Few Americans are aware that Washington is the country’s largest single patron of art. Every year a group of unelected federal bureaucrats and congressmen spends millions of taxpayer dollars on monuments, sculptures, buildings, plays, and exhibitions, largely without public knowledge or involvement. Frank Gehry’s outlandish memorial to President Eisenhower, an installation that blinks quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt in Morse code at a cash-strapped Veterans Administration hospital, a giant $...

This book gives the necessary background for the study and appreciation of Italian painting and sculpture from about 1250 to 1550. It tells how the artists learned their craft, the organization of their workshops, and the guilds they belonged to; how their customers or patrons treated them and where their work was displayed?churches, civic buildings, or private homes. The book discusses how art was made?tempera, oil, panel, canvas, fresco; it surveys the characteristic types of Renaissance...

This up-to-date, well-illustrated, and thoughtful introduction to the life and works of one of the giants of Western Painting also surveys the golden age of Venetian Painting from Giovanni Bellini to Veronese and its place in the history of Western art. Bruce Cole, Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts at Indiana University and author of numerous books on Italian Renaissance art, begins with the life and work of Giovanni Bellini, the principal founder of Venetian Renaissance painting. He co...

In Teaching America, more than 20 leading thinkers sound the alarm over a crisis in citizenship—and lay out a powerful agenda for reform. The book’s unprecedented roster of authors includes Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Senator Jon Kyl, Senator Bob Graham, Secretary Rod Paige, Alan Dershowitz, Juan Williams, Glenn Reynolds, Michael Kazin, Frederick Hess, Andrew Rotherham, Mike Feinberg, Seth Andrew, Mark Bauerlein and more.Their message: To remain America, our country has to give it...

The Founders of this nation believed that the government they were creating required a civically educated populace. Such an education aimed to cultivate enlightened, informed, and vigilant citizens who could perpetuate and improve the nation. Unfortunately, America’s contemporary youth seem to lack adequate opportunities, if not also the ability or will, to critically examine the foundations of this nation. An even larger problem is an increasing ambivalence toward education in general. St...

Best-selling author and narrator team from Solitude: Dimension Space Book One.A routine flight. An encounter with the impossible. A race against time.Captain Jake Giard's world is turned upside down when a routine training flight becomes an encounter with the impossible. After seeing a UFO with physics-defying abilities, Jake finds himself at the center of a government cover-up as he struggles to uncover the truth about the death o...

From the Bestselling Author of Solitude!A routine test flight. A mysterious crash. Humanity’s first encounter with an alien race.When Major Anthony Spinelli takes his P-51 Mustang on a routine test flight over the deserts of New Mexico, he expects a few mechanical glitches—not to encounter a craft unlike anything built on Earth. After a storm forces Tony into a life-or-death spiral, the alien craft saves him at the last second, onl...

A lifeless fleet. A weapon that defies understanding. A battle for the future of humanity.Captain Jake Giard thought the nightmare was over. But when he and Colonel Newcastle explore the immense alien carrier drifting silently above the Atlantic, they realize the fight is far from finished. With its crew mysteriously vaporized, the carrier fleet holds the key to Earth’s survival—or its destruction. As Jake ventures deep into the eerie, deserted starship, he uncov...

From International bestselling author Maggie Cole comes a morally gray psychological romance where boundaries are temptation, ethics are foreplay, and a dangerously perceptive woman sets her stalker sights on her therapist.My parents made me see a therapist for stalking.They thought Dr. Red Mercer would cure me. They assumed he would teach me restraint, discipline, and distance. What they didn’t count on was the way his gaze linger...

The fifth volume in the Science Fiction Megapack series collects 25 tales of high adventure through other worlds and times, including 5 Hugo and Nebula Award-winners and nominees. Featured this time are:AGAPE AMONG THE ROBOTS, by Allen SteeleTHE STARSHIP MECHANIC, by Jay Lake and Ken ScholesPEACEMAKER, by Gardner DozoisOR ALL THE SEAS WITH OYSTERS, by Avram DavidsonGRANDMA, by Carol EmshwillerTHE GIFT BEARER, by Charles L. FontenayI, ROBOT,...

Romanzo erotico-novella best seller di Aria ColeQuando Paige Brennan trasloca nel suo nuovo appartamento non si aspetta di trovare un vicino diabolico.I suoi strani comportamenti a notte fonda la tengono sempre sveglia, e ogni colpo e sbatacchiamento è acuito dalla parete condivisa della loro camera da letto. Quando finalmente Paige si imbatte nel chiassoso nottambulo, è determinata a dirgliene quattro, anche se le sue spalle larghe e il sorriso malandrino la lasciano eccit...

Liz Truss’s journey from schoolgirl revolutionary to Britain’s shortest-serving Prime MinisterThe Sunday Times Politics Book of the Year A Guardian Politics Book of the Year 2023‘An insightful and at times riotously entertaining account of the lengthy rise and abrupt fall of Britain’s 56th Prime Minister. What was intended as a prologue to her premiership is now a riveting political obituary in which every page drips with the seeds of both triumph ...