Susan's spunk. He promises restitution for her client and delegates the discovery to a long-standing business associate who, unknown to him, is possessed by a creature of the otherworld. Aiden and Susan can't deny their attraction and dive into a whirlwind romance. But Susan fears someone, or something, is after her. When Aiden fails to disclose pertinent contracts, she slaps him with a class-action lawsuit, forcing him to slog through a twisted conspiracy of blackmail and murder to rescue her from the heinous entity hell-bent on destroying her.

Blood Rites
Blood Rites

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich

Publisher: Twelve

Published: 2020-01-07

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1455543713

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A New York Times Notable BookAn ALA Notable Book "Original and illuminating." --The Washington Post What draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to "become" men? Newly reissued in paperback, Blood Rites takes readers on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place -- not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experiences of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception and rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that continues to transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.

Blood Rites
Blood Rites

Author: Jim Butcher

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2004-08-03

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1101146664

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In this novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files, Chicago's only professional wizard takes on a case for a vampire and becomes the prime suspect in a series of ghastly murders. Harry Dresden has had worse assignments than going undercover on the set of an adult film. Like fleeing a burning building full of enraged demon-monkeys, for instance. Or going toe-to-leaf with a walking plant monster. Still, there’s something more troubling than usual about his newest case. The film’s producer believes he’s the target of a sinister curse—but it’s the women around him who are dying, in increasingly spectacular ways. Harry’s doubly frustrated because he only got involved with this bizarre mystery as a favor to Thomas—his flirtatious, self-absorbed vampire acquaintance of dubious integrity. Thomas has a personal stake in the case Harry can’t quite figure out, until his investigation leads him straight to the vampire’s oversexed, bite-happy family. Now, Harry’s about to discover that Thomas’ family tree has been hiding a shocking secret: a revelation that will change Harry’s life forever.

Vampires Are Us
Vampires Are Us

Author: Adler, Margot

Publisher: Weiser Books

Published: 2014-03-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1578635608

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“Vampires. Why do we care? In these pages you will find what is very simply, the most literate, imaginative, and just plain fascinating answer to that question ever written.” ?Whitley Strieber In a culture that does not do death particularly well, we are obsessed with mortality. Margot Adler writes, “Vampires let us play with death and the issue of mortality. They let us ponder what it would mean to be truly long lived. Would the long view allow us to see the world differently, imagine social structures differently? Would it increase or decrease our reverence for the planet? Vampires allow us to ask questions we usually bury.” As Adler, a longtime NPR correspondent and question asker, sat vigil at her dying husband’s bedside, she found herself newly drawn to vampire novels and their explorations of mortality. Over the next four years—by now she has read more than 270 vampire novels, from teen to adult, from gothic to modern, from detective to comic—she began to see just how each era creates the vampires it needs. Dracula, an Eastern European monster, was the perfect vehicle for 19th-century England’s fear of outsiders and of disease seeping in through its large ports. In 1960s America, Dark Shadows gave us the morally conflicted vampire struggling against his own predatory nature, who still enthralls us today. Think Spike and Angel, Stefan and Damon, Bill and Eric, the Cullens. Vampires Are Us explores the issues of power, politics, morality, identity, and even the fate of the planet that show up in vampire novels today. Perhaps, Adler suggests, our blood is oil, perhaps our prey is the planet. Perhaps vampires are us.

The Dresden Firebombing
The Dresden Firebombing

Author: Tony Joel

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-01-20

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0857736353

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The firebombing of Dresden marks the terrible apex of the European bombing war. In just over two days in February 1945, over 1,300 heavy bombers from the RAF and the USAAF dropped nearly 4,000 tonnes of explosives on Dresden's civilian centre.Since the end of World War II, both the death toll and the motivation for the attack have become fierce historical battlegrounds, as German feelings of victimhood complete with those of guilt and loss. The Dresden bombing was used by East Germany as a propaganda tool, and has been re-appropriated by the neo-Nazi far right. Meanwhile the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche- the city's sumptuous eighteenth-century church destroyed in the raid-became central to German identity, while in London, a statue of the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, has attracted protests. In this book, Tony Joel focuses on the historical battle to re-appropriate Dresden, and on how World War II continues to shape British and German identity today.