Why does a soup can feel like a work of art? Why does a starlet’s pose become an icon? And why does our present sometimes feel like an endless repetition of images? If you understand Andy Warhol, you understand the mechanics of pop culture, media and fame right up to our own day. This non-fiction book opens the door to an artist who turned advertising into art – and art into a brand: cool, razor-sharp in observation and, surprisingly, deeply human.Andy Warhol (1928...

How did a handful of colonies in a short space of time become a nation that shapes politics, business and science across the world? Anyone who wants to understand the rapid rise of the United States to world power not merely in slogans but in its causes and consequences will find in this book a fact rich and compelling account. ‘History of the USA’ shows in a clear, engaging and well structured way how settlements on the Atlantic coast developed into a state of global reach.

Anyone who looks at Rembrandt van Rijn sees more than Baroque painting. They see light that grows out of darkness, faces full of inwardness, and a kind of painting that still feels like a conversation today. What makes Rembrandt’s art so distinctive that his pictures in the Rembrandt Museum and in the great collections of the world hold people spellbound, from art lessons at school to art history at university, from Amsterdam to far beyond it?This non-fiction book ...

How could an island on the edge of Europe give rise to the power that, through kings, Parliament, empire and industrialisation, shaped the world for centuries? Anyone wishing to understand Great Britain, its political upheavals and its global influence, will find in this book far more than a mere chronicle. ‘The History of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK)’ is a fact-rich, clearly structured and compelling account of a nation whose rise, crises and trans...

This uplifting romantic comedy takes you on Alice’s journey, interweaving her relationships with real-life characters and dreams involving her favourite romantic screen idols.Lamenting the loss of her long-term partner and having been made redundant, Alice makes a New Year’s resolution to get on with life, and definitely without a man. But things don’t quite go to plan. As her Aunt Betty says, ‘Men, dear, are like buses, there are none on the horizon then three come along at once.’ Alice c...

Anyone who knows Pablo Picasso only as a famous name has merely skimmed the surface. This non-fiction book opens up a view behind myth and masterpiece and shows why Picasso’s art still electrifies us today. You follow a compelling Picasso biography that does not stop at anecdotes, but explains how talent and defiance combined to form an artist who shaped Classical Modernism and repeatedly reinvented himself.From the first formative years in A Coruña via Barcelona a...

Why do melting clocks and burning giraffes still haunt us today, and why does Dalí’s world feel like a mirror of our own dreams? This non-fiction book shows you how Salvador Dalí turned the unconscious into images you never forget – and how a young provocateur became the best-known Surrealist of the twentieth century. Anyone who knows Dalí only as an eccentric figure will discover here the precise thinker behind the pose: an artist who blended reality, delirium and advertising so d...

Why did France become a country that shaped Europe’s history, politics and culture over the centuries more profoundly than almost any other nation? This book presents France as the cultural visionary of the new Europe and leads straight into a history full of upheavals, power struggles, ideas and moments of artistic brilliance. Anyone wishing to understand Europe will discover here the developments that made France an intellectual and political key power.Bert Alexa...

Anyone who knows Albert Einstein only as a tousle haired face on a poster has seen only the surface. How could a physicist so fundamentally change the Newtonian view of the world that time and space suddenly became mobile and the twentieth century learned a new way of thinking. This non fiction book shows why Einstein, as the originator of the theory of relativity, became the very image of the scientist, the genius and the pacifist, and why his ideas still shape research, technolog...

Why does the art world celebrate male genius while overlooking the revolutionary women who transformed how we see pain, identity, and the female experience? Discover how one Mexican painter defied convention, suffering, and erasure to become the most iconic feminist artist of the twentieth century.Frida Kahlo didn't just paint self-portraits – she created a visual language that spoke truths about the female body, suffering, and resilience that the art establishment...

How could one of the world’s oldest civilisations become a state that today commands global attention, poised between millennia-old culture and digital supremacy? Anyone wishing to understand China needs more than headlines. ‘History of China’ shows, in a clearly structured way, how dynasties, revolutions and modernisation gave rise to one of the most influential powers of the present day.The book’s appeal lies already in its early historical scope. China appears h...

What happens when a person no longer understands themselves as master in their own house and suddenly senses that unconscious wishes, repressed conflicts and old childhood images are steering their thinking? This non fiction book takes you into the world of Sigmund Freud and explains, in an accessible way, why his ideas around 1900 shook medicine and still shape our view of psyche, culture and society today.The experienced author and editor Bert Alexander Petzold t...