Learning Art History

For Audrey Lind, working with clay still evokes memories of her favorite professor. The woman’s zeal for art history ignited Audrey’s own academic career—and her tweed blazers and British accent kindled her first female crush. After fate brings Audrey back to Northshire University to teach, she’s thrilled to be working alongside her former mentor, but the grumpy woman she encounters upon her return is nothing like the dynamo she remembers.

How do art and faith intersect? How does art help us see our own lives more clearly? What can we understand about God and humanity by looking at the lives of artists? Striving for beauty, art also reveals what is broken. It presents us with the tremendous struggles and longings common to the...

Award-winning author Stephen Greenblatt is one of the most influential literary thinkers in the world. An acclaimed interpreter of Shakespeare's works, his ideas have changed the way countless people approach the classics. Now Greenblatt's uniquely brilliant voice delivers a magnificent biography of the Bard himself.

Art history encompasses the study of the history and development of painting, sculpture, and the other visual arts. In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Dana Arnold presents an introduction to the issues, debates, and artifacts that make up art history. Beginning with a consideration of what art history is, she explains what makes the subject distinctive from other fields of study and also explores the emergence of social histories of art (such as feminist art history and queer art history).

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.

On the eve of his fortieth birthday, a professor of no discernible musical talent learns to play the guitar and investigates how anyone of any age might master a new skill. Just about every human being knows how to listen to music, but what does it take to make music? Is musicality something we...

"It's a genuine pleasure to hear spoken Latin--lots of it, and by many of the great classical authors, including Cicero, Ovid, and Virgil--and to follow the story of Gardini's lifelong infatuation with a language that is nowhere and everywhere in our modern lives... This is an audiobook to...

Actor William Shaksper of Stratford had little education, never left England, and apparently owned no books. How could he have written the great plays and poetry attributed to him? Journalist Mark Anderson's biography offers tantalizing proof that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, courtier, spendthrift, scholar, traveler, soldier, scoundrel, and writer, was the real "Shakespeare".

Black education was a subversive act from its inception. African Americans pursued education through clandestine means, often in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence. They developed what Jarvis Givens calls a tradition of "fugitive pedagogy"—a theory and practice of Black education in America. The enslaved learned to read in spite of widespread prohibitions; newly emancipated people braved the dangers of integrating all-White schools and the hardships of building Black schools.

In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out stars' sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall.

Britain's most esteemed scholar of 16th and 17th century literature, Frank Kermode is also a noted author and professor. In this Modern Library Chronicle, he uses the context of the Elizabethan Era to link each of Shakespeare's plays to their probable years of creation. By portraying the bard's England in terms of its society, economy, and arts, Kermode provides an invaluable guide to understanding Shakespeare?s works.

The first book in The Art Of series of books on the craft of writing, fiction writer and essayist Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext discusses and illustrates the hidden subtextual overtones and undertones in fictional works haunted by the unspoken, the suppressed, and the secreted.

“Written with grace, empathy, and bright imagination, Learning to See gives us the vivid interior life of a remarkably resilient woman. Dorothea Lange’s story is about passion and art, love and family, but also about the sacrifices women make—and have always made—to illuminate the truth...

This book contains a treasure trove of 1,001 facts that will astound you. Whether you're a trivia enthusiast, a parent looking for a fun learning tool, or simply someone who loves to learn new things, 1,001 Amazing Random Fun Facts for Adults and Kids is just the audiobook you need. Forget about boring textbooks and stale encyclopaedia entries! This audiobook captures the attention of both young and old with its easy-to-understand language and bite-sized snippets of knowledge. Perfect for road trips!

A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today’s artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos. In Starborn, cosmologist Roberto...

Explore Sicily’s language, culture, and timeless celebrations in one unforgettable bilingual guide. Designed for both travelers and Italian learners, this dual language book invites you to journey through Sicily’s most fascinating towns and traditions while naturally improving your Italian. Read in English and Italian side by side, compare sentence structures, and build vocabulary through authentic stories of festivals, faith, and local life. Dual language format: English text appears on the left page and Italian on the right, paragraph by paragraph, allowing you to follow along easily ...

Why do we run? To what end, all the effort and pain? Wherefore this love of muscle, speed, and sweat? The Greeks were the first to ask these questions, the first to suspend war, work, politics, to enjoy public celebrations of athletic prowess. They invented sport and they were also the first to understand how physical activity connected to our mental well-being.

Ask a scientist about Hollywood, and you'll probably get eye rolls. But ask someone in Hollywood about science, and they'll see dollar signs: Moviemakers know that science can be the source of great stories, with all the drama and action that blockbusters require. That's a huge mistake, says Randy Olson: Hollywood has a lot to teach scientists about how to tell a story - and, ultimately, how to do science better. With Houston, We Have a Narrative, he lays out a stunningly simple method for turning the dull into the dramatic.

Sara Daniel, a star European correspondent and one of the few women reporters covering Iraq, dares to venture where few have gone, in this gripping and fascinating memoir. In June of 2002, war looms and Saddam Hussein still has a brutal grip on a nation in disarray. Sara Daniel travels the length and breadth of Iraq, following the fast-evolving events and interviewing people from all walks of life and all religious and political affiliations: from the Kurds in the north to the rising new politicians in Baghdad and beyond....

Animal House, the film adaptation of stories Chris Miller published in National Lampoon about his experiences at a Dartmouth fraternity, is among the most beloved and successful comedies of all time. In fact, its portrayal of college party life is still imitated on campuses across the country: toga party, anyone? Now Chris Miller can finally answer the fans who all want to know one thing: was it really like that? The answer: yes, but much, much more out of control!