As major actors in the unfolding drama of climate change, glaciers feature prominently in Earth's past and its future. Wherever on the planet we live, glaciers affect each of us directly. They control
From the inception of the Daguerreotype in 1839, photography has been widely deployed to document sports as an important social activity. In the earliest days, these photos took the form of staged gen
The North Pole has long held surprising importance for many of the world’s cultures. Interweaving science and history, this book offers the first unified vision of how the North Pole has shaped
In Ice, Klaus Dodds provides a wide-ranging exploration of the cultural, natural, and geopolitical history of this most slippery of subjects. Beyond Earth, ice has been found on other planets, moons,
The foot—we know it well. Small or large, attractive or unsightly, clean-smelling or foul, it is quite literally the support that carries us through the day. But while the foot may seem nothing
From the fire-breathing beasts of North European myth and legend to the Book of Revelation’s Great Red Dragon of Hell, from those supernatural agencies of imperial authority in ancient China to
The rainbow is a compelling spectacle in nature—a rare, evanescent, and beautiful bridge between subjective experience and objective reality—and no less remarkable as a cultural phenomenon
Since time immemorial, the nocturnal skies have mesmerized us, and heavenly bodies have inspired the imaginations of artists, poets, and scientists. Featuring paintings, sculpture, drawings, watercolo
At the end of his long, prolific life, Titian was rumored to paint directly on the canvas with his bare hands. He would slide his fingers across bright ridges of oil paint, loosening the colors, blend
In sixteenth-century Northern Europe, during a time of increasing religious and political conflict, Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel explored how people perceived human nature. Bruegel turned his critic
Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor’s The Madness of Knowledge i
The British public school is an iconic institution, a training ground for the ruling elite and a symbol of national identity and tradition. But beyond the elegant architecture and evergreen playing fi
Though reaching ever further toward the skies, today’s cities are overshadowed by multiple threats: climate change, overpopulation, social division, and urban warfare all endanger our metropolitan way
For fifteen centuries, legends of King Arthur have enthralled us. Born in the misty past of a Britain under siege, half-remembered events became shrouded in ancient myth and folklore. The resulting ta
In colonial India, a range of administrators, soldiers, surveyors, and others invested large parts of their lives in attempting to inventory and comprehend the vast country, its teeming populations, a
There is no other way to put it: Elvis is the King. Note the present tense: even though Elvis (supposedly) died nearly forty years ago, he has lived on in our hearts, as a sound, as an image, and as a
From Jurassic Park to Sue the T-Rex and Barney, our dino love affair is as real, as astonishing, and as incomprehensible as the gargantuan beasts themselves. At once reptilian and avian, dinosaurs ena
The story of the universe is written in the light that travels through it—the light that we can capture, that is. Nearly everything we know about how the universe works on its grandest scale com
Without any prompting, children intuitively develop a powerful impulse to draw. Beginning with their first scribbles, drawing is an activity that encompasses children’s expanding knowledge, new
Since 2010, Greece’s social and economic conditions have been irreversibly transformed due to austerity measures imposed by the European troika and successive Greek governments. These stringent
In January 2006, a man tried to break Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain sculpture with a small hammer. The sculpted foot of Michelangelo’s David was damaged in 1991 by a purportedly mentally ill artist. Each
Sublime madness, ennui, and melancholy: a condition of imbalance, chaotic and desolate—and a keystone of modern Western thought. Why did this threatening expression of languor and disorder gain
An increasing proportion of exhibitions are curated by artists rather than professional curators, and in this book Alison Green provides the first critical history of visual artists as curators. Green
In 1600, the Catholic Inquisition condemned the philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno for heresy, and he was then burned alive in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome. Historians, scientists, and ph
For millennia, corals were a marine enigma, organisms that confounded scientific classification and occupied a space between the animal and plant kingdoms. Our cultural relationships with coral have b
In remembering the Holocaust, we have largely ignored the contributions made by German artists in the first twenty years after the end of the war. But how did artists in Germany deal with their own ex
Public sculpture is a major draw in today’s cities, and nowhere is this more the case than in New York. In the Big Apple, urban art has become synonymous with the municipal “brand,”
With eye-popping colors and shapes, intense flavors, and curious textures, sweets and candy are beloved by people of all ages worldwide. They provide minor treats, lessons in economics for children, a
Over the last forty years, the human landscape of the United States has been fundamentally transformed. The metamorphosis is partially visible in the ascendance of glittering, coastal hubs for finance
Polar bears are truly majestic animals: the largest land-dwelling carnivore on earth, these white-furred, black-skinned giants can measure up to three meters in length and weigh up to fifteen hundred
