Product Description: Este libro investiga la historia de la pasion por coleccionar desde el Renacimiento hasta nuestros dias. Todo objeto de coleccion, ya sea una caja de cerillas o la una de un martir, tiene un significado que trasciende al objeto mismo; es un totem...read more

Product Description: Vienna in 1900 was home to a thriving arts and intellectual culture that included many important thinkers and a substantial group of prominent artists, including the founder of the Secession Gustav Klimt. A common thread throughout music and the fine and decorative arts was the redefining of individual identity for the modern age, as the search for a specifically modern Viennese sense of self prompted a dialogue about ornamentation and inner truth in the arts of the age...read more

Product Description: The most breathtaking work of history since Paris 1919.Europe, early in the 20th century: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The hot topics of the day — terrorism and globalization, immigration, consumerism, the lack of moral values, and rivaling superpowers — could make one forget that it is a century ago that this era vanished into the trenches of the Somme and Vimy Ridge...read more

Product Description: The most breathtaking work of history since Paris 1919.Europe, early in the 20th century: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The hot topics of the day — terrorism and globalization, immigration, consumerism, the lack of moral values, and rivaling superpowers — could make one forget that it is a century ago that this era vanished into the trenches of the Somme and Vimy Ridge...read more

Explores the history of Austrian wine and provides in-depth reference to Austria's wine regions, including Burgenland, Wachau, Styria, Kremstal, and Kamptal. The leading estates and winemakers in each area are detailed, and the best wines of each are highlighted. This book also features twelve detailed maps of the wine-producing areas.

A history of the human drive to collect things considers how various objects carry meanings of significance to their collectors, tracing popular items of pursuit during the Renaissance and other eras while discussing the themes underlying collecting behaviors. Reprint.

Cosmopolitan, stylish, even a little decadent, Amsterdam--"the Venice of the North"--is a city of legendary beauty. From a twelfth-century settlement of wooden huts at the mouth of the River Amstel, it had become by the late sixteenth century one of the great cultural capitals of Europe and a major financial center. In this gracefully written examination of Amsterdam's soul--part history, part travel guide--the Dutch writer Geert Mak imaginatively depicts the lives of early Amsterdammers and traces the city's progress from a small town of merchants, sailors, farmers, and fishermen to a thriving metropolis. Mak's Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture and magnificent monuments, but also of civil wars, uprisings, and bloody religious purges. In his delightfully instructive journey through the city and through time, Mak displays an eye for the bizarre and the unexpected: a Rembrandt sketch of a young girl executed for manslaughter; the shoe of a medieval lady unearthed during a remodeling project; a graffito foretelling the city's doom on the wall of a mansion, daubed by a deranged burgomaster with his own blood. Amsterdam remains a magnet for travelers from around the world, and this charmingly detailed account of its origins and its history through the present day is designed to help the reader step into daily life in a truly modern city.