Palaces like the Aljaferia and the Alhambra rank among the highest achievements of the Islamic world. In recent years archaeological work at Cordoba, Kairouan and many other sites has vastly increased our knowledge about the origin and development of Islamic palatial architecture, particularly in the Western Mediterranean region. This book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Islamic palace architecture in Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and southern Italy. The author, who has himself conducted archaeological field work at several prominent sites, presents all Islamic palaces known in the region in ground plans, sections and individual descriptions. The book traces the evolution of Islamic palace architecture in the region from the 8th to the 19th century and places them within the context of the history of Islamic culture. Palace architecture is a unique source of cultural history, offering insights into the way space was conceived and the way rulers used architecture to legitimize their power. The book discusses such topics as the influence of the architecture of the Middle East on the Islamic palaces of the western Mediterranean region, the role of Greek logic and scientific progress on the design of palaces, the impact of Islamic palaces on Norman and Gothic architecture and the role of Sufism on the palatial architecture of the late medieval period.

"Ajanta: Year by Year" is planned as a biography of this remarkable site, starting with the earliest caves, dating from some two thousand years, to its startling renaissance in the brief period between approximately 462 and 480. Concentrating on the excavations of the later period, during the reign of the Vakataka emperor Harisena, it attempts to show how, after a surprising gap of some three hundred years, Ajanta's proud and pious courtly patrons and its increasingly committed workmen created not only the greatest but the latest monument of India's Golden Age. Nearly three hundred illustrations, in color and black and white, reveal the exuberant flowering of Ajanta and related Vakataka monuments, as well as the manner of their sudden demise.

Maya Sanders has had enough drama to last a lifetime. For too long has Maya withstood the slings and arrows of those close to her-her aunts, uncles, and cousins; her daughter's father; his mother; and any number of so-called friends. Now she is ready to open a Pandora's box and share secrets about herself and others that everyone believed would go with them to their graves. She tells her story with the hope that when she's done, everything will finally be out in the open.

In her memoir, she recalls the forty-year grieving process that she has undergone in order to get where she is today. She has overcome the sense of being held hostage by those whom she believed loved her. Exploring the tragic circumstances of her life, she discusses all the pain she experienced and affirms that God has given her the strength to move on.

Maya shares the honest saga of her trials and tribulations as she tried to navigate the world on the streets of Chicago. Now, after decades of grief and healing within the comforting arms of God, Maya is ready to finally say goodbye to her pain.

Gandhara, with its wide variety of architectural remains and sculptures, has for many decades perplexed students of South and Central Asia. Kurt Behrendt in this volume for the first time and convincingly offers a description of the development of 2nd century B.C.E. to 8th century C.E. Buddhist sacred centers in ancient Gandhara, today northwest Pakistan.
Regional variations in architecture and sculpture in the Peshawar basin, Swat, and Taxila are discussed. At last a chronological framework is given for the architecture and the sculpture of Gandhara, but also light is being shed on how relic structures were utilized through time, as devotional imagery became increasingly significant to Buddhist religious practice.
With an important comparative overview of architectural remains, it is indispensable for all those interested in the development of the early Buddhist tradition of south and central Asia and the roots of Buddhism elsewhere in Asia.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

a[Duranteas] guidebook is a perfect walking-tour accompaniment to help New Yorkers and visitors find, identify and better appreciate statues famous and obscure (honoring, among others, the afather of gynecologya and the general who had an unremarkable military and business career but composed taps, the bugle call). . . . Durante winsomely places 54 monuments in historical and artistic perspective. We learn that a trumpet is an allegory for announcing fame, that the monument to Admiral Farragut in Madison Square Park altered the course of American sculpture, that the figure with the winged hat atop Grand Central Terminal is Mercury and that the statue of Atlas at Rockefeller Center was reviled when it was unveiled in 1937 because it supposedly resembled Mussolini. Letas hope Ms. Durante follows up in the other four boroughs.a
--"The New York Times"

aOutdoor Monuments of Manhattan is a primer on getting to know our city's monuments. . . . Each entry has a uniform structure. It contains a photo, vital stats (year dedicated, size, materials), an aAbout the Sculpturea section, and an aAbout the Subjecta section, as well as a carefully chosen boxed quotation culled from an old book or newspaper that pertains to the subject. . . . Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan is well written, well researched, well thought-out, funny, and often refreshingly original, and will help any interested New Yorker know about the wondrous monuments that dot the city.a
--"New York Sun"

aAnyone whose curiosity has ever been piqued by the peculiar mixture of historical statues that ornament the grounds of Central Park will find Outdoor Monuments byDianne Durante a satisfying read. . . . The entries provide background on each workas origin, explaining, for example, how a statue of the medieval Polish king Jagiello came to be in New York alongside more predictable allegorical and American patriotic figures. A brief history of the subject is also provided, including enough lively anecdotes and obscure facts to entice all readers.a
--"Sculpture Magazine"

a[Durante] tackles her task in the manner of a walking tour. . . . The language of the book is friendly and chatty, as if the author were in front of you, conducting an on-site lecture. . . . The purpose of the book is to encourage people to go and see the wealth of outdoor sculpture in Manhattan, and the book treats this purpose with the enthusiasm the subjects deserve.a
--"The Art Book"

Stop, look, and discover--the streets and parks of Manhattan are filled with beautiful historic monuments that will entertain, stimulate, and inspire you. Among the 54 monuments in this volume are major figures in American history: Washington, Lincoln, Lafayette, Horace Greeley, and Gertrude Stein; more obscure figures: Daniel Butterfield, J. Marion Sims, and King Jagiello; as well as the icons of New York: Atlas, Prometheus, and the Firemen's Memorial. The monuments represent the work of some of America's best sculptors: Augustus Saint Gaudens' Farragut and Sherman, Daniel Chester French's Four Continents, and Anna Hyatt Huntington's Jose Marti and Joan of Arc.

Each monument, illustrated with black-and-white photographs, is located on a map of Manhattan and includes easy-to-follow directions. All the sculptures are considered both as historical mementos and as art. We learn offurious General Sherman court-martialing a civilian journalist, and also of exasperated Saint Gaudens' proposing a hook-and-spring device for improving his assistants' artistic acuity as they help model Sherman. We discover how Lincoln dealt with a vociferous Confederate politician from Ohio, and why the Lincoln in Union Square doesn't rank as a top-notch Lincoln portrait. Sidebars reveal other aspects of the figure or event commemorated, using personal quotes, poems, excerpts from nineteenth-century periodicals ("New York Times," "Harper's Weekly"), and writers ranging from Aeschylus, Washington Irving, and Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi to Mark Twain and Henryk Sienkiewicz.

As a historical account, Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide is a fascinating look at figures and events that changed New York, the United States and the world. As an aesthetic handbook it provides a compact method for studying sculpture, inspired by Ayn Rand's writings on art. For residents and tourists, and historians and students, who want to spend more time viewing and appreciating sculpture and New York history, this is the start of a unique voyage of discovery.

Making the changes maps the representation of jazz music and the occasions of its performance in South African literature and reportage. Throughout its history, South African jazz has been formed from complex transactions with other black Atlantic cultures, identities and political possibilities. The tactics these transactions have entailed and their effects on the cultural imaginary in the appropriation and manipulation of the music's meaning by creative writers, biographers and journalists are traced. By considering how South African writers participate in the global symbolic flows of jazz discourse, what emerges is how local contingencies have been managed through elaborating a relational history that has meaningfully cut across the categories and hierarchies of colonial and apartheid ideology. Making the changes maps jazz discourse from the legendary elan vital of the Sophiatown writers, through the King Kong reportage and white writing, to the agonised poetics of exile. The study then considers the role of dissonance in resistance writing of the Soweto poets of the 1970s and the Staffrider generation of the 1980s. In the final chapter it traces the contemporary use of jazz in a poetics of healing. The chapters are divided by 'solos', each of which discusses either a particular writer's engagement with jazz or the representation of a specific musician.

"Revelation and Trinity" provides a guide for the serious study of the systematic theologies of John Calvin and Karl Barth.

The controversial debate between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner drew attention to John Calvin's theology. Each one claims his theology is more faithful to Calvin's theology than the other. In "Revelation and Trinity," author Sang-Hwan Lee analyzes and interprets the theologies of Calvin's 1559 "Institutes" and Barth's "Church Dogmatics" and how they affect Christianity.

Originally a doctoral thesis, Lee's analysis demonstrates their conceptual basis in the revelation of the triune God to which the Bible and the Church attest, and he imparts the implications of this basis. "Revelation and Trinity" highlights the relationship that both Calvin and Barth find between the ontology of the living God in revelation and its noetic and conceptual possibility in faith.

Revitalizing the discussion on the theologies of Calvin and Barth and their relationship, Lee offers a critical assessment of the tenability of the oneness and the threeness of God in their theologies. "Revelation and Trinity" offers old and new insights into their theologies, and examines their relationship with a fresh discussion.

This book contains selected papers presented during the bi-annual World Renewable Energy Network's Med Green Forum aimed at the international community as well as Mediterranean countries. This forum highlights the importance of growing renewable energy applications in two main sectors: Electricity Generation and the Sustainable Building Sector. In-depth chapters highlight the most current research and technological breakthroughs, covering a broad range of renewable energy technologies and applications in all sectors - for electricity production, heating and cooling, agricultural applications, water desalination, industrial applications and for the transport sectors.

If you are looking for a book to help you get ready for the fast paced and exciting field of technical engineering