World Art History

1973 was the year rock hit its peak while splintering-just like the rest of the world. Ziggy Stardust traveled to America in David Bowie's "Aladdin Sane". The Dark Side of the Moon began its epic run on the Billboard charts, inspired by the madness of Pink Floyd's founder, while all four former Beatles scored top 10 albums, two hitting number one. FM battled AM; Motown battled Philly on the charts, as the era of protest soul gave way to disco. DJ Kool Herc gave birth to hip hop in the Bronx. The glam rock of the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper split into glam metal and punk.

On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms with men.

When he was 17 years old, Audie Murphy falsified his birth records so that he could enlist in the army and help defeat the Nazis. When he was 19, he single-handedly turned back the German army at the Battle of Colmar Pocket by climbing on top of a tank with a machine gun, a moment immortalized in the classic film To Hell and Back, starring Audie himself.

We are facing an alarming upsurge in the spread of misinformation and attempts by powerful figures to discredit facts so they can seize control of narratives. These are threats American journalist Sigrid Schultz knew all too well. The Chicago Tribune's Berlin bureau chief and primary foreign correspondent for Central Europe from 1925 to January 1941, Schultz witnessed Hitler’s rise to power and was one of the first reporters—male or female—to warn American readers of the growing dangers of Nazism.

The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced: the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians.

You can always recognize a painting by Kahlo because she is in nearly all of them, with her black braided hair and colorful Mexican outfits. A brave woman who was an invalid most of her life, she transformed herself into a living work of art. As famous for her self-portraits and haunting imagery as she was for her marriage to another famous artist, Diego Rivera, this strong and courageous painter was inspired by the ancient culture and history of her beloved homeland, Mexico. Her paintings continue to inform and inspire popular culture around the world.

Al final la lectura deviene la música de un río ancho y calmo que nos arrastra junto con los objetos que expresan la cultura del mundo hacia un océano apacible de remansadas sensaciones y conocimientos. Un acierto pleno y una obra que, estoy seguro, va a ocupar un lugar importante en la bibliografía del tema.

Hailed by INC. magazine as "America's toughest CEO coach", retired Navy SEAL Rob Roy teams with former national security correspondent Chris Lawson to pen this innovative guide on leadership. The Navy SEAL Art of War explores how battle-tested skills employed by SEAL teams can translate to the boardroom, helping leaders of all stripes thrive when the pressure is on.

Five hundred and thirty years ago, a young woman sat before a Grecian-nosed artist known as Leonardo da Vinci. Her name was Cecilia Gallerani, and she was the young mistress of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. Sforza was a brutal and clever man who was mindful that Leonardo’s genius would not only capture Cecilia’s beguiling beauty but also reflect the grandeur of his title. But when the portrait was finished, Leonardo’s brush strokes had conveyed something deeper by revealing the essence of Cecilia’s soul.

From Broadway debuts to landmark productions. Score a front row seat to hear hundreds of stories about the most important stages in the world, seen through the eyes of the producers, actors, stage hands, writers, musicians, company managers, dressers, designers, directors, ushers, and door men who bring The Great White Way to life each night. You'll never look at Broadway the same way again.

With a discerning eye and acerbic wit, Lynskey examines how various doomsday tropes and predictions in literature, art, music, and film have arisen from contemporary anxieties, whether they be comets, pandemics, world wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Y2K, or the climate emergency. Far from being grim, Lynskey guides readers through a rich array of fascinating stories and surprising facts, allowing us to keep company with celebrated works of art and the people who made them, from H.G. Wells, Jack London, W.B. Yeats and J.G. Ballard to The Twilight Zone, Dr. Strangelove, and The Terminator.

The violin has formed an important aspect of Jewish culture for centuries, both as a popular instrument with classical Jewish musicians—Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman—and also a central factor of social life as part of the enduring Klezmer tradition. But during the Holocaust, the violin assumed extraordinary new roles within the Jewish community. For some musicians, the instrument was a liberator; for others, it was a savior that spared their lives. Music historian James A. Grymes tells the amazing, horrifying, and inspiring story of the violins of the Holocaust.

In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.

For the truly well-rounded "intellectual," nothing fascinates so much as the subversive, the contrarian, the suppressed, and the bizarre. Richard Zacks has unloosed his admittedly strange mind and astonishing research abilities upon the entire spectrum of human knowledge, ferreting out endlessly fascinating facts, and stories guaranteed to make you laugh, gasp in wonder, and occasionally shudder at the depths of human depravity. The result of his labors is this quasi-encyclopedia that provides alternative takes on art, business, crime, science, medicine, sex (lots of that), and many other facets of human experience.

In this companion volume to The Discoverers, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin brings to life more than three thousand years of human artistic achievement, examining painting, sculpture, architecture, theology, philosophy, history, poetry, drama, literature, dance, music, and film.

Dangerous Melodies vividly evokes a time when classical music stood at the center of American life, occupying a prominent place in the nation’s culture and politics. The work of renowned conductors, instrumentalists, and singers - and the activities of orchestras and opera companies - were intertwined with momentous international events: two world wars, the rise of fascism, and the Cold War.

The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum.

With Muse of Fire, Michael Korda, the bestselling author of Alone and Hero, takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war's unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation—destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England—and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives.

In 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case at Westminster; it is the only occasion on which his actual spoken words were recorded. The case seems routine - a dispute over an unpaid marriage dowry - but it opens an unexpected window into the dramatist's famously obscure life. Using the court testimony as a springboard, acclaimed nonfiction writer Charles Nicholl examines this fascinating period in Shakespeare's life.

This bold, wide-ranging collection brings together some of the most noted military minds, past and present, to examine the crucial role of leadership in combat. Written while Christopher Kolenda was a faculty member in the history department at West Point, it covers both classic and modern concepts of leadership and uses case studies from Alexander the Great through World War II to illustrate principles of leadership in concrete historical contexts.