The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age by Simon Schama

Despite Calvinist sermons on thrift, the Dutch upper and middle classes flaunted their wealth in the consumer paradise that was 17th century Hollandbut they lived uneasily with material riches. How the Dutch reconciled piety with their commitment to profits is just one of the conundrums explored in this cultural history by a Harvard professor. Netherlandic seafarers built a world empire in just two generations; the Dutch nation's precocious rise to power as presented here helps to explain their defensive patriotism, the mania of housewives for cleanliness and the ideal of the family as a miniature commonwealth. The Dutch urge to classify was evident in everything from their tulip classification system to paintings of children's games. Delving into customs, beliefs, popular art and quirks of behavior, Schama has fashioned a tour de force, a profound, unconventional and rewarding portrait of a people. Photos not seen by PW. Reader's Subscription Book Club alternate.
"History on the grand scale...An ambitious portrait of one of the most remarkable episodes in modern history."--New York Times
"Wonderfully inclusive; with wit and intense curiosity he teases out meaning from every aspect of Dutch seventeenth-century life."--Robert Hughes

Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297-1797

John Jeffries Martin (Editor), Dennis Romano (Editor)
Venice Reconsidered offers a dynamic portrait of Venice from the establishment of the Republic at the end of the thirteenth century to its fall to Napoleon in 1797. In contrast to earlier efforts to categorize Venice's politics as strictly republican and its society as rigidly tripartite and hierarchical, the scholars in this volume present a more fluid and complex interpretation of Venetian culture. Drawing on a variety of disciplines—history, art history, and musicology—these essays present innovative variants of the myth of Venice—that nearly inexhaustible repertoire of stories Venetians told about themselves.
John Martin and Dennis Romano make a very persuasive and compelling argument for the radical shift in Venetian historiography, from the strands of myth and anti-myth in traditional scholarship to the contemporary image—more complex, more nuanced, and more flexible—developed by the other essays in this volume. Gene Brucker, University of California, Berkeley
An exemplary collection of essays which taken together demonstrate not only how much our view of Venice has changed in the past twenty-five years but also how much the Venetians' representation of themselves changed over the half millennium of the Republic's history. Nicholas Davidson, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002
ISBN-13: 978-0801873089

Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice. Thomas F. Madden

Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, Venice transformed itself from a struggling merchant commune to a powerful maritime empire that would shape events in the Mediterranean for the next four hundred years. In this magisterial new book on medieval Venice, Thomas F. Madden traces the city-state's extraordinary rise through the life of Enrico Dandolo (c. 1107–1205), who ruled Venice as doge from 1192 until his death. The scion of a prosperous merchant family deeply involved in politics, religion, and diplomacy, Dandolo led Venice's forces during the disastrous Fourth Crusade (1201–1204), which set out to conquer Islamic Egypt but instead destroyed Christian Byzantium. Yet despite his influence on the course of Venetian history,we know little about Dandolo, and much of what is known has been distorted by myth.
The first full-length study devoted to Dandolo's life and times, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice corrects the many misconceptions about him that have accumulated over the centuries, offering an accurate and incisive assessment of Dandolo's motives, abilities, and achievements as doge, as well as his role—and Venice's—in the Fourth Crusade. Madden also examines the means and methods by which the Dandolo family rose to prominence during the preceding century, thus illuminating medieval Venice's singular political, social, and religious environment. Culminating with the crisis precipitated by the failure of the Fourth Crusade, Madden's groundbreaking work reveals the extent to which Dandolo and his successors became torn between the anxieties and apprehensions of Venice's citizens and its escalating obligations as a Mediterranean power.
In addition to a lively narrative, Madden offers a new interpretation of Venice's role in the Fourth Crusade. Choice
An elegantly constructed book that gives a new twist to the fourth crusade and a new perspective on the government and constitution of Venice at a critical moment in its development. International History Review
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0801885396.

Venice, Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo

When Venice was both a center of Renaissance culture and a gathering place for news from around the world, Marin Sanudo tried to write everything down. He was the finest diarist of his time, with a keen eye for the everyday and the monumental alike. Venice, Cità Excelentissima offers a broad and engaging introduction to Sanudo's detailed observations of life in his beloved city and the world it knew.
This expertly translated volume glimpses into Renaissance life at a spectacular time when Venice was at the top of its game. Organized thematically, the selections offer a Venetian's viewpoint of the glories of high culture, the gritty reality and sparkling drama of daily life, the perils of diplomacy and war, and the high-risk ventures of voyages and commerce. Here, the work of the Renaissance's most assiduous historian is finally given the accessibility it warrants and the merit it is due.
Marin Sanudo's diaries are like having a New York Times for thirty years of the Venetian Renaissance. Pulsing with life, his fifty-six close-packed volumes illuminate government, crime, justice, intrigue, the economy, the arts, architecture, war on land and sea, and the fascinating personality of Sanudo himself. A book as scintillating and colorful as the jewel of cities that it chronicles, this crystalline translation and fascinating commentary make the most important source for Venetian history available in English for the first time. (Joseph Connors, Director, Villa I Tatti, Florence)

The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0801887659

Venice: Pure City. Peter Ackroyd

Even during the dominance of the Roman Empire, Venice and Venetians were regarded as distinct by their neighbors. They spoke Latin, and later Italian, in an unusual dialect. Their geographic position as an island in a lagoon contributed to their fierce spirit of independence, but it also positioned them to control trade routes to and from the East. Ackroyd, the novelist, biographer, and writer of tributes to great urban centers (London), has captured the rich tradition, beauty, and vibrancy of this magnificent city in a survey that combines political and artistic history with aspects of a travelogue. Ackroyd moves back and forth in time as he examines the growth of Venice, from prehistoric settlement to its place in both the Roman and Byzantine empires to the present time. As he describes the development of the art and architectural treasures, he includes informative and charming diversions on various traditions, events, and personalities. For those who have visited or hope to visit the “Pearl of the Adriatic,” this work will be a treasure.
“Ackroyd — the marvelously erudite and staggeringly industrious English writer — [has compiled] an encyclopedic amount of general and arcane factual information and then [arranged] it less chronologically than thematically — much as one might encounter it in the course of a long walk over fascinating terrain in the company of a knowledgeable but never pedantic companion. It's an experience rendered all the more agreeable by the independent turn of Ackroyd's critical imagination and lapidary quality of his prose.” —Los Angeles Times
"Venice tends to provoke extreme reactions. People love it or hate it. Ackroyd’s response, however, is pleasingly complex. He observes his subject with a forensic yet morally neutral eye. You can tell he is fascinated by the place; but he is not blind to its many flaws." —The Times
Nan A. Talese, 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0385531528
PETER ACKROYD is the author of Thames; London: The Biography; Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination; Shakespeare; acclaimed biographies of T. S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More; several successful novels; and the series Ackroyd’s Brief Lives. He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the South Bank Award for Literature.

Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice's Maritime State. Monique O'Connell

The city-state of Venice, with a population of less than 100,000, dominated a fragmented and fragile empire at the boundary between East and West, between Latin Christian, Greek Orthodox, and Muslim worlds. In this institutional and administrative history, Monique O'Connell explains the structures, processes, practices, and laws by which Venice maintained its vast overseas holdings.
The legal, linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity within Venice's empire made it difficult to impose any centralization or unity among its disparate territories. O'Connell has mined the vast archival resources to explain how Venice's central government was able to administer and govern its extensive empire.
O'Connell finds that successful governance depended heavily on the experience of governors, an interlocking network of noble families, who were sent overseas to negotiate the often conflicting demands of Venice's governing council and the local populations. In this nexus of state power and personal influence, these imperial administrators played a crucial role in representing the state as a hegemonic power; creating patronage and family connections between Venetian patricians and their subjects; and using the judicial system to negotiate a balance between local and imperial interests.
In explaining the institutions and individuals that permitted this type of negotiation, O'Connell offers a historical example of an early modern empire at the height of imperial expansion.
O'Connell offers an excellent guide to how Venice ruled its empire. - Choice
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0801891458

Средневековая Венеция. Жан-Клод Оке

Когда-то Венеция была столицей могущественной республики, имевшей большое влияние в Средиземноморье. Ныне это прекрасно сохранившийся древний город, история которого тесным образом связана с историей европейской культуры. Французский историк Ж.-К.Оке в своей книге "Средневековая Венеция" ограничивает "время действия" рамками 1500 года. По мнению автора, именно средневековый период Венецианской республики наиболее интересен, так как в это время здесь в полной мере определились черты уникальной цивилизации, оказав на Европу важное культурное и политическое влияние.

Издательство: Вече, 2006 г.
ISBN 5-9533-1622-4

Venice: Lion City: The Religion of Empire. Garry Wills

The tiny island city-state of Venice was, for a time, one of the greatest maritime powers the world has ever known, its influence extending far beyond the Mediterranean. Garry Wills, well known for his studies of American political history, travels far afield to explore Renaissance Venice at the height of its power.
Venice, Wills writes, was "not an ideal state." Its champions would claim otherwise; they held a view of Venetian "exceptionalism," an idea that the city-state, like its classical Athenian model, was somehow destined for great things. It achieved many of them, gathering phenomenal wealth through the monopolies of its many guilds, floating great navies that controlled the seas, and building a splendid, renowned city. Wills profiles the leaders, great families, corporations, and institutions (including what he calls a "gerontocracy" of elder statesmen) that allowed such growth, as well as women, ordinary workers, and other actors who do not often figure in histories of the period. He examines the religious beliefs and worldly wisdom that motivated and justified the Venetian impulse to achieve wealth and power, and he takes his readers on a learned tour of Venice's architectural and artistic glories--many of which survive today.
No, it was not ideal, Wills concludes, "just better than most of those around it--better able to sustain, over a long period, whatever ideals it had." His account of those ideals and the city they made will appeal to a wide audience of readers.

Образование Венецианской колониальной империи. Соколов Н.П.

В основу монографии легла докторская диссертация завкафедрой всеобщей истории Горьковского университета профессора Николая Петровича Соколова (1890-1979). В работе описывается ход превращения Венеции из городской аристократической республики св. Марка в империю Восточного Средиземноморья (конец X – первая половина XIII в.), анализируются его внутренние пред-посылки и внешнеполитические аспекты, включая отно-шения с Византией, роль Венеции в организации IV крестового похода.

Издательство Саратовского университета, 1963.

полный текст книги

The Trouble with City Planning by Kristina Ford

After the vast destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faces a rare chance to rebuild, with an unprecedented opportunity to plan what gets built. As the city's director of planning from 1992 until 2000, Kristina Ford is uniquely placed to use these opportunities as a springboard for an eye-opening discussion of the intransigent problems and promising possibilities facing city planners across the nation and beyond. In "The Trouble with City Planning", Ford argues that almost no part of our usual understanding of the phrase 'city planning' is accurate: not our conception of the plan itself, nor our sense of what city planners do or who plans are made for or how planners determine what citizens want. Most important, our conventional understanding does not tell us how a plan affects what gets built in any city in America. Ford advances several planning innovations that, if adopted, could be crucial for restoring New Orleans, but also transformative wherever citizens are troubled by the results of their city's plan. This keenly intelligent book is destined to become a classic for planners and citizens alike.
"In what should be regarded as one of the best urban planning texts to come off the presses in the past decade, Ford traces the origins, evolution, and practices of city planning, outlines its troubles, and offers a cogent remedy for its plight."—Books and Culture
“A thoughtful, engaging, and cautionary account of the interaction of professional planners, politicians, developers, and citizens in contemporary American cities. The message that planning can and must do better with respect to daily decision making, as well as big and recalcitrant but now urgent problems, and that informed citizens are crucial to this, is timely and important.”—Alan Plattus, Yale University

Yale University Press , 2011
ISBN: 9780300177428

Symphonies Nos. 2 & 6 David Matthews

You can't stop David Matthews writing symphonies... and please don't try. Both symphonies here... reveal his lively Englishness and bright ear for colour. The glorious Sixth, grounded in a Vaughan Williams hymn tune, also shows a flair for large structures. Jac van Steen and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales give persuasive performances; the Second's journey from innocence to experience is especially thrilling. - The Times

2011 BBC Music Magazine Award

Dutton CDLX 7234

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Death in Venice: Britten Benjamin

Performer: Conductor: Bruno Bartoletti
Direction & costumes: Pierluigi Pizzi
Chorus director: Alfonso Caiani
Choreography: Gheorghe Iancu
Gustav von Aschenbach - Marlin Miller
Voice of Apollo - R.-François Bitar
Traveller and other roles - Scott Hendricks
Tadzio - Alessandro Riga
Jaschiu - Danilo Palmieri
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice, Venice 2008

No other production of this opera has so successfully transported the audience through a series of fully conceived sets...Marlin Miller sings with a refined lyrical sensibility...the beauty and grandeur of the production on DVD make it an exceptional treat. It is unlikely we will see a Death in Venice to rival this one visually for a long time. - Gramophone
Gramophone Awards 2011 finalist
Dynamic: 33608

The Fairy Queen

Purcell

Jonathan Kent’s spectacular production of Purcell’s huge semi-opera is joyous, imaginative and witty. Glyndebourne, with its intimate auditorium, provides the perfect setting for a drama which is partly spoken and partly sung. Based on an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the story is lavished with a brilliance that justifies this production’s acclaim. Paul Brown’s inventive designs, Kim Brandstrup’s exquisite choreography, an excellent cast of actors and singers and outstanding playing by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under William Christie combine to make a seamless theatrical experience, here recorded in High Definition and true surround sound.

“There are too many highlights to mention in this varied and infinitely delightful entertainment. Glyndebourne has a triumph on its hands.” The Stage

2011 BBC Music Magazine Award

Opus Arte 1031 D

Dan Cruickshank's Adventures in Architecture

BBC: Шедевры мировой архитектуры (4 DVD)

Историк и ученый Дэн Крикшэнк предлагает зрителям совершить увлекательный и познавательный вояж по самым знаменитым памятникам архитектуры, которые оказали огромное влияние на историю человечества, восхитили нас и изменили наше восприятие мира. Сопоставляя между собой совершенно разные по стилю со-оружения, вы увидите, сколь искусно они были сделаны, как связаны между собой и поразитесь, насколько сильно в них отразились стремления и убеждения людей.

Дэн Крикшанк — остроумный и обаятельный дедушка с BBC — путешествует по самым необычным зданиям, которые когда-либо создали люди. Он строит юрты вместе с эскимосами на Северном полюсе и складывает хижины в тропиках из пальмовых листьев, залезает на вершину небоскрёба и оказывается на заброшенных развалинах храмов Центральной Америки. Архитектура для него способ прикоснуться к другим эпохам и понять совсем других людей: в фильме почти не рассказывается о зданиях, изменивших историю архитектуры, зато подробно объясняется, что обязательно должно стоять в кухне настоящего брахмана. - Lookatme

Page One-Inside the New York Times

Director: Andrew Rossi

In the tradition of great fly-on-the-wall documentaries, the film deftly gains unprecedented access to the New York Times newsroom and the inner workings of the Media Desk. With the Internet surpassing print as our main news source and newspapers all over the country going bankrupt, Page One chronicles the transformation of the media industry at its time of greatest turmoil. Writers like Brian Stelter, Tim Arango and the salty but brilliant David Carr track print journalism’s metamorphosis even as their own paper struggles to stay vital and solvent, while their editors and publishers grapple with up-to-the-minute issues like controversial new sources and the implications of an online pay-wall. Meanwhile, rigorous journalism is thriving—Page One gives us an up-close look at the vibrant cross-cubicle debates and collaborations, tenacious jockeying for on-record quotes, and skillful page-one pitching that brings the most venerable newspaper in America to fruition each and every day.
"Pick of the Week" -Time Out NY
"A VITAL, INDISPENSABLE HELL-RAISER. Potent and provocative." -Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"Slick, fun, and surprisingly sexy." -John Lopez, Vanity Fair
"Essential viewing for news junkies" -Stephen Garrett, Esquire
"EXCELLENT. It's a movie with heroes, villains (sort of), humor, anxiety, anger, hope and conflict, that just happens to be true. It also happens to be a film anyone who cares about the future should see." -Mark Rabinowitz, CNN

BBC: Сила искусства. (8 DVD)

Часть 1. Караваджо. Рембрандт / BBC: Сила искусства. Часть 2. Пикассо. Бернини / BBC: Сила искусства. Часть 3. Давид. Тернер / BBC: Сила искусства. Часть 4. Ван Гог. Ротко

"Этот цикл фильмов совсем не похож на утомительную прогулку по музеям мира. Вместо этого предлагаем Вам нечто необычное и захватывающее, похожее на прыжок с парашютом в вулкан творческого воображения восьми гениев живописи: Караваджо, Рембрандта, Пикассо, Ван Гога, Тернера, Ротко, Давида, Бернини. Только так можно представить, почувствовать и оценить, как же создавались величайшие шедевры живописи на Земле". Симон Шама

Британский историк искусства Саймон Шама придумал «The Power of Art» как цикл из 8 документальных передач, посвящённых одному шедевру каждого из художников: Караваджо, Бернини, Рембрандту, Давиду, Тёрнеру, Ван Гогу, Пикассо и Ротко. Но за каждой историей шедевра в его фильмах стоит фигура автора, его современников, тогдашней моды и образа жизни. Таким образом история одной картины превращается в убедительный детальный слепок названной эпохи: от Позднего Ренессанса до середины 20 века. Один из самых дорогих документальных фильмов об искусстве содержит огромное количество исторических врезок, архивных материалов и монологи пристрастного и увлечённого Шамы. - Lookatme

Визуальная антропология: городские карты памяти

Под редакцией Павла Романова, Елены Ярской-Смирновой (Библиотека Журнала исследований социальной политики). М.: ООО «Вариант», ЦСПГИ, 2009

«Городские карты памяти» представляют возможность исторических экскурсов и когнитивную реконструкцию повседневного опыта. Эта книга стала продолжением издательской инициативы Центра социальной политики и гендерных исследований в области визуального анализа. Авторы обращаются к исследованию символической организации городского пространства, применяя методологию картирования городской среды, изучают способы восприятия и освоения людьми городских контекстов, интерпретируют репрезентации в массовой культуре и дискурсы о городских путешествиях, обсуждая очертания городов, меняющиеся под влиянием социальной и культурной политики. Пристально вглядываясь в городские ареалы и миры, исследователи обращают внимание на разнообразные универсумы жизненных стилей, рассматривают их социальную организацию и культурные практики в динамике глобального и локального, в условиях постоянно обновляемых технологий коммуникации. Издание адресовано антропологам, социологам, культурологам, всем тем, кого интересуют возможности и принципы визуальных исследований культуры и общества.

The History of the Mongol Conquests J. J. Saunders

The History of the Mongol Conquests
J. J. Saunders

The Mongol conquests, culminating with the invasion of Europe in the middle of the thirteenth century, were of a scope and range never equaled. These nomadic peoples from central Asia briefly held sway over an empire that stretched across Asia to the frontiers of Germany and the shores of the Adriatic. Surprisingly little has been written on this vast and immensely influential empire, known chiefly through the charismatic leaders, Chingis Khan and Kublai Khan.

J. J. Saunders's landmark book, first published in 1972, is a carefully documented introductory history of the rise and fall of the great Mongol empire. Saunders sets the historical stage with a discussion of nomad groups and cultures at the dawn of the second millennium, and then traces the rise of the Mongol conquests through the earlier Turkish expansion into Asia between the eighth and twelfth centuries. Beginning in the early 1200s, the Mongols led by Chingis Khan began their insatiable assault on all the kingdoms and peoples around them, erasing whole cities, killing entire populations, forcing mass migrations, and permanently changing the distribution of the world's major religions. The Mongols were finally checked along the edges of Europe and forced out of the Middle East by rejuvenated Muslim factions.

As Saunders concludes, one of the major legacies of the Mongol conquests was the transfer of intellectual and scientific primacy of the Old World from Islamic societies to Western Europe, paving the way for the Renaissance.

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001
ISBN-10: 0812217667 ISBN-13: 978-0812217667

Чингиз-хан и Чингизиды. Судьба и власть Т. И. Султанов

Чингиз-хан. Величайший полководец и завоеватель Азии. Основатель огромной, могущественной империи, которая начала распадаться вскоре после его смерти. Какова была судьба его потомков и созданных ими государств — Моголистана, Чагатайского улуса и хорошо знакомой российским читателям Золотой Орды? Кто из Чингизидов и какими путями приходил к высшей власти? Как наследовался престол, на который имели равные права все Чингизиды? Это — лишь немногие из вопросов, на которые отвечает книга знаменитого отечественного тюрколога профессора Т.И. Султанова.

АСТ, АСТ Москва, 2006 г.
ISBN 5-17-035804-0, 5-9713-1680-X

История монголов

Монгольская империя. Она охватила практически всю Евразию, и лишь на территории Венгрии монголов остановили, вынудив повернуть назад, - но даже тогда им удалось сохранить все завоеванные ранее земли.

Эта средневековая империя рассматривается многими как несомненный исторический феномен. Исследования его предпринимались неоднократно.

Путевые записки францисканского монаха Иоанна Плано Карпини и фламандского путешественника Виллема Рубрука сохранили для нас картины неповторимого мира монгольской цивилизации, долгое время остававшейся для Западной Европы настоящей загадкой - и в силу своей исторической, географической, ментальной расположенности; и - в силу военно-политической ситуации XIII века, когда монгольская конница, словно ураган, прошла с востока на запад по евроазиатскому континенту.
Представленный в записках этнографическое, историческое и географическое описание монголов дает читателю возможность сложить собственное представление об этом удивительном этническом феномене, оставившем свой глубокий след в нашем прошлом.

Основополагающий труд великого отечественного ученого Н.Я.Бичурина (Иакинфа) считается во всем мире классической работой по истории монголов.


Никита Бичурин История четырех ханов из дома Чингисова
Джиованни дель Плано Карпини История монгалов, именуемых нами татарами
Гильом де Рубрук Путешествие в восточные страны
Марко Поло Книга Марко Поло
Стэнли Лэн-Пуль Монголы XIII-XVIII веков

АСТ, АСТ Москва, Хранитель, Мидгард, 2008 г.
ISBN 978-5-17-047433-2, 978-5-9713-6581-5, 978-5-9762-4742-0

Джек Уэзерфорд Чингисхан и рождение современного мира

Чингисхан. Один из величайших завоевателей в мировой истории. Правитель, покоривший множество стран и народов. Сын нищих изгнанников, ставший могущественным монархом и непобедимым военачальником. Но каким он был в реальности?
Ответ на этот вопрос вам предлагает великолепная книга Джека Уэзерфорда — известного американского ученого, работавшего в закрытых прежде для иностранцев районах Монголии — родины Чингисхана — и включившего в свое исследование уникальные материалы.


АСТ, 2008 г. ISBN 978-5-17-048486-7, 5-17-031548-1, 978-5-17-031548-2

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

It is a narrative of the rise and impact of Genghis Khan, and of his successors. In addition to various accounts in English, it refers to three major non-Western sources: The Secret History of the Mongols, the Ta' rīkh-i jahān-gushā of Juvayni and the Jami al-Tawarikh of Rashid-al-Din Hamadani. Weatherford has the ambition to present Genghis Khan in a far more positive light than traditional Western historiography. The last section of the book deals with historiography of Genghis Khan in the West and argues that his earlier image as an "excellent, noble king" was converted into that of a bloodthirsty pagan during the Age of Enlightenment.

“Reads like the Iliad. . . Part travelogue, part epic narrative.” — Washington Post
“Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongol’s reputation, and it takes wonderful learned detours. . . . Well written and full of suprises.” — Kirkus Reviews
2004 New York Times Best Seller book
Broadway, 2005. ISBN-10: 0609809644 ISBN-13: 978-0609809648

Л.Грэхэм, Ж.-М.Кантор «Имена бесконечности: правдивая история о религиозном мистицизме и математическом творчестве»

Перевод с английского, совсем новая книга (оригинал — 2009). Биография нескольких французских и русских математиков конца XIX — начала XX века; и история об отношениях математики и религиозного мистицизма. «Центральный сюжет этой книги — соревнование французских и русских математиков, искавших новый ответ на один из старейших вопросов математики — на вопрос о природе бесконечности. Французская школа шла по пути рационалистических решений. Российские же ученые, в частности Дмитрий Егоров и Николай Лузин — основатели знаменитой московской математической школы — руководствовались совсем иными идеями. Они вдохновлялись религиозными прозрениями имяславия — мистического православного движения, заключающегося в особом почитании имени божьего и оформившегося первоначального в среде русских монахов на Афоне. После выдворения имяславцев с Афона в 1913 году они оказались рассеяны по всей России, само же учение, однако, сохранило существенное влияние в среде интеллектуалов. Именно эта религиозная практика и послужила толчком для одного из крупнейших прорывов в математике, позволив русским ученым заглянуть в бесконечное и открыть дескриптивную теорию множеств». - Афиша

Издательство Европейского университета в Санкт-Петербурге, 2011

Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikötter

Otto von Bismarck 'made' Germany but never 'ruled' it. He was a political genius who remade Europe and united Germany between 1862 and 1890 by the sheer power of his great personality and for twenty eight years he acted as a prime minister but without a party.
This biography takes the reader into close proximity with a human being of almost superhuman abilities and one of the most interesting human beings who ever lived. It uses the diaries and letters of his contemporaries to explore a man who never said a dull thing or wrote a slack sentence. We see him through the eyes of his secretaries, his old friends, his neighbours, his enemies and the press. Bismarck’s personality combined creative and destructive traits, generosity and pettiness, tolerance and ferocious enmity, courtesy and rudeness - in short, not only the most important nineteenth-century statesman but by far the most entertaining.
Jonathan Steinberg served for 33 years at Cambridge University as University Lecturer and then Reader in European History, Fellow of Trinity Hall, and Vice-Master. He now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Modern European History. Steinberg has written on twentieth century Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.
Samuel Johnson Prize 2011 Shortlist

Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg

Otto von Bismarck 'made' Germany but never 'ruled' it. He was a political genius who remade Europe and united Germany between 1862 and 1890 by the sheer power of his great personality and for twenty eight years he acted as a prime minister but without a party.

This biography takes the reader into close proximity with a human being of almost superhuman abilities and one of the most interesting human beings who ever lived. It uses the diaries and letters of his contemporaries to explore a man who never said a dull thing or wrote a slack sentence. We see him through the eyes of his secretaries, his old friends, his neighbours, his enemies and the press. Bismarck’s personality combined creative and destructive traits, generosity and pettiness, tolerance and ferocious enmity, courtesy and rudeness - in short, not only the most important nineteenth-century statesman but by far the most entertaining.

Jonathan Steinberg served for 33 years at Cambridge University as University Lecturer and then Reader in European History, Fellow of Trinity Hall, and Vice-Master. He now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Modern European History. Steinberg has written on twentieth century Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.

Samuel Johnson Prize 2011 Shortlist

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley, acclaimed author of the classics Genome and Nature via Nurture, turns from investigating human nature to investigating human progress. In The Rational Optimist, Ridley offers a counterblast to the prevailing pessimism of our age, and proves, however much we like to think to the contrary, that things are getting better.
Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.
In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other.
Matt Ridley received his BA and D. Phil at Oxford researching the evolution of behaviour. He has been science editor, Washington correspondent and American editor of The Economist. His books have sold over half a million copies, been translated into 25 languages and been shortlisted for six literary prizes. In 2007 Matt won the Davis Prize from the US History of Science Society for Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code. He is married to the neuroscientist Professor Anya Hurlbert.

Уинстон Черчилль Вторая мировая война. В 6 томах (комплект из 3 книг)

К 65-летию Победы "Альпина нон-фикшн" издает трехтомную историю Второй мировой войны Черчилля. Комплект выходит тиражом в 5000 экземпляров с качественной полиграфией.
В трех книгах публикуется в сокращенном переводе с английского шеститомное издание мемуаров бывшего премьер-министра Великобритании. Автор приводит малоизвестные исторические факты, характеристики видных государственных и военных деятелей, документы предвоенного и военного времени. Этот грандиозный труд, написанный выдающимся политиком, скрупулезным историком и талантливым литератором, позволяет читателю ощутить дух эпохи и драматизм описываемых событий. Книга рассчитана на широкий круг читателей.

Дали и я Dali and I: The surreal Story. Лоуриссенс Стэн

Международный бестселлер - биография ("тайная история") Дали, написанная в тюрьме арт-дилером, осужденным за торговлю картинами сомнительными "дали" и перековавшимся в писатели - Лоуриссенс стал автором детективов и даже был награжден премией Эркюля Пуаро за лучший детективный роман года. Текст очень живой, написан от "я". Дали, утверждает Лоуриссенс, который, скрываясь от следствия, провел много времени в Каталонии, общаясь с богемным окружением мастера, не просто прекрасно знал о том, что его работы подделывались, - но и сам потворствовал фальсификаторам. Дали был не только художником; этот успешный арт-проект был фабрикой, на которой производились очень большие деньги. В общем, книга-разоблачение; интересная.

АСТ, АСТ Москва, 2010 г.
Твердый переплет, 256 стр.
ISBN 978-5-17-049410-1, 978-5-403-02930-8

Самодержец пустыни. Барон Р. Ф. Унгерн-Штернберг и мир, в котором он жил. Леонид Юзефович

Новое, исправленное и расширенное почти вдвое издание книги «Самодержец пустыни: барон Р.Ф. Унгерн-Штернберг и мир, в котором он жил», Opus Magnum лауреата премий «Национальный бестселлер» (2001) и «Большая книга» (2009) Леонида Юзефовича, представляет собой документальную биографию одного из самых загадочных персонажей русской истории ХХ века. Знаменитый «черный барон» Роман Федорович Унгерн-Штернберг (1886 – 1921) прославился не только своей жестокостью, но и небывалым утопическим проектом спасения умирающей европейской цивилизации по принципу ex oriente lux («свет с востока»). Белый генерал, буддист и муж китайской принцессы, в 1921 году он со своей Азиатской дивизией разгромил китайские войска в Монголии, освободив ее из-под власти Пекина, после чего вторгся в Советскую Россию, но был захвачен в плен и расстрелян. В книге объемом более 600 страниц (около 100 фотографий, многие из которых публикуются впервые) читателю предлагается совершить необыкновенное по экзотичности путешествие во времени и пространстве, погрузившись в атмосферу Гражданской войны на востоке России, монгольского буддизма и Серебряного века русской культуры.

На самом деле в книге двое рассказчиков: скептик иронизирует над «барабанной мистикой» вокруг барона и демонстрирует нам комическое несоответствие идеи материальному миру. Романтик транслирует величие Монголии, матки очень странных людей и идей. Сейчас кажется, что Унгерну повезло с биографом больше, чем биографу — с героем. - Афиша

Юзефович описывает странную эпоху, в которой коммунисты верили в древние сказания, а новейшее на тот момент вооружение — пулеметы и аэропланы — сосуществовало в войсках с древнейшими суевериями. Однако «Самодержец пустыни» — это не просто качественный нон-фикшн. Книга Юзефовича может стать примером того, как писать хороший исторический науч-поп. - Ведомости

История в изложении Юзефовича соперничает в причудливой увлекательности с важнейшими текстами современной литературы, от Сорокина до Пелевина, а в некотором смысле и превосходит их. - Эксперт

Издательство: Ад Маргинем, 2010 г.
ISBN 978-5-91103-102-2

Университетское пространство и его обитатели. Ирина Кулакова

Книга И.П.Кулаковой посвящена историко-культурной коллизии, сложившейся в Москве 2-й половины XVIII века. Московский университет, возникший здесь в 1755 г. по воле государства, был создан по образцу западноевропейских университетов. Однако он не стал слепком с чужеродной культуры, испытывая влияние российских культурных традиций и вполне конкретного городского окружения. В книге анализируются "тектонические" процессы, идущие как внутри университетского сообщества, так и в русской культуре в целом. Театр и сады Москвы, масонские объединения и газета, научные общества и городские гуляния - эти и многие другие явления оказались связаны с университетом. А его открытость, многоаспектность его влияния на окружающее культурное пространство, патриархальные черты - это те особенности Московского университета, которые закладывались в XVIII в. и определили его характер в дальнейшем.

Новый хронограф, 2006 г.
ISBN 5-94881-013-5

Премия Просветитель - 2011 лонг-лист

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

In a wide-ranging intellectual career, Michel de Montaigne found no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well. By casting her biography of the writer as 20 chapters, each focused on a different answer to the question How to live? Bakewell limns Montaigne’s ceaseless pursuit of this most elusive knowledge. Embedded in the 20 life-knowledge responses, readers will find essential facts—when and where Montaigne was born, how and whom he married, how he became mayor of Bordeaux, how he managed a public life in a time of lethal religious and political passions. But Bakewell keeps the focus on the inner evolution of the acute mind informing Montaigne’s charmingly digressive and tolerantly skeptical essays. Flexible and curious, this was a mind at home contemplating the morality of cannibals, the meaning of his own near-death experience, and the puzzlingly human behavior of animals. And though Montaigne has identified his own personality as his overarching topic, Bakewell marvels at the way Montaigne’s prose has enchanted diverse readers—Hazlitt and Sterne, Woolf and Gide—with their own reflections. Because Montaigne’s capacious mirror still captivates many, this insightful life study will win high praise from both scholars and general readers. - Booklist

“This charming biography shuffles incidents from Montaigne’s life and essays into twenty thematic chapters…Bakewell clearly relishes the anthropological anecdotes that enliven Montaigne’s work, but she handles equally well both his philosophical influences and the readers and interpreters who have guided the reception of the essays.” —The New Yorker

“Ms. Bakewell’s new book, How to Live, is a biography, but in the form of a delightful conversation across the centuries.” —The New York Times

“So artful is Bakewell’s account of [Montaigne] that even skeptical readers may well come to share her admiration.” — The New York Times Book Review

“Extraordinary…a miracle of complex, revelatory organization, for as Bakewell moves along she provides a brilliant demonstration of the alchemy of historical viewpoint.” —Boston Globe

“[Bakewell reveals] one of literature's enduring figures as an idiosyncratic, humane, and surprisingly modern force.” —Publisher’s Weekly (starred)

National Book Critics Circle Awards Winner