Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference by Jane Burbank & Frederick Cooper

2011 World History Association Book Prize
CHOICE Magazine's 2010 Outstanding Academic Titles

Empires--vast states of territories and peoples united by force and ambition--have dominated the political landscape for more than two millennia. Empires in World History departs from conventional European and nation-centered perspectives to take a remarkable look at how empires relied on diversity to shape the global order. Beginning with ancient Rome and China and continuing across Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Africa, Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine empires' conquests, rivalries, and strategies of domination--with an emphasis on how empires accommodated, created, and manipulated differences among populations.

Burbank and Cooper examine Rome and China from the third century BCE, empires that sustained state power for centuries. They delve into the militant monotheism of Byzantium, the Islamic Caliphates, and the short-lived Carolingians, as well as the pragmatically tolerant rule of the Mongols and Ottomans, who combined religious protection with the politics of loyalty. Burbank and Cooper discuss the influence of empire on capitalism and popular sovereignty, the limitations and instability of Europe's colonial projects, Russia's repertoire of exploitation and differentiation, as well as the "empire of liberty"--devised by American revolutionaries and later extended across a continent and beyond.

With its investigation into the relationship between diversity and imperial states, Empires in World History offers a fresh approach to understanding the impact of empires on the past and present.

Жили-были старик со старухой. Елена Катишонок

Короткий список «Русского Букера» 2009
"Ясная Поляна"- 2010, Номинация «XXI век»

Роман "Жили-были старик со старухой", по точному слову Майи Кучерской, - повествование о судьбе семьи староверов, заброшенных в начале прошлого века в Остзейский край, там осевших, переживших у синего моря войны, разорение, потери и все-таки выживших, спасенных собственной верностью самым простым, но главным ценностям.

"...Эта история захватывает с первой страницы и не отпускает до конца романа. Живые, порой комичные, порой трагические типажи, "вкусный" говор, забавные и точные "семейные словечки", трогательная любовь и великое русское терпение - все это сразу берет за душу. Прекрасный язык. Пронзительная ясность бытия. Непрерывность рода и памяти - все то, по чему тоскует сейчаjavascript:void(0)с настоящий читатель". Дина Рубина

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of our most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many fields—including economics, medicine, and politics—but until now, he has never brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book.
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
“A major intellectual event . . . The work of Kahneman and Tversky was a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.” —David Brooks, The New York Times
“The mind is a hilariously muddled compromise between incompatible modes of thought in this fascinating treatise by a giant in the field of decision research. Nobel-winning psychologist Kahneman (Attention and Effort) posits a brain governed by two clashing decision-making processes. The largely unconscious System 1, he contends, makes intuitive snap judgments based on emotion, memory, and hard-wired rules of thumb; the painfully conscious System 2 laboriously checks the facts and does the math, but is so "lazy" and distractible that it usually defers to System 1. Kahneman uses this scheme to frame a scintillating discussion of his findings in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, and of the ingenious experiments that tease out the irrational, self-contradictory logics that underlie our choices. We learn why we mistake statistical noise for coherent patterns; why the stock-picking of well-paid investment advisers and the prognostications of pundits are worthless; why businessmen tend to be both absurdly overconfident and unwisely risk-averse; and why memory affects decision making in counterintuitive ways. Kahneman's primer adds to recent challenges to economic orthodoxies about rational actors and efficient markets; more than that, it's a lucid, marvelously readable guide to spotting--and correcting--our biased misunderstandings of the world.” —Publishers' Weekly (starred review)

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 25, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-0374275631

Л. Пантелеев – Л. Чуковская. Переписка (1929–1987)

Переписка Алексея Ивановича Пантелеева (псевдоним Л.Пантелеев), автора "Часов", "Пакета", "Республики ШКИД" с Лидией Корнеевной Чуковской велась более пятидесяти лет (1929-1987). Они познакомились в 1929 году в редакции ленинградского Детиздата, где Лидия Корнеевна работала редактором и редактировала рассказ Пантелеева "Часы". Началась переписка, ставшая особенно интенсивной после войны. Лидия Корнеевна переехала в Москву, а Алексей Иванович остался в Ленинграде. Сохранилось более восьмисот писем обоих корреспондентов, из которых в книгу вошло около шестисот в сокращенном виде. Для печати отобраны страницы, представляющие интерес для истории отечественной литературы.

Письма изобилуют литературными событиями, содержат портреты многих современников - М.Зощенко, Е.Шварца, С.Маршака и отзываются на литературные дискуссии тех лет, одним словом, воссоздают картину литературных событий эпохи.

Издательство: Новое литературное обозрение

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

Erik Larson has been widely acclaimed as a master of narrative non-fiction, and in his new book, the bestselling author of Devil in the White City turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power.

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance--and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

Amazon Best Books of the Month
"By far his best and most enthralling work of novelistic history….Powerful, poignant…a transportingly true story."--The New York Times
"Terrific."--Los Angeles Times
“A stunning work of history.”--Newsweek
“Larson has meticulously researched the Dodds’ intimate witness to Hitler’s ascendancy and created an edifying narrative of this historical byway that has all the pleasures of a political thriller….a fresh picture of these terrrible events.”--The New York Times Book Review

Все и Ничто. Символические фигуры в искусстве второй половины XX века. Екатерина Андреева

Книга представляет собой аналитическую историю узловых моментов в развитии современного искусства. Основанная на цикле лекций, прочитанных в начале 2000-х годов, книга вобрала в себя сравнительное описание и анализ творчества западных (Дж.Поллок, Энди Уорхол, Ив Кляйн) и российских, в частности, петербургских (К.Малевич, В.Стерлигов, Е.Михнов-Войтенко, Тимур Новиков) художников. Их биографии, истории художественных движений и новых технологий составляют основной сюжет исследования.

Вторая половина ХХ века в мировом искусстве – время личных амбиций художников: арт-объект создаётся из подручных материалов, а галерея открывается уже при жизни художника. Художник не обращается ни к городу, ни к миру: он знает, что его свидетельство услышат и увидят в аскетическом пространстве его галереи. Что при этом происходит с привычными формами? Развитие дизайна, обустройство публичного пространства – только одна сторона происходящего в искусстве второй половины века. Екатерина Андреева, анализируя творчество И. Кляйна, Э. Уорхола и других знаменитостей, говорит об этом искусстве как искусстве узнаваемом, которое ни с чем не спутаешь. Но эти «торговые марки» бунтуют против усреднённого рынка вещей, с его стандартизацией и влечением к комфорту, предмет искусства должен доставлять дискомфорт, и быть настолько нестандартным, чтобы его ценили вовсе не за рыночную стоимость. Нужно уметь увидеть консервную банку не просто как материал для искусства, а как экспонат для музея, фонды которого неотчуждаемы и на продажу не выставляются. Конечно, рынок, с почтением склоняющийся перед арт-объектом дюшановского типа – оптимистическая картина возвращения смысла в нашу повседневность. Но есть что-то очень печальное в таком подходе: потребительский рынок давно привык обходиться без искусства, а может ли современное искусство обойтись без рынка? И как провести границы между частным и общественно значимым заявлением в искусстве – неужели полагаясь только на собственный вкус и культурный опыт? – Русский журнал

Издательство: Издательство Ивана Лимбаха
ISBN 978-5-89059-159-3; 2011 г.

Спокойный хаос. Сандро Веронези

Знаменитый итальянский писатель Сандро Веронези в романе "Спокойный хаос" через сложные драматические коллизии основных героев выводит читателей к простой истине: человека надо принимать таким, какой он есть. Человеческая натура с ее обыкновенностью и героизмом, силой и слабостью, разумом и инстинктами является главным объектом исследования автора романа.
За эту работу писатель удостоился нескольких престижных литературных премий (в том числе - итальянская премия Стрега и французская премия Фемина) и одного религиозного скандала: у читателей-католиков вызвало негодование подробное описание акта содомии. В целом же С.Веронези предложил нам очень важное произведение, зрелость и глубина которого схватывают самую суть человеческих отношений.
Выход главного романа актуального итальянского писателя ‒ одно из основных литературных событий Года Италии в России - Openspace.ru

Москва глазами архитектора. Владимир Резвин

В книге "Москва глазами архитектора" автор раскрывает осо-бенности эмоционального восприятия московской архитектуры, об­разно и доходчиво объясняет ее специфику, показывает прекрасное там, где люди порой не замечают ничего особенного: каким мы ви­дим город, как формируются первые впечатления о нем, как они ме­няются по мере знакомства с эволюцией отдельных фрагментов го­рода во время неторопливых прогулок? Сегодня, когда новое строи­тельство в исторической части Москвы, как правило, вступает в про­тиворечие с сохранившимися памятниками, взгляд архитектора-про­фессионал а на эту непростую проблему особенно важен.

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor

Mariinsky Concert Hall, St Petersburg, 12-16 September 2010.

Natalie Dessay (Lucia), Piotr Beczala (Edgardo), Vladislav Sulimsky (Enrico), Dmitry Voropaev (Arturo), Ilya Bannik (Raimondo), Zhanna Dombrovskaya (Alisa) & Sergei Skorokhodov (Normanno) Mariinsky Orchestra & Chorus, Valery Gergiev

The Mariinsky label’s opera recordings have garnered acclaim and awards from around the world, most recently for Valery Gergiev’s recording of Parsifal released in 2010. For the label’s fifth opera, Gergiev conducts Donizetti’s masterpiece with a magnificent cast led by Natalie Dessay. Natalie Dessay is one of the world’s most sought-after sopranos and an admired interpreter of lyric heroines. She is particularly renowned for her interpretation of the role of Lucia, which she has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House and the Mariinsky Theatre. Future engagements include Verdi’s La Traviata with the LSO at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July and at the Vienna State Opera in October.

“Here’s a Valery Gergiev recording in which, for once, the febrile maestro isn’t centre stage. This is all about Natalie Dessay’s performance as poor deluded Lucy. And if you thrill to the French soprano’s hypercharged, histrionic and occasionally wayward delivery of Donizetti’s mad scene, you will forgive the ebullient but sometimes rough-edged playing of the Mariinsky Orchestra...Top singing from Vladislav Sulimsky as Enrico.” The Times
“there is something distinctively Russian about this Lammermoor. All those Italian melodies flow beautifully...But there is a sense of drive and purpose about this performance that seems, to me at least, distinctively Slavic...Dessay structures [the Mad Scene] well, always saving something in reserve for the build-ups and outbursts. Some excellent glass harmonica playing from Sascha Reckert...An intense but satisfying experience.” Classical Review

Gramophone disc of the month

Britten: Songs & Proverbs of William Blake

The unbeatable, multi-award-winning partnership of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake turn to the composer Benjamin Britten for their latest Hyperion release.
Although Britten is particularly celebrated for the substantial body of music he composed for the tenor voice, the composer also left an important legacy of music for baritone. Characteristically, Britten’s output for low voice was also inspired by the talents of specific performers with whom he was closely associated, among them Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and John Shirley-Quirk. In addition to song-cycles, individual songs and folksong arrangements, Britten wrote challenging baritone roles in operas as diverse as Billy Budd (1951), Owen Wingrave (1970) and Death in Venice (1972)—the title role of the second of these made very much Gerald Finley’s own in his magnificent interpretation in Margaret Williams’s 2001 television film of the opera.
This disc contains Britten’s two important song cycles for baritone: Tit for Tat, setting the poems of Walter de la Mare, and the more substantial and challenging Songs and Proverbs of William Blake. The latter was written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; designed to showcase his unique blend of intense lyricism and dramatic characterization, qualities which are undoubtedly also exhibited by Gerald Finley.
Also included are some of Britten’s popular folksong settings, and a selection of later songs, which received exposure and publication only after the composer’s death in December 1976.

Gramophone Awards 2011. Best of Category - Solo Vocal
Hyperion: CDA67778

Жизнь за один день. Режиссеры: Кевин Макдональд, Наталья Андреадис.

Одна планета, 24 часа, 6 миллиардов точек зрения.



Летом 2010 года Youtube предложил пользователям заснять на видео свою жизнь в один конкретный день - 24 июля 2010 года. В результате было получено более 4,5 тысяч часов материала, из которых Кевин МакДональд и Ридли Скотт собрали грандиозную киномозаику, потрясающую величием замысла и высочайшим уровнем исполнения. В числе 60 стран, жители которых откликнулись на приглашение, оказались и кинолюбители из России - присланные ими сюжеты также вошли в общую картину мира, каким он был 24 июля прошлого года...

Engineering an Empire: Collector's Edition DVD Set

The Parthenon. Chichén Itzá. The Pyramids. Their scale, complexity, and sheer beauty stand as permanent reminders of the indomitable strength and ingenuity of the human spirit.
ENGINEERING AN EMPIRE: THE COLLECTOR S EDITION circles the globe to re-examine history s most magnificent civilizations by surveying the architectural and engineering triumphs they left behind. Beginning more than five-thousand years ago with the mind-boggling construction feats of the ancient Egyptians, the 14 documentaries--including two feature-length specials--in this collection revive the spectacular glory of the past, from the great temples of Greece to the majestic and mysterious Tenochtitlan. Cutting-edge CGI graphics and stunning location footage reanimate the ancient streets of such cities as Carthage and Rome, while expert interview trace the rise of each empire and the technological achievements that paved the way for their gravity-defying masterpieces.
Hosted by Peter Weller, ENGINEERING AN EMPIRE: THE COLLECTOR S EDITION unites each riveting moment of this critically-acclaimed and Emmy Award-winning series to reveal the innovation and infrastructure behind the world s most dazzling empires.
Engineering an Empire: Britain - Blood and Steel,
Engineering an Empire: Carthage,
Engineering an Empire: China,
Engineering an Empire: Da Vinci's World,
Engineering an Empire: Egypt,
Engineering an Empire: Greece,
Engineering an Empire: Greece - Age of Alexander,
Engineering an Empire: Napoleon - Steel Monster,
Engineering an Empire: Rome,
Engineering an Empire: Russia,
Engineering an Empire: The Aztecs,
Engineering an Empire: The Byzantines,
Engineering an Empire: The Maya - Death Empire,
Engineering an Empire: The Persians

SKU ID #70058

The Decades 20th Century DVD Collection by History Channel

Throughout history, every decade has its own unique identity, its touchstone moments - precise points in time that reside within history's collective memory. This unique series of DVD collections pulls together some of the finest programs in the HISTORY™ library to bring to life the most evocative and meaningful people and events of each decade in the 20th century. From disasters and technological marvels, to world-changing events and the personalities that caused them, the breadth of human experience is definitively and comprehensively presented as only HISTORY™ can.
1900 – 1909. The dawn of the 20th century brought with it stunning new technology - technology that would change the world - and public personalities that were larger than life. Relive the heady days at the birth of the Modern Age, and discover its more sobering moments, with this exceptional compilation of documentaries.
1910 – 1919. In the teens, a nation still recovering from its own growing pains was thrust onto the world stage and began its rise to the status of superpower. In THE DECADES COLLECTION: THE 1910s you will discover the genesis of World War I and the reality of life in the trenches; walk the decks of the "unsinkable" Titanic; witness the demise of a 300-year dynasty; and experience much more of this formative decade.
1920 – 1929. Following a decade of worldwide terror and deprivation, the Roaring Twenties were a swinging time of flappers, bathtub gin and high spirits. It was an exhilarating period when we could achieve anything, from flying across oceans, to discovering the mysteries of the past, to unlocking the secrets of life itself.
etc.

Хождения во Флоренцию. Флоренция и флорентийцы в русской культуре. Из века ХIХ в век ХХI

Под общ. ред. Е.Ю.Гениевой.
В антологии Флоренция представлена сквозь призму восприятия знаменитых русских: художников, поэтов, музыкантов, историков, философов, общественных деятелей XX века. Все они так или иначе выражали "тоску по Флоренции", тягу и любовь к Средиземноморью, к истокам европейской культуры. Открывают книгу письма художника В. А. Серова, написанные в конце XIX века, и завершает очерк современного историка-медиевиста М. Л. Абрамсон. Читатель познакомится со страницами воспоминаний, писем, стихотворений, очерков М. Нестерова, Б. Зайцева, Н. Бердяева, Вяч. Иванова, А. Ахматовой, О. Мандельштама, В. Вейдле, И. Бродского, А. Сахарова, А. Лосева, Л. Баткина, М. Розовского, П. Вайля и многих других. В расположении материала соблюдается авторский и хронологический принцип. В книге использованы старинные гравюры, фотографии первой трети XX века и цветные фотографии Сергея Ширяна. Издание подготовлено при участии Флорентийского общества в Москве и является логическим продолжением антологии "Хождения во Флоренцию. Флоренция и флорентийцы в русской культуре. Век XIX".
М.: Центр книги ВГБИЛ им. М.И.Рудомино, 2009.
Шорт-лист премии "Книга года", 2011 в номинации «Страна высоких вдохновений…»

Не надейтесь избавиться от книг! Жан-Клод Карьер, Умберто Эко

Вы привыкли читать с экрана компьютера, мобильного телефона, электронного "ридера"? Вы не ходите в книжные магазины и уж подавно в библиотеки? Вы надеетесь избавиться от книг?
"Не надейтесь!" - говорят два европейских интеллектуала, участники предлагаемой Вам дружеской беседы: "Книга - это как ложка, молоток, колесо или ножницы. После того, как они были изобретены, ничего лучшего уже не придумаешь".
Умберто Эко - знаменитый итальянский писатель, ученый-медиевист и семиотик. Жан-Клод Карьер - известный французский романист, историк, сценарист, актер, патриарх французского кинематографа, сотрудничавший с такими режиссерами, как Бунюэль, Годар, Вайда и Милош Форман.
Страсть обоих - книги: старые и новые, популярные и редкие, умные и глупые. И предмет своей страсти они отстаивают, пуская в ход всю свою эрудицию и остроумие.
Авторы легко переходят от серьезных тем - способов передачи знаний в культуре, роли папируса и мнемотехник, Интернета и электронных книг - к историческим анекдотам и бытовым курьезам. Между делом читатель узнает, почему "своими знаниями о прошлом мы обязаны кретинам, имбецилам или врагам", а "курицам понадобилось сто лет, чтобы научиться не переходить через улицу". И почему Умберто Эко прочел "Войну и мир" только в сорок лет.
Эта книга о судьбе книг - ностальгическое признание в любви и веская защитительная речь в пользу самой себя
Издательство: Симпозиум, 2010 г.
ISBN 978-5-89091-423-1

The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World. by Ben Wildavsky

In The Great Brain Race, former U.S. News & World Report education editor Ben Wildavsky presents the first popular account of how international competition for the brightest minds is transforming the world of higher education--and why this revolution should be welcomed, not feared. Every year, nearly three million international students study outside of their home countries, a 40 percent increase since 1999. Newly created or expanded universities in China, India, and Saudi Arabia are competing with the likes of Harvard and Oxford for faculty, students, and research preeminence. Satellite campuses of Western universities are springing up from Abu Dhabi and Singapore to South Africa. Wildavsky shows that as international universities strive to become world-class, the new global education marketplace is providing more opportunities to more people than ever before.
'Ben Wildavsky has given us the most thorough and penetrating account to date of how globalization is transforming higher education around the world. The details are rich and compelling, and Wildavsky's judgments are, in my opinion, unerring.'--Richard C. Levin, president, Yale University
Comprehensive and fascinating. . . . [Wildavsky] reports on American universities, notably NYU, branching out internationally; on foreign governments, like China's, spending vast sums to improve their own institutions, partly to attract scholars and students from abroad; on for-profit businesses, like Laureate and the Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan Inc., planting campuses in remote global locations. . . . This is Mr. Wildavsky's major argument. The globalization of education is producing what he calls a 'free trade in minds'--beneficial not only to countries sending their students abroad and countries accepting them but also, through positive externalities, to the broader world. -- James K. Glassman, Wall Street Journal
Academic globalisation has gone into overdrive in the modern university. Some of this is along familiar lines--academics collaborating with ever more foreign colleagues and sabbatical-seekers contriving to spend ever more time abroad. But Mr. Wildavsky demonstrates that globalisation is now much more complicated than just cross-border collaboration spiced up with junkets. . . . This is a fascinating story. -- Economist
Winner of the 2010 Philip E. Frandson Award
Honorable Mention for the 2010 PROSE Award for Excellence in Education
Princeton University Press
ISBN-13: 978-0691146898

Коллекция Оскара Уайльда

Застольные беседы
Впервые на русском языке
«Застольные беседы» Оскара Уайльда вышли на его родине через сто лет после его смерти. По свидетельствам современников писателя, его устные рассказы были едва ли не ярче его опубликованных произведений. Благодаря усилиям литературоведа Томаса Райта сорок два таких рассказа собраны теперь под одной обложкой и каждый из них сопровождает подробный комментарий составителя.

Портрет Дориана Грея
Полный вариант романа. перевод с английского Марии Абкиной
Художник — тот, кто создает прекрасное. Раскрыть людям себя и скрыть художника — вот к чему стремится искусство. Критик — это тот, кто способен в новой форме или новыми средствами передать свое впечатление от прекрасного. Высшая, как и низшая, форма критики — один из видов автобиографии. Те, кто в прекрасном находит дурное, — люди испорченные, и при том испорченность не делает их привлекательными. Это большой грех. Те, кто способен узреть в прекрасном его высокий смысл,—люди культурные. Они не безнадежны. Но избранник—тот, кто в прекрасном видит лишь одно: Красоту.

Портрет г-на У. Г. Рассказы. Эссе. Заметки. Дневники.
Впервые на русском языке
Третья книга "Коллекции Оскара Уайльда" включает значительную часть «малой прозы» Оскара Уайльда и фрагменты его «Оксфордского дневника», впервые переведенные на русский язык. Автор блестящих рассказов, Уайльд отдал немало лет журналистике, а также трудам, посвященным теории искусств. Дневниковые записи, сделанные им в студенческие годы, удивляют не только широтой интересов, но и поразительной для столь молодого человека глубиной осмысления философии и истории.

American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900. By H.W. Brands

In this timely study, University of Texas historian Brands (Traitor to His Class) describes the rise of the great corporate capitalists after the Civil War. J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie constituted an trinity of power-obsessed individuals who instinctively understood that wealth was the ultimate political weapon. They defined the cold-blooded authority of big business. Fascinating detours away from the tale of corporate empires examine the Reconstruction process in the South, the Indian Wars of the West, the opening of the Great Plains, immigration in the East, and the rise of organized labor and the agrarian reformers. Effectively, excerpts from the first-person accounts of Booker T. Washington, Black Elk, Jacob Riis, and others convey the drama of the time. Perhaps the only significant omission in this fast-paced, engrossing narrative is a tendency to dwell on political doctrines that sought to repudiate or restrain capitalism while only briefly discussing the dogma of Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism, which favored the monopolists. - Publishers Weekly
“A superb new history... A big, brash narrative.” —Bloomberg News
“A first-rate overview of one of the most important periods in American history... Brands is a terrific writer who commands his material, handles this sprawling, complicated story with authority and panache.” —The New York Times

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