Whisky is a story. Whisky is many stories. This book brings together the most surprising anecdotes from the world of whisky and is therefore the perfect addition to other books on distilling, tasting and travelling. Enjoy heart-warming tales about secret recipes, haunted castles, hidden distilleries, generous drunks and the first whisky tourist, and discover aspects about whisky that you’ll never find in any other book. For almost 40 years, whisky enthusiast Fernand Dacquin has been traveling through this wonderful world of whisky, in search of the most striking stories and images. Now he turns those experiences into 111 stories, in his own tongue-in-cheek style. The result is a wonderfully unusual book, published in a practical format that leaves one hand free for a good glass of whisky.
Rome is not only enriched by the works that have led it to be known as the “eternal city”, or with those monuments that still preserve the stories of a strong people, such as the Colosseum, the Roman Forum or Castel Sant’Angelo. It is not only the symbolic center of Christianity thanks to St. Peter’s Basilica, or the central and figurative hub of the Italian Republic because of the Palazzo del Quirinale. The history, art, and culture of Rome tell the story of a process of restoration and innovation that sees the participation of some timeless places and the birth of other contemporary community services that join those already known to the public. During 1930s, the social and cultural revolution and call for functionality and practicality are represented by impressive modern public and residential works, as well as by major operations from architectural protagonists in the urban change of the capital. Works such as the university city of Sapienza and its institutes, or the EUR district tell the story of the formal transition between modernity and contemporaneity.
Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, with 80,000 hectares of vines spanning a variety of soils and climates. It has been producing wine since the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century and today makes a range of wines: sweet, sparkling, easy-drinking and ageable. Although it produces similar volumes to countries such as New Zealand, Greece and Austria, its wines are not well known outside of South America.
The Wines of Brazil is therefore for wine explorers in search of diverse, off the beaten track wines. It begins by relating Brazil’s wine-making history, before moving on to explain current viticulture and wine making. The regions and their wine producers are profiled in detail, with a particular focus on those whose wines are sold outside the country.
Features a detailed history of alcohol production in Brazil, from indigenous peoples to the arrival of European settlers to the foundations of today’s wine business.
Explores Brazil’s differing varieties and wine growing methods across its broad range of terroirs, from the pioneering region of Serra Gaúcha in the south to the northern tropics of the São Francisco Valley.
Provides details on many of Brazil’s producers, including the author’s recommendations and information on visiting wineries. Author is a Brazilian national who has been a wine educator for more then two decades. Supported by color maps and photos.
South Africa is the eighth largest wine-producer in the world and its wine industry is among the oldest of the New World. Today it is one of the globe’s most dynamic industries, compact but diverse. In the past decade a new generation of winemakers has breathed life into centuries-old estates and new, boutique brands alike. The Wines of South Africa begins by introducing readers to the history of South African wine, starting with the arrival of the Dutch and the establishment of what would become Cape Town. Clarke then analyses South Africa’s industry today including the geological, geographical, and climatic conditions that create the parameters and potential of South African wine. He describes the major grape varieties and wine styles and outlines the broad range of wines being produced. The book the current infrastructure of the industry paying particular attention to the role of Black and coloured people in the wine industry since the end of apartheid. Key challenges facing the industry are explored, including profitability and the loss of vineyards as farmers switch to higher-margin orchards; environmental concerns, the effects of climate change, and water conservation; and the legacy of apartheid and continued imbalances in the socioeconomic structure of the Western Cape. The major growing areas of South Africa are described in turn, including an explanation of the Wine of Origin scheme, and the most important producers operating in each one.
Tea was introduced to Britain in the 1650s. Its popularity burgeoned over the following two-and-a-half centuries, until it became a defining feature of British culture.
Drawing inspiration from China, British craftsmen worked to display their skills on numerous tea-related objects, which ritualised the process of drinking tea and imbued it with luxury status. Calling on an array of different materials and techniques, they developed a huge variety of canisters and lockable containers for storing and preserving this precious commodity.
Tea chests and caddies were not merely functional items that might lurk at the back of the kitchen – they were intended for display and were an essential accoutrement for fashionable women. As the habit of tea drinking filtered down the social scale, caddies were made in larger numbers and in more affordable forms.
This book brings together a great range of decorative antique tea containers, presenting them alongside detailed historical research conducted into their making and their place in British society across the centuries. It also explores the materials and techniques employed. With historical art showing tea’s integration into British society, examples of old trade cards and original designs, and a wealth of illustrations of the objects themselves, this is a must-buy book for historians, collectors and those interested in the decorative arts.
“Building the Brooklyn Bridge is a perfect feast, a would-be time-traveler’s delight, overflowing with rare and evocative and fascinating images.”
– Kurt Andersen
Recipient of the 2021 Book Award from The Victorian Society New York.
The captivating story of how a bridge of unprecedented size and technology was built during an age of remarkable innovation.
This book invites the reader to step back in time to discover why this iconic bridge-proclaimed the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ soon after its completion and a National Historic Landmark since 1964-continues to hold such a special place in the hearts of so many.
Spanning the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge connected for the first time the then independent cities of Brooklyn and New York. This awe-inspiring structure was not only a modern engineering feat of extraordinary imagination, fortitude, and skill, it also was a towering beacon of human triumph.
Author Jeffrey Richman, historian at Brooklyn’s famed Green-Wood Cemetery, has gathered more than 250 superb nineteenth-century images, many never before published on the printed page, including engineering drawings, photographs, stereographs, woodcuts, and colored lithographs. Flipping through the book, one can imagine the excitement people around the world felt as they followed the progress of the bridge’s construction, either through the illustrated papers of the day or using viewers to look at stereographs in three dimensions. Richman specially commissioned more than forty anaglyphs-3D images generated from the historic stereographs-to recreate the 3D experience on the page. Every copy of the book includes a pair of 3D glasses kept in a pocket inside the back cover, offering the reader the sensation of being at the construction site as the towers began to rise.
A born storyteller, Richman relates how a small group of dedicated engineers and thousands of workers toiled for more than a decade to construct what was then the largest suspension bridge ever built, section by section, from the massive anchorages and elegant towers to the cables and bridge railway (operational four months after the bridge’s official opening). He reminds us how profoundly modern and groundbreaking the bridge was, in its use of steel (a new material) and pioneering construction methods. The bridge still elicits awe and admiration today.
“This is one of humankind’s great creations”-author interview with Michelle Miller on CBS Saturday Morning.
Over 200 years ago, the Mauritshuis hosted not one, but two museums. On the upper floor was the Royal Cabinet of Paintings, while on the ground floor, thousands of objects of all kinds were on display in the Royal Cabinet of Rarities. This rarities cabinet closed in 1875 and the objects were distributed to various Dutch institutions. The temporary exhibition The Vanished Museum about this Royal Cabinet of Rarities is accompanied by a publication with essays by 30 experts, including curators of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Wereldmuseum in Leiden. In relatively short texts, the reader is taken through the rich and often complex history of the institution. The diverse topics and perspectives suit the motley nature of the collection. From a text about an unusual ivory Chinese puzzle ball, to a reflection on the formation of cultural stereotypes; from a kayak on the ceiling, to a hat that turns out not to belong to Willem van Oranje after all.
The close relationship between Edvard Munch and the National Gallery of Oslo, today part of the National Museum, is a subject well worthy of a detailed publication.
The first Munch painting acquired by the museum was Night in Nice, purchased in 1891. Today the collection encompasses 57 paintings and 186 works on paper. The paintings include masterpieces such as The Sick Child, The Scream, Madonna, The Girls on the Bridge, and Man in the Cabbage Field. How did the museum come by all these works? And what is the story behind the famous ‘Munch Room’? Answers to these and many other questions can be found in this book, which contains reproductions of all the works in the collection.
The book contains texts by Karin Hindsbo, Nils Messel, Sidsel Helliesen, Gerd Woll, Thierry Ford, Mai Britt Guleng, Øystein Ustvedt, Wenche Volle and Vibeke Waallann Hansen.
Text in English and Norwegian.
William Nicholson was still in his twenties when he started working on books for the publisher William Heinemann that combined a hugely powerful woodcut style with peerlessly precise observation and sly humor. The Square Book of Animals brings together a collection of 12 beasts drawn with Nicholson’s sweeping line and unerring eye for the lively detail. The text is by Arthur Waugh, the father of Evelyn Waugh. A great classic of British book illustration, unavailable for decades. Published simultaneously with two other works An Alphabet and The Book of Blokes.
“…the panorama of a self-forgotten milieu.” — Monopol
“Toffs behaving badly: 1980s high society in photos.” — The Times
“The pictorial equivalents of Evelyn Waugh’s sentences.” — The New Yorker
“Modest though he is, Dafydd’s photographs will endure for having perfectly captured a society on the brink of decline. Unmissable listening.” — Country & Townhouse podcast
“Wonderfully ironic, every point in the picture ignites and knows how to entertain very well.” — Lovely Books
“Dafydd catches those moments of genuine exhilaration, wealth and youth.” — The Hollywood Reporter
“I wondered if the party guests I’d photographed were just re-enacting a nostalgic fantasy, an imaginary version of England that already no longer existed.” – Dafydd Jones
Throughout the 1980s, award-winning photographer Dafydd Jones was granted access to some of England’s most exclusive upper-class events. Now, the author of Oxford: The Last Hurrah presents this irreverent and intimate portrait of birthday parties and charity balls, Eton picnics and private school celebrations.
With the crack of a hunting rifle and a spray of champagne, these photos give an almost cinematic account of high-society England at its most riotous and its most vulnerable. Against the backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain, globalization, the Falklands War, rising stocks and dwindling inherited fortunes, Jones reveals the inner lives of the established elite as they party long into the night-time of their fading world.
Praise for Oxford: The Last Hurrah
‘Sublime vintage photographs…’ – Hermione Eyre, The Telegraph
‘In The Last Hurrah…we see familiar faces from British high society poised on the brink of adulthood.’ – Eve Watling, Independent
Best of the Watch is a panorama of the best global watch production from the last 30 years. Legendary brands are included, such as Rolex, Vacheron-Constantin, Patek-Philippe, Bréguet, Blancpain, A Lange & Söhne, Richard Mille, and Audemars Piguet, to name just a few.
Iconic and fascinating creations unveiled in a luxurious XL format to better illustrate the mysteries and inner workings of these legendary timepieces.