History & Criticism

Graham Hancock's multi-million bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilization. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with the sequel to his seminal work....

Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way....

Too often history focuses on the stories of kings, those (often men) who were given the credit, yet what fascinates most are the stories of those who have passed through the cracks of history...

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art....

One of USA Today's “100 Books to Read While Stuck at Home During the Coronavirus Crisis” A dazzling gift, the unforgettable, unknown history of colors and the vivid stories behind them in a beautiful multi-colored volume. “Beautifully written . . . Full of anecdotes and fascinating...

A former New York Times Paris bureau chief explores the Louvre, offering an intimate journey of discovery and revelation.

Have your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many artforms often ignored or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the history of art as it's never been told before....

In Fabric, bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and asking how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it, and made symbols out of it. And sometimes why they have fought for it....

First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images, which are continually inserted between experience and reality....

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe.....

From a world-renowned painter comes an exploration of creativity's quintessential - and often overlooked - role in the spiritual life....

From celebrated art historian, curator, and teacher Sarah Lewis, a fascinating examination of how our most iconic creative endeavors—from innovation to the arts—are not achievements but conversions, corrections after failed attempts. The gift of failure is a riddle: it will always be both...

Poststructuralism changes the way we understand the relations between human beings, their culture, and the world. This Very Short Introduction traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture....

Today it's routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera underwater, watch a movie, or view an X-ray. But the photographic innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were experimental, revelatory, and sometimes dangerous.

From the acclaimed biographer and author of Balzac's Omelette comes an engaging new work on the life of "the father of Impressionism" and the role his Jewish background played in his artistic creativity....

"Inspiration leaps off the pages from Jerry Saltz's new book on creativity. . . . This book is for the artist or non-artist, for the person who gets plain English, for the person who understands that practical talk can coax out the mystical messages that lie underneath." —Steve Martin Art has...

A compelling call to rediscover the transformative power of art in an age of distraction, coercion, and spectacle – featuring an introduction from Pulitzer Prize–winning author Donna Tartt In Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, J. F. Martel offers a compelling and incisive meditation on...

New York Times Notable Book “A smart, crackling chronicle of fast game, the ’80s art market, [and] the attraction of destruction.”— Village Voice A bold and vivid biography that chronicles the dazzling rise and tragic death of Neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. In less than...

Plutarchs's (46-120 A.D.) epic chronicle of the lives of great Grecians and Romans....

The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum....

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness “Brilliant . . . To read this...

A funny, inviting book about art for people who don’t know about “art”—featuring new artworks by David Shrigley. What is art, where do I find it, and once I’m in front of it, what am I supposed to think about it? Kate Bryan is a self-confessed art addict who has worked with art for...

In this vivid and captivating journey through the colors of an artist’s palette, Victoria Finlay takes us on an enthralling adventure around the world and through the ages, illuminating how the colors we choose to value have determined the history of culture itself. How did the most precious...

Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world....

The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse—a fear of corruption or contamination through color—lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought.

In the six lectures of A Short History of Role-Playing Games, gaming consultant and avid gamer Jamin Warren will take you on a whirlwind tour of role-playing games, tracing a fascinating story of community-building, technical innovation, and, occasionally, cultural backlash.

New York Times Notable Book “A smart, crackling chronicle of fast game, the ’80s art market, [and] the attraction of destruction.”— Village Voice A bold and vivid biography that chronicles the dazzling rise and tragic death of Neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. In less than...

In this influential sequence of linked interviews, Ranciere explores the interplay of art and politics. The Politics of Aesthetics rethinks the relationship between art and politics, reclaiming "aesthetics" from the narrow confines it is often reduced to. Jacques Rancière reveals its intrinsic link to politics by analysing what they both have in common: the delimitation of the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the possible and the impossible.

Spanning seventy years, from bohemian early-twentieth-century Montmartre to the glittering Riviera in the 1920s, and from Paris under Nazi occupation to Picasso’s death, and beyond, Hidden Portraits reclaims a set of brilliant women and in the process rewrites a vital chapter in the history of modern art.

Discover how twelve centuries of Japanese art hold the keys to understanding everything from Zen mindfulness to your iPhone’s sleek design. What You Should Know About Japanese Art History invites you on a captivating journey from the Heian court’s gilded screens (794) to Meiji Japan’s revolutionary collision of ink and oil (1912). Imagine walking beside noblewomen composing waka poetry in vermilion-lit palaces, where Yamato-e scrolls captured love’s fleeting beauty. Feel the spiritual intensity of Kamakura’s lifelike Buddhas—carved for samurai seeking solace—and lose yourself ...