Best known for its collection of masterpiece paintings, the Gardner Museum is also one of the first museums to include a large quantity of Italian furniture. Ranging from renaissance wedding chests and inlaid credenza to Rococo Venetian pieces of the 18th century, the collection is perhaps the largest of its type in the United States. Although relying upon several advisors for her acquisitions of paintings and sculptures (most famously, Bernard Berenson), Isabella Gardner bought her furniture entirely on her own, recognizing the critical role furniture played in the function and decoration of Italian interiors from the 15th century to the early 19th century. This meticulously designed catalogue includes numerous photographs that focus on individual objects and reveal characteristic forms and styles. Observations made by the museum conversation department about the techniques and materials of the pieces, which differ significantly from furniture of other countries, are also published. Long overlooked, very little has appeared in English on the subject of Italian furniture. Yet, these magnificent objects are finally given the careful study and attention they deserve in this beautifully produced catalogue.

Furnishing a Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner's Collection of Italian Furniture

Arts & Photography

Calderai, Fausto

Chong, Alan

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Periscope

Paintings of ruined cathedrals, mystery fiction, and nationalist claims to medieval origins for language, law, and cultural patrimony--these mark the beginning of the re-invention of the Gothic that was to become key to the Romantic Movement in early 19th-century Europe. By contrast, in the U.S., it was only after the Civil War, the spread of Ruskin s teachings, and the emergence of Gilded Age wealth that art collectors developed a taste and an interpretation for artefacts previously consigned to a Dark Age of blind faith and alien codes of representation. In this highly original book, a team of international experts trace the history of the first sizable collection of Gothic art brought from Paris to the U.S. in 1889. Though it belonged to Alva Vanderbilt (the Commodore s daughter-in-law), it was sold to John Ringling in 1927 and is now part of the Ringling Museum. The essays explain why early Italian paintings, including a masterpiece by Piero di Cosimo, could be regarded as Gothic rather than as Renaissance and show how 19th-century installations of the objects enveloped them in an atmosphere of mystery and ancient privilege. A catalogue with color illustrations of every object in the collection makes this book indispensable to museum visitors as well as to scholars of medieval art, medieval revivals, and the history of collecting.

Gothic Art in the Gilded Age: Medieval and Renaissance Treasures in the Gavet-Vanderbilt-Ringling Collection

Brilliant, Virginia

History & Criticism

Iraqi Kurdistan at the turn of the twenty-first century is a territory ruled by strongmen, revolutionaries, fixers, bureaucrats and the "Barons," who control everything from livestock and land to Kurdish cultural life. Defying the absolute power wielded by the Barons, a band of friends led by a poet embarks on an odyssey to find the bodies of two lovers killed unjustly by the authorities. The Barons respond by attempting to crush these would-be avengers, though their real war is waged against the imagination itself - despite the fact that imagination in its myriad forms is a prized, elusive commodity for which intellectuals, merchants, political elites and humble workers all search in one way or another. The stark realities of a rapidly changing yet still traumatised society are woven through with elements of the fantastic: a boy is born with a poem etched into his chest; a wild-eyed mystic consummates his love for a married woman in the spirit world; a political assassin discovers compassion and can no longer kill; a Hollywood film buff leads a cluster of blind children on an imaginary sea journey.Bakhtiyar Ali's visionary novel is a soulful meditation on both political and poetic power. The Gardens of the Imagination is a trip, in more ways than one: a tale of people travelling great distances in their minds or with their feet. It is a phantasmagoric, lyrical interpretation of contemporary Kurdistan, so much in the news nowadays but otherwise so little known. Told by several unreliable narrators in a kaleidoscope of fragments that all eventually cohere, the author manages the neat trick of dipping the reader into a mesmerising fantasia just long enough before wrenching her or him back to hard, cold "real life." Bakhtiyar Ali has said that he wrote this novel

I Stared at the Night of the City

Ali, Bakhtiyar

Children's Books

In a drab North Korean city, a seventh daughter is born to a couple longing for a son. Abandoned hours after her birth, she is eventually rescued by her grandmother. The old woman names the child Bari, after a legend telling of a forsaken princess who undertakes a quest for an elixir that will bring peace to the souls of the dead. As a young woman, frail, brave Bari escapes North Korea and takes refuge in China before embarking on a journey across the ocean in the hold of a cargo ship, seeking a better life. She lands in London, where she finds work as a masseuse. Paid to soothe her clients aching bodies, she discovers that she can ease their more subtle agonies as well, having inherited her beloved grandmother s uncanny ability to read the pain and fears of others. Bari makes her home amongst other immigrants living clandestinely. She finds love in unlikely places, but also suffers a series of misfortunes that push her to the limits of sanity. Yet she has come too far to give in to despair... Princess Bari is a captivating novel that leavens the grey reality of cities and slums with the splendour of fable. Hwang Sok-yong has transfigured an age-old legend and made it vividly relevant to our own times.

Princess Bari

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Hannah Lowe's father "Chick," a half-Chinese, half-black Jamaican immigrant, worked long hours at night to support his family—except Chick was no ordinary working man. A legendary gambler, he would vanish into the shadows of East London to win at cards or dice, returning during the daylight hours to greet the daughter whose love and respect he courted.
In this poignant memoir, Lowe calls forth the unstable world of card sharps, confidence men, and small-time criminals that eventually took its toll on Chick. She also recalls her own coming-of-age in a London suburb during the racially charged 1980s and conjures her father's difficult childhood in a changing Jamaica, where he first honed his formidable skills. Lowe tells Chick's story eloquently, even as she begins to make sense of her own.
Gently paced, dramatic, and complex, Long Time No See speaks of love and its absence; regret and compassion; and the struggle to know oneself.
Hannah Lowe teaches at the Poetry School in London. Her poetry collection, Chick, was shortlisted for the 2013 Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

Long Time No See

Parenting & Relationships

Lowe, Hannah

Parenting

Wry, satirical, and bawdy, Zakaria Tamer's microfiction is always informed by his dark view of humanity and of Syrian society in particular. Through these mordant glimpses of corrupt, fearful lives under a violent dictatorship, it is possible to discern echoes of the storm that has brought Syria to near-disintegration.
Unsentimental and brilliantly compressed, these sixty-three stories are the work of a virtuoso.
Zakaria Tamer was born in 1931 in Damascus. A former journalist, he has written in a variety of forms, but the genre for which he is best known is al-qissa al-qasira jjiddan, the very short story.

Breaking Knees

TAMER, ZAKARIA

Short Stories & Anthologies

Passionate about steak, award-winning food and travel writer Mark Schatzker sets off in a quest for perfection in the art of cooking beef. His odyssey takes him thousands of miles through eight countries, and sees him tuck into more than 100 lbs of steak. He gasps for air on Texas feedlots; dodges the descendants of prehistoric aurochs inFrance; encounters grass-fed glory in Scotland and ferventlocalism in Italy; debunks the myth of beer-massaged cows in Kobe; and admires Argentinian grilling savvy.Schatzker also discovers that, whilst there's a lot of steak around, there's not a lot of great steak. To determine why this might be, he meets with ranchers, chefs, experts on flavour and animal welfare and even chemists and historians. Some key issues that emerge include breed integrity, marbling, grass versus grain feed, slaughterhouse conditions and industrial practices designed solely to maximize output. Finally, he has ago at raising a cow himself ...In humorous, lively and highly informative prose, Schatzker pursues his obsession with admirable thoroughness.This illuminating study of steak and its discontents as well as its many delights will resonate with avid and casual meat-eaters alike, and will even make vegetarians go 'hmm'.

Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef

Mark Schatzker

Even against the vivid backdrop of the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, Esther Handali stood out. Widow of an Istanbul rabbi and refugee from the Spanish Inquisition, she established herself during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent as an intermediary between the women of the sultan's seraglio and the world outside the harem to which they were confined. Her connection to the Imperial Palace ended under Suleiman's great-grandson—when a careless indiscretion led to her shocking downfall.
Solmaz Kamuran was born in 1954 in Istanbul, where she lives today. She is amongst Turkey's most popular authors, and has written six novels.

Kiraze

The "Dive into History" series brings to life the wealth of fascinating history that lies on the bottom of the sea. The series will appeal to historians, naval enthusiasts and divers as it uncovers many thrilling episodes of our naval past preserved for posterity in the ocean's depths. Volume 3 traces the development of the U-boat and its role in two world wars. The eleven wrecks featured are both war losses and war prizes sunk around the coast of the United States during the twentieth century. The authors are both very experienced divers who have combined their knowledge of the wrecks with detailed historical research to accurately tell the story of the "Raiders of the Deep" which came so close to winning two world wars.Some of the wrecks are within easy reach of the sport diver, while others are far more challenging. Some are largely intact while some have experienced heavy damage. Each story is a microcosm of the tale of the U-boat as a formidable weapon of war. The reader will be surprised by some of the facts uncovered in this book. For instance the presence of a rubber-coated "stealth" U-boat in the Potomac River, only 100 miles from Washington DC. This edition benefits from an addendum that updates the story of the U869, recently identified off the coast of New Jersey.

U-boats (Dive into History)

History

Henry C. Keatts

George C. Farr

Military

This book shows how and why the Italian Renaissance gained 5-star ranking in popular culture around the world. The change began in the late 1800s when trains made travel to Italy affordable for a middle class eager to experience masterpieces from the age of the Medici. Today planes transport millions of people to Italy’s art capitals, and the Renaissance has a mass market. The Da Vinci Code is one of the best-selling books of all time. The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus, and other icons are replicated in thousands of commodities, most cheap and ephemeral, the reverse of the art they reproduce. To the authors of this book, all such adaptations, however ill-informed or vulgar, are significant. Markers in a reciprocal exchange between the past and the present, they provide invaluable insights into the spectrum of facts, myths, and ideals that have defined the Renaissance since the 19th-century. This rich history is surveyed in the book’s introduction, which takes readers from the Grand Tour to the video game Assassin’s Creed. Essays, often illustrated with contemporary art, divide the book into 9 sections on major themes, ranging from “sex matters” to racism and slavery. Each theme is then developed in several essays on particular topics, from the “discovery” of Michelangelo’s homosexuality to the Renaissance origins of the McMansion, the Jewish ghetto, and “slave portraits.” Many illustrations have explanatory captions so that mere browsing allows the reader to engage with the book’s reassessment of the Renaissance heritage. A team of experts in art, architecture, history, and literature collaborated on this volume, which was planned from the outset as an alternative textbook on the Renaissance. Except for James M. Saslow’s little-known piece on Michelangelo, nothing in it has been previously published. This book is also noteworthy because it proposes new ways of understanding the give-and-take between the Renaissance and its modern admirers. With lively writing and unusual photographs, this book will appeal to all those interested in Italian culture as well as to undergraduate and graduate students in courses on the Renaissance or cultural studies.

The Renaissance: Revised Expanded Unexpurgated

Lasansky, D. Medina

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