Art Study

Drawing on a host of recently declassified documents from the Reagan-Thatcher years, A Diplomatic Meeting provides an innovative framework for understanding the development and nature of the special relationship between British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and American President Ronald Reagan, who were known as "political soulmates". James Cooper boldly challenges the popular conflation of the leaders' platforms and proposes that Reagan and Thatcher's summitry highlighted unique features of domestic policy in their respective countries.

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.

We need to understand something: God is. And he doesn’t change who he is because of what we believe about him. The fact is, he is holy, and he wants us to be holy, too. Now the Bible says “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.” And this perplexes us. How can God say, “Be ye holy for I am holy,” in one breath, and then, “All things are lawful,” in another?

A groundbreaking book exploring the breadth of history of recorded music by and for the LGBT community and how those records influenced the evolution of the music we listen to today. From Sia to Elton John, from Billie Holiday to David Bowie, LGBT musicians have changed the course of modern music. But before their music - and the messages behind it - gained understanding and a place in the mainstream, how did the queer musicians of yesteryear fight to build foundations for those who would follow them?

Donna Seaman brings to dazzling life seven forgotten artists, among the best of their day: Gertrude Abercrombie, with her dark, surreal paintings and friendships with Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins; Bay Area self-portraitist Joan Brown; Ree Morton, with her witty, oddly beautiful constructions; Loïs Mailou Jones of the Harlem Renaissance; Lenore Tawney, who combined weaving and sculpture; Christina Ramberg, who drew on pop culture and advertising; and Louise Nevelson, an art-world superstar.

IELTS is the most popular English exam in the world today. It is also the ideal way to perfect the English language from a basic to advanced level. In this series you will be escorted through the course with Richard Aspinall, a teacher who has a proven track record in teaching the IELTS curriculum successfully all over the world, he will take you through this "easy to follow" step by step guide where you will be represented by a student and you will learn everything you need to know to improve your English.

Come to the movies with two celebrated spirituality writers—American poet and author Kathleen Norris and Irish storyteller and peace activist Gareth Higgins. In A Whole Life in Twelve Movies, Norris and Higgins invite listeners along as they discuss acclaimed movies that can help us better understand our lives—from before birth to death and beyond. Featuring twelve films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Malcolm X, and Babette's Feast, this book is perfect for individuals or groups to watch and discuss movies over the course of a year.

In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny’s chemistry, to Bergstein’s political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film’s remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes—deeply feminist, sensitively written—that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.

In a captivating realm where cinematic narratives enchant countless viewers, how can one harmonize their faith with the craft of filmmaking? The Wages of Cinema encourages a deep dive into this relationship, drawing upon the significant reflections of Dorothy L. Sayers defending the authenticity of art and truth's manifestation.

The work of Stanley Kubrick amounts to a sustained reflection on the male condition: past, present, and future. The persistent theme of his filmmaking is less violence or sex than it is the pressurized exertion of masculinity in unusual or extreme circumstances, where it may be taxed or exaggerated to various effects, tragic and comic—or metamorphosed, distorted, and even undone.

The story of five best-selling novels beloved by evangelicals, the book industry they built, and the collective imagination they shaped. Who are evangelicals? And what is evangelicalism? Those attempting to answer these questions usually speak in terms of political and theological stances. But those stances emerge from an evangelical world with its own institutions - institutions that shape imagination as much as they shape ideology.

Forty-eight stories of brave sparrows, wilds winds, and how to live in times of climate change. A prize-winning book by the natural storyteller Georgiana Keable, sharing long experience with children in the forests and snows of Norway. Meet the girl who became a fish, married a bear, and had a tree as her mum and dad. Meet the boy who tried to stop the wind, fetched fire from the center of the earth on the back of a bird, and whose father was the river.

In her last days, Sylvia Plath struggled to break out from the control of the towering figure of her husband Ted Hughes. In the antique mythology of his retinue, she had become the gorgon threatening to bring down the House of Hughes. Drawing on recently available court records, archives, and interviews, and reevaluating the memoirs of the formidable Hughes contingent who treated Plath as a female hysteric, Carl Rollyson rehabilitates the image of a woman too often viewed solely within the confines of what Hughes and his collaborators wanted to be written.

A Thousand Cuts is a candid exploration of one of America's strangest and most quickly vanishing subcultures. It is about the death of physical film in the digital era and about a paranoid, secretive, eccentric, and sometimes obsessive group of film-mad collectors who made movies and their projection a private religion in the time before DVDs and Blu-rays.

The pantheon of big-budget, commercially successful films encompasses a range of genres, including biblical films, war films, romances, comic-book adaptations, animated features, and historical epics. In Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History authors Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale discuss the characteristics, history, and modes of distribution and exhibition that unite big-budget pictures, from their beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present.

Almost 200 years after her death, Austen remains a hot topic, and the current flare in the cultural zeitgeist echoes the continuous revival of her works, from the time of original publication through the 20th century. In Jane's Fame, Claire Harman gives us the complete biography of the author and analyzes her lasting cultural influence, making this essential listening for anyone interested in Austen's life, works, and remarkably potent fame.

In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable.

From plain old doping to claiming a marathon victory despite having driven the middle section of the race, from match-fixing to diving for a penalty - cheating in sport is as old as sport itself. But what constititues cheating and where do we draw the line? Are some sports cleaner than others? Is cheating in one sport the same as cheating in another or does each sport's distinctive culture set different standards? Is there such a thing as a sport without sin? Or, indeed, a sporting competitor?

In this examination of Solzhenitsyn and his work, Lee Congdon explores the consequences of the atheistic socialism that drove the Russian revolutionary movement.

From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed Israeli author, a suspenseful and poignant story of a family coping with the sudden mental decline of their beloved husband and father—an engineer who they discover is involved in an ominous secret military project Until recently, Zvi Luria was...