World Art History

Jim Clary presents a compelling and riveting digest of beliefs, customs, and mystery in Superstitions of the Sea. Clary focuses on the vast array of strange, mythical, and often comical beliefs of mariners from ancient times to the present. Collecting the various topics for years, Clary found that maritime superstition was weaved throughout every fabric of his study. The folklore was so interesting that it often lured him far away from his subject search and held him spellbound for hours at a time.

Orthodoxy, first published 1908, is Chesterton's spiritual autobiography. Subtitled, 'The romance of faith', Chesterton declares that people need a life of 'practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.'

On this adventure we're going to need to turn the sound up as we're learning all about musical instruments! From the instruments you can make in your own house, to some of the most talented musicians around the world, we're going to have a musical blast and learn more about what music means in different cultures.

In March 1941, after a year of unbroken and devastating U-boat onslaughts, the British War Cabinet decided to try a new strategy in the foundering naval campaign. To do so, they hired an intensely private, bohemian physicist who was also an ardent socialist. Patrick Blackett was a former navy officer and future winner of the Nobel Prize; he is little remembered today, but he and his fellow scientists did as much to win the war against Nazi Germany as almost anyone else.

There have been few times in modern music history that an instant shift in how we listen to - and view - music has occurred. However, the launch of MTV on August 1, 1981, was certainly one such occurrence. Instantly, music fans were now “listening with their eyes” rather than relying solely on their ears.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch’s life-long fascination with classical music has taken her through Juilliard and into the shiny world of symphony halls and international concert tours. She’s loved classical music her whole life. But she’s also hated classical music her whole life. After all, if you can like Beyoncé without liking Bieber, you can certainly like Brahms without liking Bach—especially since they were born 148 years apart and the thing we call “classical music” is really just centuries of compositions shoved into one hodge-podge of a genre.

Hone your knowledge with iMinds Specialist Series. Have a particular interest? Recognize gaps in your knowledge? iMinds' Specialist series works across each of our 12 categories, bringing you targeted information to broaden your mind. The Arts, Volume 1 looks at the life of Andy Warhol, the story of Robin Hood, a history of blues music, the film genres film noir and anime, and the history of the Hollywood blacklist.

Married . . . With Children writer-producer Richard Gurman takes us behind the scenes of this boundary-breaking show to reveal how its inner workings were at times as disruptive and contentious—yet at other times, as hysterical and raunchy—as the Bundy family themselves.

Laura Kasinof studied Arabic in college and moved to Yemen a few years later - after a friend at a late-night party in Washington, DC, recommended the country as a good place to work as a freelance journalist. When she first moved to Sanaa in 2009, she was the only American reporter based in the country. She quickly fell in love with Yemen’s people and culture, in addition to finding herself the star of a local TV soap opera.

Meditations, The Art of War, and Self Reliance are three famous books that will help you achieve mastery in life. Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy. The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise written by strategist Sun Tzu. Each chapter is devoted to a distinct aspect of warfare and how that applies to military strategy and tactics. Self Reliance is an essay written in 1841 by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Many of the world's leaders have turned to Niccolo Machiavelli's The Art of War as a guide to the fundamentals of war, including Frederick the Great, Napoleon, as well as countless other military leaders. Limited warfare is one of the philosophies promoted in this work. Machiavelli believed that military conflict should be a last resort and should only be considered when diplomacy fails. He was also of the belief that society could only remain stable and secure with a strong state military.

Scandal, shock, and rivalry all have negative connotations, don't they? They can be catastrophic to businesses and individual careers. A whiff of scandal can turn a politician into a smoking ruin. But these potentially disastrous "negatives" can and have spurred the world of fine art to new heights. A look at the history of art tells us that rivalries have, in fact, not only benefited the course of art, from ancient times to the present, but have also helped shape our narrative of art, lending it a sense of drama that it might otherwise lack.

Throughout the course of history, civilization has been blessed by strong-minded men and women who have impacted our world in extraordinary ways. Their imprint upon humanity is beyond dispute. And many would contend that they were no less than the result of Divine Providence - a gift of God to the human race. The Mark of a Giant examines the lives and contributions of seven men and women who changed the world: Abraham of Ur, Pericles, the Apostle Paul, Sir Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa.

After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science, and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.

British airman Dym Ingleford is convinced that the young German prisoner, Max Eckermann, is his brother Anthony, who was kidnapped years before. Raised in the Nazi ideology, Tony has by chance tumbled into British hands. Dym has brought him back, at least temporarily, to the family he neither remembers nor will acknowledge as his own.

In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.

Pandemic, climate change, or war: Our era is ripe with the odor of doomsday. In movies, books, and more, our imaginations run wild with visions of dreadful, abandoned cities and returning to the land in a desperate attempt at survival. In The Next Apocalypse, archaeologist Chris Begley argues that we completely misunderstand how disaster works. Examining past collapses of civilizations, such as the Maya and Rome, he argues that these breakdowns are actually less about cataclysmic destruction than they are about long processes of change.

No one in history has provoked more controversy than Napoleon Bonaparte. Was he an enlightened ruler or brutal tyrant? Was he an insatiable warmonger or a defender of France against the aggression of the other great powers? Was he kind or cruel, farsighted or blinkered, a sophisticate or a philistine, a builder or a destroyer? One thing is certain, if the art of leadership is about getting what one wants, then Napoleon was among history's greatest masters.

In this book in praise of wait times, award-winning author Jason Farman passionately argues that the delay between call and answer has always been an important part of the message. Traveling backward from our current era of Twitter and texts, Farman describes how societies have worked to eliminate waiting in communication and how they have interpreted those times' meanings. And in a rebuttal to the demand for instant communication, Farman makes a powerful case for why good things can come to those who wait.

Learn from the best military strategists of history how best to fight your battles in Strategy Masters. This collection includes three major military and political strategy texts: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar. These three books, though written specifically about military and political strategies, are frequently cited by modern business strategists as insightful looks at human nature and philosophy.