Awesome Fifteenth Album and Music Offers

Serving as both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting and as a text on how to interpret social history from the style of pictures in a given historical period, this new edition to Baxandall's pre-eminent scholarly volume examines early Renaissance painting, and explains how the style of painting in any society reflects the visual skills and habits that evolve out of daily life. Renaissance painting, for example, mirrors the experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels. The volume includes discussions of a wide variety of painters, including Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Sandro Botticelli, Masaccio, Luca Signorelli, Boccaccio, and countless others. Baxandall also defines and illustrates sixteen concepts used by a contemporary critic of painting, thereby assembling the basic equipment needed to explore fifteenth-century art.
This new second edition includes an appendix that lists the original Latin and Italian texts referred to throughout the book, providing the reader with all the relevant, authentic sources. It also contains an updated bibliography and a new reproduction of a recently restored painting which replaces the original..
Price: $7.64 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The remarkable story of the Renaissance's preeminent financiers. "A swift and brilliant synthesis of finance, politics, and history "—Ben Sisario, New York Times Book Review

Their name is a byword for immense wealth and power, but before their renown as art patrons and noblemen the Medicis built their fortune on banking—specifically, on lending money at interest. Banking in the fifteenth century, even at the height of the Renaissance, meant running afoul of the Catholic Church's prohibition against usury. It required more than merely financial skills to make a profit, and the legendary Medicis—most famously Cosimo and Lorenzo ("the Magnificent")—were masterly in wielding the political, diplomatic, military, and even metaphysical tools that were needed to maintain their family's position.

In this brisk and witty narrative, Tim Parks uncovers the intrigues, dodges, and moral qualities that gave the Medicis their edge. Vividly evoking the richness of the Florentine Renaissance and the Medicis' glittering circle, replete with artists, popes, and kings, Medici Money is a brilliant look into the origins of modern banking and its troubled relationship with art and religion. 14 illustrations..
Price: $8.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A book to raise the spirits and warm the heart. Includes the famous Kindergarten essay that was read on the floor of the U.S. Senate.


From the Hardcover edition..
Price: $18.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When Zen master Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481) was appointed headmaster of the great temple at Kyoto, he lasted nine days before denouncing the rampant hypocrisy he saw among the monks there. He in turn invited them to look for him in the sake parlors of the Pleasure Quarters. A Zen monk-poet-calligrapher-musician, he dared to write about the joys of erotic love, along with more traditional Zen themes. He was an eccentric and genius who dared to defy authority and despised corruption. Although he lived during times plagued by war, famine, rioting, and religious upheaval, his writing and music prevailed, influencing Japanese culture to this day.

Stephen Berg is the Editor and founder of American Poetry Review.

Also available by Stephen Berg
Steel Cricket
PB $16.00, 1-55659-075-X CUSA
New & Selected Poems
PB $12.00, 1-55659-043-1 CUSA.
Price: $7.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A general introduction to medieval magic, containing a little-known handbook from the late Middle Ages. "Forbidden Rites is the best book on magic in the late Middle Ages and a great introduction to the problematic relations of magic and religion in general." —H. C. Erik Midelfort, University of Virginia Preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich is a manuscript that few scholars have noticed and that no one in modern times has treated with the seriousness it deserves. Forbidden Rites consists of an edition of this medieval Latin text with a full commentary, including detailed analysis of the text and its contents, discussion of the historical context, translation of representative sections of the text, and comparison with other necromantic texts of the late Middle Ages. The result is the most vivid and readable introduction to medieval magic now available.

Like many medieval texts for the use of magicians, this handbook is a miscellany rather than a systematic treatise. It is exceptional, however, in the scope and variety of its contents—prayers and conjurations, rituals of sympathetic magic, procedures involving astral magic, a catalogue of spirits, lengthy ceremonies for consecrating a book of magic, and other materials.

With more detail on particular experiments than the famous thirteenth-century Picatrix and more variety than the Thesaurus Necromatiae ascribed to Roger Bacon, the manual is one of the most interesting and important manuscripts of medieval magic that has yet come to light..
Price: $18.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This clearly written and engaging book presents a global narrative of the origins of the modern world. Unlike most studies, which assume that the rise of the West is the story of the coming of the modern world, this history, drawing upon new scholarship on Asia, Africa, and the New World, constructs a story in which those parts of the world play major roles. Robert Marks defines the modern world as one marked by industry, the nation state, interstate warfare, a large and growing gap between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the world, and an escape from the biological old regime. He explains its origins by emphasizing contingencies (such as the conquest of the New World); the broad comparability of the most advanced regions in China, India, and Europe; the reasons why England was able to escape from common ecological constraints facing all of those regions by the 18th century; and a conjuncture of human and natural forces that solidified a gap between the industrialized and non-industrialized parts of the world..
Price: $11.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The B-24 was heavily utilised in the North African and Mediterranean theatres by the USAAF's Fifteenth Air Force, with operations over the Ploesti oilfields in Rumania being some of the most famous missions undertaken by the big American 'heavy' in World War 2. The stirling work of the Fifteenth Air Force is often overshadowed by the glamorous 'Mighty Eighth', yet the men flying the B-24 fought ceaselessly right through to VE Day. This is the third of five titles planned to chart the operational history of the Consolidated heavy bomber, and is the first single volume to exclusively cover the Fifteenth Air Force's B-24 units..
Price: $13.65 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Step-by-step techniques obtained by the author during her sessions with a leading OCD specialist in NYC, who also endorsed and prefaced the book. Linda Maran knows firsthand the struggles and challenges of having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,thereby understanding the fears and weariness of other sufferers. Never dry or technical. Full of encouragement, tips and effective methods that work when applied as directed. Excellent for those who cannot obtain or afford the proper treatment for OCD. Also good for a support group setting. The author presents OCD as a harassing bully and shows the reader how to fight back. Her motto: "Don't let OCD bully you!".
Price: $14.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Spanish Inquisition remains a fearful symbol of state terror. Its principal target was the conversos, descendants of Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity some three generations earlier. Since thousands of them confessed to charges of practicing Judaism in secret, historians have long understood the Inquisition as an attempt to suppress the Jews of Spain. In this magisterial reexamination of the origins of the Inquisition, Netanyahu argues for a different view: that the conversos were in fact almost all genuine Christians who were persecuted for political ends. The Inquisition's attacks not only on the conversos' religious beliefs but also on their "impure blood" gave birth to an anti-Semitism based on race that would have terrible consequences for centuries to come.

This book has become essential reading and an indispensable reference book for both the interested layman and the scholar of history and religion..
Price: $21.88 [Notify me when price goes down.]