Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: october book display

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  Cicero

  The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician

  by Anthony Everitt

  “All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.” —John Adams He squared off against Caesar and was friends with young Brutus. He advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botched transition from military hero to politician. He lambasted Mark Antony and was master of the smear campaign, as feared for his wit as he was for exposing his opponents’ sexual peccadilloes.... (more)
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  American Notes and Pictures from Italy: For General Circulation (Everyman's Library (Paper))

  by Charles Dickens

  These authoritative texts are among the most vital editions of Dickens's works available. Each volume includes a chronology of Dickens's life and times, a suggested reading list, and a collation of the novel's critical reception.
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  Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

  by Ross King

  In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel. With little experience as a painter (though famed for his sculpture David ), Michelangelo was reluctant to begin the massive project. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the four extraordinary years Michelangelo spent laboring over the... (more)
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  The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

  by Jacob Burckhardt

  For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world - a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and politics. In this landmark work he depicts the Italian city-states of Florence, Venice and Rome as providing the seeds of a new form of society, and traces the... (more)
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  Leonardo Da Vinci, 1452-1519

  The Complete Paintings and Drawings

  by Frank Zöllner

  One of the most fully achieved human beings who has ever lived, Leonardo remains the quintessential Renaissance genius. Creator of the world's most famous painting, scientist, philosopher, builder, he is credited with defining the accomplishments of the great flowering in human consciousness. And yet, so wide-ranging and prolific were his interests that he brought hardly any major undertaking to a final end. If he... (more)
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  A Renaissance Tapestry: The Gonzaga of Mantua

  by Kate Simon

  The Gonzaga dynasty, which held the dukedom of Mantua in its iron grip for centuries, was as pleasure-loving and internecine as any leading family of Renaissance Italy. Simon nicely captures the excesses and contradictory passions that swept the ducal palace as she chronicles fraternal rivalries, poisonings, bribes of popes, seesaw alignments of warring states. With an eye for telling detail, the well-known travel... (more)
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  Very Short Introductions: Book 31

  Machiavelli

  A Very Short Introduction

  by Quentin Skinner

  Niccolo Machiavelli taught that political leaders must be prepared to do evil that good may come of it, and his name has been a byword ever since for duplicity and immorality. Is his sinister reputation deserved? In answering this question Quentin Skinner focuses on three major works, The Prince, the Discourses, and The History of Florence, and distills from them an introduction to Machiavelli of exemplary... (more)
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  Pompeii

  The Living City

  by Alex Butterworth

  The ash of Mt. Vesuvius preserves a living record of the complex and exhilarating society it instantly obliterated two thousand years ago. In this highly readable, lavishly illustrated book, Butterworth and Laurence marshall cutting-edge archaeological reconstructions and a vibrant historical tradition dating to Pliny and Tacitus; they present a richly textured portrait of a society not altogether unlike ours,... (more)
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  World of Art

  From Giotto to Cézanne

  A Concise History of Painting

  by Michael Levey

  From Giotto to Cezanne: A Concise History of Painting Michael Levey. 549 color illustrations. "Outstanding...accurate, free from prejudice, always neat, often stimulating. No better introduction to Western painting has eve been produced." (The Sunday Times). " combining serious scholorship with a presentation simple enough to interest the general reader and employing a standard of reproduction good enough to make... (more)
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  The Essential Writings of Machiavelli

  by Peter Constantine

  In The Essential Writings of Machiavelli, Peter Constantine has assembled a comprehensive collection that shows the true depth and breadth of a great Renaissance thinker. Refreshingly accessible, these superb new translations are faithful to Machiavelli’s original, beautifully crafted writings. The volume features essays that appear in English for the first time, such as “A Caution to the Medici” and “The... (more)
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  Basilica

  The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's

  by R. A. Scotti

  Out of the clash of genius and the caprice of popes came the most glorious monument of the Renaissance It was the splendor—and the scandal—of the age. In 1506, the ferociously ambitious Renaissance Pope Julius II tore down the most sacred shrine in Europe—the millenniumold St. Peter’s Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine over the apostle’s grave—to build a better basilica. Construction of the new... (more)
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  Art in Renaissance Italy: 1350-1500 (Oxford History of Art Series)

  by Evelyn S. Welch

  The Italian Renaissance was a pivotal period in the history of Western culture during which artists such as Masaccio, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Leonardo created some of the world's most influential and exciting works in a variety of artistic fields. Here, Evelyn Welch presents a fresh picture of the Italian Renaissance by challenging traditional scholarship and placing emphasis on recreating the experience of... (more)
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  Sicily: Three Thousand Years of Human History

  by Sandra Benjamin

  The rich, recorded history of Sicily reaches back for more than three thousand years. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy and the modern era have all held sway, and left lasting influences on the island’s culture and architecture. And yet no contemporary book tells the story of Sicily in a single volume for the general reader.... (more)
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  Italian Fairy Tales (The Hippocrene Library of World Folklore)

  by Lila E. Romano

  These 11 stories of romance, mischief and adventure interweave Italy's traditions and heritage with fantasy and folklore. Beautiful princesses, magical animals, handsome princes, fearsome witches and ogres all play their roles in these tales. With captivating illustrations on nearly every page, this collection is sure to delight readers of all ages. This classic volume was originally published before 1920, and... (more)
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  The Spartacus War

  by Barry S. Strauss

  The Spartacus War is the extraordinary story of the most famous slave rebellion in the ancient world, the fascinating true story behind a legend that has been the inspiration for novelists, filmmakers, and revolutionaries for 2,000 years. Starting with only seventy-four men, a gladiator named Spartacus incited a rebellion that threatened Rome itself. With his fellow gladiators, Spartacus built an army of 60,000... (more)
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  The Sack of Rome

  by E. R. Chamberlin

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  The Politics of the Piazza (Design and the Built Environment)

  by Eamonn Canniffe

  Through a detailed study of the principal spaces of Italian cities, this book explores the relationship between political systems and their methods of representation in architecture. Illustrated by contemporary photographs, analytical drawings and historic images, it examines approximately 70 significant piazzas and situates these in their social and political contexts, highlighting shifts between autocratic and... (more)
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  Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy

  by Anne Dunlop

  The emergence of modern Western artwork is sometimes cast as a slow process of secularization, with the devotional charge of images giving way in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to a focus on the beauty and innovation of the artwork itself. Our understanding of art in this pivotal age is badly distorted, focused almost exclusively on religious and civic images. Even many Renaissance specialists believe that... (more)
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  Caesar

  Life of a Colossus

  by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy

  As Adrian Goldsworthy writes in the introduction to this book, “in his fifty-six years, Caesar was at times many things, including a fugitive, prisoner, rising politician, army leader, legal advocate, rebel, dictator . . . as well as husband, father, lover and adulterer.” In this landmark biography, Goldsworthy examines all of these roles and places his subject firmly within the context of Roman society in the... (more)
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  The World Atlas of Wine

  by Hugh Johnson

  Hailed by critics worldwide as "extraordinary" and "irreplaceable," there are few volumes that have had as monumental an impact in their field as Hugh Johnson's The World Atlas of Wine: sales have exceeded four million copies, and it is now published in thirteen languages.World-renowned authors Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson once again combine their unrivalled talents to enhance this masterpiece of wine... (more)