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.

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...

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.

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.

An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime—sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag—to aid a professor’s psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong? In Luke Kennard’s audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a...

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...

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.” —...

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...

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.

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.

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.

“[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...

The latest novel from million-copy bestseller author Graham Norton - a dazzling, decades-sweeping story about love, bravery and what it means to live a significant life. 'Warm and wise, Frankie is a woman worth getting to know' BONNIE GARMUS 'I loved Frankie so much. I couldn't stop reading it...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'We see with everything that we are' On the morning of 12 October 1654, in the Dutch city of Delft, a sudden explosion was followed by a thunderclap that could be heard more than seventy miles away. Carel Fabritius - now known across the world for his exquisite...

“Vital” –The New York Times Book Review “Provocative…[Hazleton] paddles the river of doubt with energy and exuberance.” –The Seattle Times A widely admired writer on religion celebrates agnosticism as the most vibrant, engaging—and ultimately the most honest—stance toward the...

Transform your life with existentialist psychology -- deepen your sense of identity, find new meaning in your interests and relationships, and discover how awakening to freedom helps you get better with age. How can we find our own direction and purpose? When life feels too much, is it possible...

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”...

Inspired by a real-life unsolved art theft, this “startling, smart, vivid” (Tana French, New York Times bestselling author) thriller follows the fallout from a viral video that exposes a hidden crime and pulls four desperate lives into a deadly hunt for a stolen masterpiece. In just...

An elderly woman recounts her Dutch family’s survival during the final years of Nazi occupation, shedding new light on old secrets that rippled through subsequent generations. Eighty-year-old Mieke Geborn’s life is one of quiet routine. Widowed for many years, she enjoys the view from her...

A CBC and Globe and Mail Spring Book Pick In this debut novel, a young woman in the Rocky Mountains, separated from the ancestral rhythms of her home in Scotland, turns to ancient rituals to find solace and connection. With shades of Olga Tokarczuk, Ali Smith, and Rachel Cusk, Hovel is a book...