Dutch Art

Beyond the sainted Rembrandt—who harbored a startling darkness—and the mysterious Vermeer, whose true subject, it turned out, was lurking in plain sight, Moser got to know a whole galaxy of geniuses: the doomed virtuoso Carel Fabritius, the anguished wunderkind Jan Lievens, the deaf prodigy Hendrik Avercamp. Year after year, as he tried to make a life for himself in the Netherlands, Moser found friends among these centuries-dead artists. And he found that they, too, were struggling with the same questions that he was.

Plagued - as we are! - by nonstop pings and notifications, we have lost the knack of zoning out. Kicking back. Slacking off. Even when pandemic-induced lockdowns forcibly cleared our calendars, many who thought I’m free! filled their days with Netflix and doomscrolling. How can we reclaim our free time (planned or not) to truly rest and reset? The Dutch have it figured out: with niksen. Perhaps their best-kept lifestyle secret, niksen is the art of doing, well, nothing. It’s the opposite of productivity, and it’s incredibly good for you.

Frans Hals was one of the greatest portrait painters in history, and his style transformed ideas and expectations about what portraiture can do and what a painting should look like. Hals was a member of the great trifecta of Dutch Baroque painters alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer, and he was the portraitist of choice in the Dutch Golden Age. Steven Nadler gives us the first full-length biography of Hals in many years and offers a view into seventeenth-century Haarlem and this culturally rich era of the Dutch Republic.

The Dutch people are some of the happiest in the world. Their secret? They are masters of niksen, or the art of doing nothing. Niksen is not a form of meditation, nor is it a state of laziness or boredom. It’s not scrolling through social media, or wondering what you’re going to cook for...

Embark on a thrilling journey through the ancient and fascinating world of Muay Thai. Are you new to Thai Boxing? Or are you currently trying to keep up with the martial art? Would you like to learn practical and efficient techniques to boost your Muay Thai skills? Muay Thai is an art using different areas of your body. It has several techniques to prepare you for an unarmed fight, making you mentally and physically fit.

Working with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have accessed a wealth of previously untapped materials. While drawing liberally from the artist's famously eloquent letters, they have also delved into hundreds of unpublished family correspondences, illuminating with poignancy the wanderings of Van Gogh's troubled, restless soul. Naifeh and Smith bring a crucial understanding to the larger-than-life mythology of this great artist.

Over rouw en het fijne van herinneren In 2021 krijgt Eva Hermans-Kroot de diagnose longkanker. Jarenlang gaat alle aandacht logischerwijs naar Eva. En is Matthijs – haar man en haar beste vriend – op de achtergrond altijd bij haar, een liefde die groot is en onvoorwaardelijk. Op 30 november 2024 sterft Eva, een feit dat zelfs het landelijke nieuws haalt, wordt Matthijs op 29-jarige leeftijd weduwnaar en begint de rouw en het alleen zijn. Voor het eerst dingen in zijn eentje doen waar Eva altijd bij was: kerst vieren, jarig zijn, familiebezoek. Hoe doe je dat?

Eerlijk, rauw en met humor schrijft Anjali Taneja – bedenker van de hitserie Moedermaffia – over de druk, twijfels en kracht van het moederschap. Ik moeder maar wat aan is geen handleiding en geen boek over 'goed' of 'fout' opvoeden, maar een eerlijk verslag van zestien jaar moederen, doordrenkt met de stemmen van haar moeder, oma, vader en dochter.

The bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and The Map That Changed the World examines the enduring and world-changing effects of the catastrophic eruption off the coast of Java of the earth's most dangerous volcano -- Krakatoa. The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the...

From the Nobel Prize winner, a coming-of-age story that illuminates the harshness and beauty of an Africa on the brink of colonization Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough”...

A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the million-copy bestseller The Personal Librarian. Eunice Carter...

Rom-com lovers and fans of Elise Bryant and Jenna Evans Welch will adore this next summer read from Hot British Boyfriend and Dungeons and Drama author Kristy Boyce. No one has ever accused Sage Cunningham of being easily distracted. She has a plan, and she won’t be swayed. She’ll spend the...

A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick “I had been so engaged by Ann Patchett’s multifaceted story, so lured in by her confiding voice, that I forgot I was on the job. […] As the best personal essays often do, Patchett’s is a two-way mirror, reflecting both the author and her readers.” —...

Johannes Vermeer: Light, Silence, and the Art of Seeing A definitive exploration of the life, art, and enduring mystery of a master Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) painted fewer than forty known works—yet few artists have shaped the way we see the world as profoundly as he did. This book offers a richly informed, deeply engaging journey into Vermeer’s life, art, and legacy, written from the perspective of a world-renowned art historian and curator specializing in Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Moving beyond biography alone, this book situates Vermeer within the cultural, scientific, ...

Are you ready to take on the great outdoors? The Art of Bushcraft is the ultimate guide to mastering survival skills in the wilderness. With 20 comprehensive chapters, this ebook will teach you everything you need to know about thriving in the great outdoors. Starting with an introduction to bushcraft skills, you'll quickly learn the basics of fire-starting techniques. From there, you'll progress to advanced fire-starting techniques and creative fuel options to build the perfect campfire. Safety is always a top priority, and chapter 5 will teach you how to build a campfire while staying ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE The extraordinary and surprising life of Piet Mondrian, whose unprecedented geometric art revolutionized modern painting, architecture, graphic art, fashion design, and more—from acclaimed cultural historian Nicholas Fox Weber "As...

“[A] striking debut. . . funny, heartbreaking, and real.”––SAM LANSKY, author of Broken People Prep meets The Secret History in this searing debut novel about a tragic scandal at an American prep school, told in the form of a literary investigation through a distinctly...

A Best Book of 2025 from Chicago Review of Books For fans of Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Great Disasters is a stirring debut novel about six young men coming of age, and the enduring friendships that make us who we are—even as our paths diverge. This is...

The Netherlands had a great century in the 1600s, until it all ended about three-fourths of the way along. Trading was all around; business was good. Their vast empire that reached across the world made money from spices, raw materials, metals, and so much more, with an extensive network of ships and merchants, and an entire army fleet. The Dutch Golden Era was a time in Dutch history varying from about 1588 (the start of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the "Catastrophe Year"), throughout which Dutch trade, science, and art, and the Dutch armed force, were amongst the world's best.

In 1831, Charles Darwin embarked on an expedition that, in his own words, determined my whole career. The Voyage of the Beagle chronicles his five-year journey around the world and especially the coastal waters of South America as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. While traveling through these...