World Art History

Since 2001, the US Department of State has been sending hip hop artists abroad to perform and teach as goodwill ambassadors. There are good reasons for this: Hip hop is known and loved across the globe, acknowledged and appreciated as a product of American culture. Hip hop has from its beginning been a means of creating community through artistic collaboration, fostering what hip hop artists call building.

April of 1958 - the Iron Curtain was at its heaviest, and the outcome of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition seemed preordained. Nonetheless, as star musicians from across the globe descended on Moscow, an unlikely favorite emerged: Van Cliburn, a polite, lanky Texan whose passionate virtuosity captured the Russian spirit. This is the story of what unfolded that spring - for Cliburn and the other competitors, jurors, party officials, and citizens of the world who were touched by the outcome.

For music executive Mathew Knowles, the sensation that became Destiny’s Child began with his own - Beyoncé. From a unique vantage point, he not only watched but encouraged her dream alongside the ever-evolving phenomenon of the world’s most acclaimed girls group. Listeners get his insights from the mechanics of managing, motivating, and maneuvering talented children through a resistant industry; to parenting and attending to them in all other aspects. His accounts reveal a journey that let to both challenges and controversy underneath an unparalleled success.

What started the war between the sexes? When two artists, Becca Tzigany and James Bertrand, began a worldwide investigation into the forbidden history of humanity, they could not have predicted the clues they would uncover across cultures to what holds us back from deep intimacy and spiritual sex. Venus and Her Lover is their long-awaited opus. Accompany Becca and James behind veils, deep into shadow realms, and through the pleasures of liberation beyond our dominator society.

There is a point in everybody's life at which a tough decision will have to be made - a hard call. For inspiration and direction, we can look to the remarkable individuals in John McCain and Mark Salter's book, which dramatically describes the anatomy of a great decision.

Set in a Paris darkened by World War II, Sara Houghteling’s sweeping and sensuous debut novel tells the story of a son’s quest to recover his family’s lost masterpieces, looted by the Nazis during the occupation.

This friendly, fun biography series focuses on the traits that made our heroes great - the traits that kids can aspire to in order to live heroically themselves. Each book tells the story of an icon in a lively, conversational way that works well for the youngest nonfiction listeners and that always includes the hero's childhood influences. This book features Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance artist and inventor.

A follow-up to her popular Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, Jenkins' new book offers a string of historical anecdotes structured around the hours of the day, celebrating the unusual, fantastic, and beautiful ways people have spent time throughout the ages.

Beatleness explains how the band became a source of emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual nurturance in fans’ lives, creating a relationship that was historically unique. Looking at that relationship against the backdrop of the sexual revolution, the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and other events of those tumultuous years, the audiobook critically examines the often-heard assertion that the Beatles changed everything.

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.

The Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, has been called "a night that changed the course of American culture". More than 70 million television viewers - the largest-ever audience for an entertainment show - watched the Beatles' performance that February 9, 1964. It was only the beginning. Had the Beatles been simply the most successful musical group of all time, their place in history would be secure. But they were much, much more. The Beatles changed popular culture forever.

From renowned diplomat and musician András Simonyi - whom Stephen Colbert calls "the only ambassador I know who can shred a mean guitar!" - comes a timely and revealing memoir about growing up behind the Iron Curtain and longing for freedom while chasing the great power of rock and roll. In Rocking Toward a Free World, Simonyi charts the struggle of growing up in 1960s Hungary, a world in which listening to his favorite music was a powerful but furtive endeavor: records were black-market bootlegs, and concerts were held under strict control, even banned....

The ultimate companion for fans of one of the most popular and groundbreaking animated series of all time. So whether you're a long-time fan or new to the show, Unveiling South Park is the perfect companion for anyone who wants to explore the wild, weird, and wonderful world of South Park....

May 1945. A Soviet military patrol searches Hitler’s secret bunker in Berlin. They find bodies, documents, jewelry, paintings—and also an extensive collection of 78 rpm records. It comes as no surprise that this collection includes work by Beethoven, Wagner, and Bruckner. The same goes for a procession of other giants promoted by the Nazi regime: “It seems as if the Nazis put a steel helmet on Mozart, girded Schubert with a saber, and wrapped barbed wire around Johann Strauss’s neck,” composer Robert Stolz once said.

सुन त्झू यांचे "द आर्ट ऑफ वॉर" हा रणनीती आणि युद्ध यांच्यावरील एक कालातीत आणि विद्वत्तापूर्ण ग्रंथ आहे ज्याने शेकडो वर्षे वाचकांच्या मनावर मोहिनी घातली आहे. दोन हजार वर्षांपूर्वी लिहिलेला हा चिनी अभिजात ग्रंथ त्या काळाइतकाच आजही लागू होतो, जो संघर्षाचे स्वरूप आणि विजय मिळवण्याची कला याबाबत विद्वत्तापूर्ण अंतर्दृष्टी देतो.

Chris Dubbs tells the fascinating stories of Edith Wharton, Nellie Bly, and more than 30 other American women who worked as war reporters. As Dubbs shows, stories by these journalists brought in women from the periphery of war and made them active participants - fully engaged and equally heroic, if bearing different burdens and making different sacrifices. Women journalists traveled from belligerent capitals to the front lines to report on the conflict. But their experiences also brought them into contact with social transformations, political unrest, labor conditions, and more.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British institution, and its story during the Second World War is also our story. This was a period of remarkable voices: Churchill’s speeches, de Gaulle’s broadcasts from exile, Richard Dimbleby and Vera Lynn. Radio offered an incomparable tool for propaganda while at the same time eyewitness testimonies gave a voice to everyone, securing the BBC’s reputation as a purveyor of truth.

Military commanders turn tactics into strategic victory by means of "operational art", the knowledge and creative imagination commanders and staff employ in designing, synchronizing, and conducting battles and major operations to achieve strategic goals. He shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, US war colleges educated and trained commanders during the interwar years specifically for the operational art they employed in World War II.

Written more than 2,000 years ago, this earliest surviving work on how to wage war successfully - and above all, rationally - argues that winning requires careful advance planning, better sources of information than your opponent, and a strategy that's flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions. Sun Tzu concludes that in the end, a decision not to take military action can be every bit as sensible and effective as being able to triumph on the battlefield.

Rollicking and informative, Reprehensible: Polite Histories of Bad Behaviour is your guide through some of the most shameful behaviour indulged in by humanity’s most celebrated figures, as told by Mikey Robins, one of Australia’s most loved comedians.