This is a book about remoteness: a memoir of places observed in solitude, of the texture of life through the quiet course of the seasons in the far north of Scotland. It is a book grounded in the singularity of one place - a house in northern Aberdeenshire - and threaded through with an unshowy commitment to the lost and the forgotten. In these painterly essays Davidson reflects on art, place, history and landscape. Distance and Memory is his testament to the cold, clear beauty of the nort...

This is a mighty book of Norths: northern geographies, histories, lights; a place of definition, frost and cold. There is an unfaltering Recusant spirit about these poems, a survival through defeat and a sense of underlying permanences. Each poem has an occasion: some of the occasions are personal meetings, conversations, which unlock shared scenes and themes; some are historical in origin, their past often one of early Christian faith or religious conflict. The poems abound in art, in spe...

Following in the successful nature-writing style of Robert MacFarlane and Gillian Clarke, Distance and Memory is a book about remoteness: a memoir of places observed in solitude, of the texture of life through the quiet course of the seasons in the far north of Scotland. It is a book grounded in the singularity of one place—a house in northern Aberdeenshire—and threaded through with an unshowy commitment to the lost and the forgotten. In these painterly essays Peter Davidson provi...

Atlas of Empires tells the story of how and why the great empires of history came into being, operated, and ultimately declined, and it discusses the future of the empire in today's globalized world. This book features 60 beautiful and detailed maps of the empires' territories at different stages of their existence, and it organizes them thematically to reflect the different driving forces behind empires throughout history (such as faith, nomadic culture, nationhood, and capitalism). Each ...

This ambitious account of the arts of the evening, now available in paperback, deftly combines prose-poetry, memoir, philosophy and art history. Intertwining personal, cultural and artistic histories, it is a richly rewarding book written in a unique voice.

Someone is operating the largest stock market insider trading scheme in the history of the United States that is making millions of dollars in illegal profits. Whoever it is, has access to secret information about numerous major corporations before the information is made available to the general public. Perhaps it is a nationally-known radio or TV host of a financial program, a financial journalist, or maybe even a Pulitzer Prize winner.The perpetrator of the insider trading scheme...

North is the point we look for on a map to orient ourselves. It is also the direction taken throughout history by the adventurous, the curious, the solitary, and the foolhardy. Based in the North himself, Peter Davidson, in The Idea of North, explores the very concept of "north" through its many manifestations in painting, legend, and literature.Tracing a northbound route from rural England—whose mild climate keeps it from being truly northern—to the wind-shorn highlands o...

Dutch Golden Age poet Constantijn Huygens (1596—1687) was a remarkable figure: in addition to writing poetry, he composed music; was secretary to two Princes of Orange, Frederick Henry and William II; and became a friend to John Donne, Rembrandt, Descartes, and many other notable people of his time. In this book, Peter Davidson and Adriaan van der Weel offer a broad selection of Huygens’s poems and provide excellent translations for those written in Dutch, Latin, and a number of other lang...

An authoritative pocket guide to the birds of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are becoming increasingly popular with all kinds of visitors, not least birdwatchers, who can visit many national parks and reserves harbouring a bounty of amazing species. The three countries are home to about 1,000 species of birds including such rarities as Bengal Florican, Giant Ibis, Green Peafowl and Vietnamese Cutia. This concise and easy-to-use guide features...

Relics, dreams, voyages is a closely focused sequence of studies of worldwide connections in all the arts in the baroque period. Drawing on original research in libraries, collections, and archives in five countries, and in as many languages, this book draws many astonishing, unfamiliar and beautiful texts, things and events, into a cartography of the secret and strange patterns of baroque cultures worldwide. The visual arts are examined across a wide temporal and geographical spa...

Archipelago is one of the most important and influential literary magazines of the lasttwenty years. Running to twelve editions, it was edited by Andrew McNeillie, with theassistance later of James McDonald Lockhart, and began as an attempt to reimagine therelationships between the islands of Ireland and Britain. Archipelago has brought togetherestablished and emerging artists in creative conversations that have transformed the studyof islands, coasts and...

On March 25, 2001, the nude body of Michelle Lewis, a 39-year-old nun, was discovered in her sleeping quarters at South Florida’s Holy Cross Academy. She had been stabbed 92 times. It wasn’t long before homicide detectives zeroed in on her killer: a young apprentice monk and former Holy Cross student, Mykhaylo Kofel. Under questioning, he confessed to the crime.But Kofel’s disturbing defense would not only rock the future of the upscale Dade County academy, it would also sound an a...