Product Description: While the 20th century was one long war for control of the world's oil supplies, opium was a key strategic raw material during the four preceding centuries. Opium consumption dates back to Ancient Egypt. Initially a useful pharmaceutical product called laudanum; it quickly became popular in Britain...read more

Product Description:   From the cave paintings of Lascaux to the Madonnas of the Renaissance Italians, to the caustic canvases of the Pop Art movement, manifestations. Punctuated by extended commentaries of the paintings and biographies of the most influential artists, this work, with its thousand reproductions, contains virtually all of the history of art within its pages...read more

Product Description:  Paul Klee is one of those artists you can hardly classify in one movement of art history. Close to Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, he was an important member of Der Blaue Reiter, an expressionist group of painters. Later, went on to be involved in the Bauhaus and even gave painting lessons in Dessau’s school...read more

Born in 1912, in a small town in Wyoming, Jackson Pollock embodied the American dream as the country found itself confronted with the realities of a modern era replacing the fading nineteenth century. Pollock left home in search of fame and fortune in New York City. Thanks to the Federal Art Project, he quickly won acclaim, and after the Second World War became the biggest art celebrity in America. For De Kooning, Pollock was the ""icebreaker."" For Max Ernst and Masson, Pollock was a fellow member of the European surrealist movement. And for Motherwell, Pollock was a legitimate candidate for the status of the Master of the American School. During the many upheavals in his life in New York in the 1950s and 60s, Pollock lost his bearings--success had simply come too fast and too easily. It was during this period that he turned to alcohol and disintegrated his marriage to Lee Krasner. His life ended, like that of 50's film icon James Dean, behind the wheel of his Oldsmobile, after a night of drinking. This book throws light on a new era in art and on the personality of Pollock, the undisputed master of Abstract American Expressionism.

Product Description: The selection of maps in this book dates from the 12th to the 18th century. While they may appear quite primitive to our eyes, they reveal the steady progress of the earliest seafarers in their determination to conquer the sea. What they lack in geographical accuracy, they make up for in charm...read more

Product Description: With more than 1,000 illustrations, this handsome book is an armchair tour through the world’s finest galleries and art museums. A celebration of the art of painting, the book's colorful pages are filled with masterworks by the greatest painters of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, including Rubens, Velázquez, Murillo, Renoir, Monet, Picasso, and many others...read more

This book presents a selection of ocean-going charts dating from the 13th century to the 17th century. Rudimentary they may perforce be, but they bear excellent witness to the achievements of the early European navigators, and to their determination to explore the ends of the Earth. What the charts may lack in geographical accuracy, they undoubtedly make up for in their charm. And of course they are invaluable as historical records. Recounting the epic journeys of maritim exploration, from Erik the Red to Robert Peary, author Donald Wigal leads us gently and pleasurably from Terra Incognita to the World As We Know It.

A collection of quotations and excerpts from the former first lady's speeches, writings, and interviews offers insight into her contributions to national policies regarding civil rights, poverty, and the United Nations. Original.

Richly illustrated with full-color artwork and maps, this informative look at cartographic history explores the use of maps during the age of exploration, focusing especially on the late thirteenth century through the seventeenth century, explaining how maps were used in navigation, how they were created, the art of map-making, and more. (view table of contents)

Presents an evocative assortment of predictions, prophecies, and visions by Nostradamus, Leonardo da Vinci, Jules Verne, Edgar Cayce, Jeane Dixon, and other prophets concerning the forthcoming millennium, scientific discoveries, major political events, potential catastrophes, technological advances, and more. (view table of contents)