Product Description: A dazzling history of the modest family that rose to become one of the most powerful in Europe, The Medici is a remarkably modern story of power, money, and ambition. Against the background of an age that saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning Paul Strathern explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage...read more

Product Description: In recent years, events in the Islamic world have captured the attention of the West to an unprecedented degree. However, much of the media coverage of events like the Islamic revolution in Iran has merely reinforced current prejudices and misconceptions about Islam...read more

Product Description: How did maps of the distant reaches of the world communicate to the public in an era when exploration of those territories was still ongoing and knowledge about them remained incomplete? And why did Renaissance rulers frequently commission large-scale painted maps of those territories when they knew that they would soon be proven obsolete by newer, more accurate information? The Mapping of Power in Renaissance Italy addresses these questions by bridging the disciplines of art history and the histories of science, cartography, and geography to closely examine surviving Italian painted maps that were commissioned during a period better known for its printed maps and atlases...read more

This magisterial study proposes a revised and innovative view of the political history of Renaissance Italy. Drawing on comparative examples from across the peninsula and the kingdoms of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, an international team of leading scholars highlights the complexity and variety of the Italian world from the fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries, surveying the mosaic of kingdoms, principalities, signorie and republics against a backdrop of wider political themes common to all types of state in the period. The authors address the contentious problem of the apparent weakness of the Italian Renaissance political system. By repositioning the Renaissance as a political, rather than simply an artistic and cultural phenomenon, they identify the period as a pivotal moment in the history of the state, in which political languages, practices and tools, together with political and governmental institutions, became vital to the evolution of a modern European political identity.

In recent years, events in the Islamic world have captured the attention of the West to an unprecedented degree. However, much of the media coverage of events like the Islamic revolution in Iran has merely reinforced current prejudices and misconceptions about Islam. This collection of essays, by specialists in a variety of disciplines, gives an impressionistic overview of contemporary Islam. Different areas of Islamic life are singled out for special attention; these include the problem of relations between Islam and the West, the role of the Sufi orders and the revival of religious fundamentalism, Islam and the feminine, Islamic economics and Islamic architecture. Geographically, the essays cover a wide area, ranging over Sudan, Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Each discussion should appeal to the layman and specialist alike and collectively they bring together a comprehensive range of material not often covered in one volume. Above all, they cut across the stereotypes of Islam found in the popular media, to reveal facets of a complex, living tradition often unsuspected in the West. First published in 1983.

Product Description: The startling truth behind one of the most notorious dynasties in history is revealed in a remarkable new account by the acclaimed author of The Tudors and A World Undone. Sweeping aside the gossip, slander, and distortion that have shrouded the Borgias for centuries, G...read more

Product Description: An awakening, a rebirth called the Renaissance, changed Europe and the world from the 14th to the 16th century. The movement influenced all parts of society-art, science, architecture, literature, religion, politics, economics, and philosophy...read more

In this newly revised edition of his widely acclaimed work, Peter Burke presents a social and cultural history of the Italian Renaissance. He discusses the social and political institutions that existed in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and he analyzes the ways of thinking and seeing that characterized this period of extraordinary artistic creativity. Developing a distinctive approach, the author is concerned not only with the finished works of Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and others, but also with the social background, patterns of recruitment, and means of subsistence of this "cultural elite." He thus makes a major contribution both to our understanding of the Italian Renaissance and to our comprehension of the complex relations between culture and society. An excellent social history of the lives and culture of the artists and artisans which made it possible for the arts to flourish.

Product Description: From one of Britain’s most respected art historians, art critic of The Guardian—the galvanizing story of a sixteenth-century clash of titans, the two greatest minds of the Renaissance, working side by side in the same room in a fierce competition...read more

Product Description: Award-winning lecturer Kenneth R. Bartlett applies his decades of experience teaching the Italian Renaissance to this beautifully illustrated overview. In his introductory Note to the Reader, Bartlett first explains why he chose Jacob Burckhardt's classic narrative to guide students through the complex history of the Renaissance and then provides his own contemporary interpretation of that narrative...read more

Product Description: This volume seeks to gauge the import of the Italian Renaissance in shaping the foundations of what we conventionally define as 'modernity.' The authors engage in an interpretative conversation with historians and thinkers such as Jacob Burckardt, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Eugenio Garin, and Louis Dupre, whose works have oriented the search for the roots of modernity and for the significance of Renaissance Humanism...read more

Product Description: The Italian Renaissance culminated between the years 1494 and 1530. The figures examined in this classic volume illustrate four key figures representing the moral life of the period. The usual picture of that period is one of exuberant energy and positive achievement...read more

Product Description: The book follows an interdisciplinary approach and covers the origins of the Italian Renaissance through the Baroque period. It is comprised of fifteen chapters, organized chronologically, along with an introduction and conclusion.

Product Description: Painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, 28 years after Michelangelo completed the glorious and hopeful ceiling, The Last Judgment is full of stark images depicting the End of Days. Here, James Connor uncovers the secrets behind the fresco, and details the engrossing stories of conspiring kings, plotting popes, and murderous rivalries between noble families who were vying for control over Michelangelo and his art...read more