A Palace for a King

A Palace for a King
Author: Jonathan Brown
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300101856

The Buen Retiro, a royal retreat and pleasure palace, was built for Philip IV on the outskirts of Madrid in the 1630s. With its superb display of paintings by Vel zquez and other contemporary artists, the palace became a showcase for the art and culture of Spain's Golden Age. A Palace for a King, first published in 1980, provides a pioneering total history of the construction, decoration, and uses of a major royal palace, emphasising the relationship of art and politics at a critical moment in European history. produced on different aspects of the history of the palace and its decoration since the 1970s. A number of new, unpublished illustrations have been added, and many of the plates are now reproduced in colour. The publication of this edition gains added importance from the fact that plans for the expansion of the Prado Museum include the restoration of the Hall of Realms to approximate its original appearance, as reconstructed in this volume.

The Dragon King's Palace

The Dragon King's Palace
Author: Laura Joh Rowland
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429908475

Once again, Laura Joh Rowland's dazzling combination of history and storytelling draws us into a sumptuous and treacherous world, in The Dragon King's Palace. On a whim of the shogun's mother, a procession has left the sweltering heat of Edo, bound for the cooler climate of Mount Fuji. Among her traveling companions are Reiko, the beautiful wife of Sano Ichiro, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People; Reiko's friend Midori, nine months pregnant; and Lady Yanagisawa, the deranged wife of the shogun's powerful second-in-command. None of them look forward to the trip. But their troubles have only begun when their procession is stopped suddenly on a deserted road. The entire retinue is viciously slaughtered and the four women are bound and taken away, imprisoned by a mysterious kidnapper. Sano now finds himself faced with the most important case of his career. The shogun demands quick action, and under the threat of death, Sano is forced to work with his bitter enemies---Chamberlain Yanagisawa and Police Commissioner Hoshina. The women are in imminent danger, and the delivery of a ransom note only complicates matters---forcing both Sano and Reiko to take desperate measures.

Gods of the Upper Air

Gods of the Upper Air
Author: Charles King
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0525432329

2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award From an award-winning historian comes a dazzling history of the birth of cultural anthropology and the adventurous scientists who pioneered it—a sweeping chronicle of discovery and the fascinating origin story of our multicultural world. A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled "primitive" or "advanced." What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature. In Gods of the Upper Air, a masterful narrative history of radical ideas and passionate lives, Charles King shows how these intuitions led to a fundamental reimagining of human diversity. Boas's students were some of the century's most colorful figures and unsung visionaries: Margaret Mead, the outspoken field researcher whose Coming of Age in Samoa is among the most widely read works of social science of all time; Ruth Benedict, the great love of Mead's life, whose research shaped post-Second World War Japan; Ella Deloria, the Dakota Sioux activist who preserved the traditions of Native Americans on the Great Plains; and Zora Neale Hurston, whose studies under Boas fed directly into her now classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Together, they mapped civilizations from the American South to the South Pacific and from Caribbean islands to Manhattan's city streets, and unearthed an essential fact buried by centuries of prejudice: that humanity is an undivided whole. Their revolutionary findings would go on to inspire the fluid conceptions of identity we know today. Rich in drama, conflict, friendship, and love, Gods of the Upper Air is a brilliant and groundbreaking history of American progress and the opening of the modern mind.

Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace
Author: Jonathan Marsden
Publisher: Scala Arts Publishers Incorporated
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Dwellings
ISBN: 9781857597578

These new, fully revised official souvenir guides, published in partnership with the Royal Collection to mark the Diamond Jubilee, include titles on the magnificent palaces and residences, on the finest working stables in existence, on the largest dolls house in the world and on the enthralling history of the royal line of succession. Written by specialist authors including the curators of the Royal Collection, beautifully illustrated and containing details of the works of art, the architecture, stories of occupants, photographs and plans, each book gives a fascinating insight into these famous sites, their history and contents. Buckingham Palace is one of the most readily recognised buildings in the world and one of the few remaining working royal palaces. This official guide to Buckingham Palace provides an illustrated account of the history of the royal palace that serves as Her Majesty The Queen's office and London residence, as well as the administrative headquarters of the Royal Household. It contains an introduction to the Palace today; a history of the building and architecture of the Palace; fascinating stories about the Palace's occupants, from George III to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; a visitor's map of the State Rooms and an illustrated tour of the State Rooms and their contents. AUTHOR: Jonathan Marsden is the Director of the Royal Collection. SELLING POINTS: *The official guidebook to Buckingham Palace *Illustrated with over 110 colour images including beautiful photographs of the State Rooms, plus historic documents and drawings and many works of art *Features highlights from the Picture Gallery's world-class collection of paintings 109 colour & 11 b/w illustrations

Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul

Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul
Author: Charles King
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393245780

The inspiration for the Netflix series premiering March 3rd "Hugely enjoyable, magnificently researched, and deeply absorbing." —Jason Goodwin, New York Times Book Review At midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock. Yet in Istanbul—an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city—people were looking toward an uncertain future. Never purely Turkish, Istanbul was home to generations of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, as well as Muslims. It welcomed White Russian nobles ousted by the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik assassins on the trail of the exiled Leon Trotsky, German professors, British diplomats, and American entrepreneurs—a multicultural panoply of performers and poets, do-gooders and ne’er-do-wells. During the Second World War, thousands of Jews fleeing occupied Europe found passage through Istanbul, some with the help of the future Pope John XXIII. At the Pera Palace, Istanbul's most luxurious hotel, so many spies mingled in the lobby that the manager posted a sign asking them to relinquish their seats to paying guests. In beguiling prose and rich character portraits, Charles King brings to life a remarkable era when a storied city stumbled into the modern world and reshaped the meaning of cosmopolitanism.

The Palace Papers

The Palace Papers
Author: Tina Brown
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2022-04-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593138104

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “addictively readable” (The Washington Post) inside story of the British royal family’s battle to overcome the dramas of the Diana years—only to confront new, twenty-first-century crises “Frothy and forthright, a kind of Keeping Up with the Windsors with sprinkles of Keats.”—The New York Times (Notable Book of the Year) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Elle, Town & Country “Never again” became Queen Elizabeth II’s mantra shortly after Princess Diana’s tragic death. More specif­ically, there could never be “another Diana”—a mem­ber of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone, and posed an existential threat to the Brit­ish monarchy. Picking up where Tina Brown’s masterful The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the trau­matic years when Diana’s blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet. Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey through the scandals, love affairs, power plays, and betrayals that have buffeted the monarchy over the last twenty-five years. We see the Queen’s stoic re­solve after the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother, and Prince Philip, her partner for seven decades, and how she triumphs in her Jubilee years even as family troubles rage around her. Brown explores Prince Charles’s determination to make Camilla Parker Bowles his wife, the tension between William and Harry on “different paths,” the ascend­ance of Kate Middleton, the downfall of Prince An­drew, and Harry and Meghan’s stunning decision to step back as senior royals. Despite the fragile monar­chy’s best efforts, “never again” seems fast approaching. Tina Brown has been observing and chronicling the British monarchy for three decades, and her sweeping account is full of powerful revelations, newly reported details, and searing insight gleaned from remarkable access to royal insiders. Stylish, witty, and erudite, The Palace Papers will irrevoca­bly change how the world perceives and under­stands the royal family.

Architecture and Geometry in the Age of the Baroque

Architecture and Geometry in the Age of the Baroque
Author: George L. Hersey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2001-03
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0226327833

The age of the baroque -- a time of great strides in science and mathematics -- also saw the construction of some of the world's most magnificent buildings. In this book, George L. Hersey explores the interrelations of the two developments, explaining how the advancements of geometry and the abstractions of mathematicians were made concrete in the architecture of the day. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Versailles

Versailles
Author: Catherine Pegard
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2017-06-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9780500519868

'The Ch�teau de Versailles is a real photographic challenge because it is so huge: there is an infinite number of possible points of view and they are never the same, depending on the time of day, the weather or the season... There are always new photos to take, to contemplate, to dream of. It is a demanding place that stimulates creativity and encourages you to look at it again and again' Thomas Garnier Versailles is one of the most photographed places in the world, but only four people have the privilege of being the Palace's official photographers. They have uniquely unfettered access to the secrets that lie within, outside and beneath this enormous domain where they spend their days - and sometimes their nights. Now, for the first time, they open their personal albums to offer a wealth of impressions and responses. Two hundred and fifty previously unpublished photographs reveal a plethora of outstanding artworks, the private apartments of Louis XIV, MarieAntoinette and Madame de Pompadour, magnificent galleries, the delightful Orangerie and more, all accompanied by texts that provide a lively introduction to daily life at the Ch�teau and its momentous history. This is a monumental volume on a scale that matches the grandeur of the worldrenowned Palace it celebrates.