The reign of James I was the real beginning of the Augustan age in England and brought with it enormously higher standards of taste and discernment. When James made his state entry into London in 1604 the new dynasty was widely seen by contemporaries as a restoration of the Golden Age, a renewal of the Roman imperium, celebrating the union of the Kingdoms and the triumph of Protestantism. The following years brought a great outpouring of poetry, music, painting, designs for masques and processions, and sermons, all striving to create a distinctive new Stuart iconography. This book ranges broadly across the arts to analyse imagery and contemporary attitudes. There are chapters on Ben Johnson and Inigo Jones; on Stuart funerals and the religious arts; on Princess Elizabeth's wedding; and on James's triumphal entry. It was an outstanding period for collecting and connoisseurship, and the author describes the artistic enterprises of the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Buckingham as well as looking at how the arts portrayed the monarch and how James, Charles and Prince Henry patronised arts and letters themselves. This elegantly written book, its text supported by illustration and quotation, brings together much inaccessible material, and will be essential reading for historians and art historians as well as students of literature.

Product Description: Since 1978, the World Bank's annual 'World Development Report' (WDR) has provided in-depth analysis and policy recommendations on a specific and important aspect of international development from agriculture, the role of the state, economic growth, and labor to infrastructure, health, the environment, and poverty...read more

Product Description: The urgency of reducing poverty in the developing world has been the subject of a public campaign by such unlikely policy experts as George Clooney, Alicia Keyes, Elton John, Angelina Jolie, and Bono. And yet accompanying the call for more foreign aid is an almost universal discontent with the effectiveness of the existing aid system...read more

Product Description: The most comprehensive index of economic freedom in the world and the only one that uses reproducible measures appropriate for peer-reviewed research, this annual report ranks 123 countries according to the degree of personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to compete, and protection of person and property enjoyed by their citizens...read more

Argues that western foreign aid efforts have done little to stem global poverty, citing how such organizations as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are not held accountable for ineffective practices that the author believes intrude into the inner workings of other countries. By the author of The Elusive Quest for Growth. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Product Description: Over the 1980s and 1990s, most Latin American countries witnessed a retrenchment of the public sector away from infrastructure provision and an opening up of infrastructure activities to the private sector. This book analyzes the consequences of these policy changes from two perspectives...read more

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Product Description: This volume presents the output of World Bank research devoted to answering the questions concerning deficits. Its focus ranges from issues of public deficit measurement to trade surplus. The book presents massive empirical evidence through a careful examination of eight country case studies: Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Morocco, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe...read more