Gateways to the Book investigates the complex image-text relationships between frontispieces and illustrated title pages on the one hand and texts on the other, in European books published between 1500 and 1800. Although interest in this broad field of research has increased in the past decades, many varieties of title pages and a great deal of printers and books remain as yet unstudied. The fifteen essays collected in this volume tackle this field with a great variety of academic approaches, asking how the images can be interpreted, how the texts and contexts shape their interpretation, and how they in turn shape the understanding of the text.

This volume examines the varied ways in which the senses were perceived afresh during the Enlightenment. In addition to introducing new philosophical and scientific models which sometimes upended the classic hierarchy of the senses, this period witnessed major changes in living and working habits, including urbanization, travel and exploration, the invention of new sonic and visual media, and the rise of comfort and pleasure as values that cut across a range of social classes. As this volume shows, those developments inspired a wealth of sensorially stimulating styles of design, art, music, poetry, foodstuffs, material goods and modes of worship and entertainment. The volume also demonstrates the period's countervailing concern with managing the senses, evident in fields like natural philosophy, medicine, education, religion, and public hygiene. Finally, it explores some of the Enlightenment's desensualizing tendencies, like the separation of sensuous body from discerning mind in certain arenas of science and manufacturing, and the late 18th-century shift away from a politics of publicity, or intense visual and aural scrutiny, toward the secret ballot. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays on the following topics: the social life of the senses; urban sensations; the senses in the marketplace; the senses in religion; the senses in philosophy and science; medicine and the senses; the senses in literature; art and the senses; and sensory media.

Inspired by both Daniel Defoe's 'A Journal of the Plague Year' (1722) and 'The King', an anthology of the witty and provocative chess columns of the Dutch Grandmaster, Jan Hein Donner, Ray Keene here collects his thoughts and writings on the year 2020 - both in chess and the wider world. His reflections include the impact of Covid-19 on the popularity of chess, the remarkable influence of the Netflix series 'The Queen's Gambit', the growing army of teenage Grandmasters, the online pivot of chess competition and the emergence of chess entrepreneurs, such as World Champion Magnus Carlsen and Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura.. Like Donner, Ray uses chess as a metaphor for observations on art, culture and civilisation.

Well Worth a Shindy tells the story of the Old Well, beloved symbol of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the United States' first public university. The Old Well is a Greco-Roman garden temple built in 1897 over an old water well on the campus. The facts concerning the Old Well's beginnings serve to introduce an historical study of the round temple from Mycenaean tholos tombs and treasuries to eighteenth-century English garden follies. The reasons that the Old Well was built, according to its commissioner, Edwin Alderman, the sixth president of the University of North Carolina, are repetitious of those that directed such as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to build round temples to be symbols of their territorial and dynastic desires. the designer of the Old Well, Eugene Lewis Harris, used to construct the temple were not new but were ancient guides filtered through Medieval and Renaissance prisms. A catalog of over 100 round structures in 14 countries is provided.

This book presents and analyses two basic assertions Life in the 21st century is threatened by an unprecedented global crisis, which is the result of the exponential increase in the impact of human activity on the earth. Properly understood, the Christian concept of Creation and of human relationships based on God's Covenant, offer the clearest light on the meaning and nature of, and effective response to, the crisis, and the most realistic Hope for the future. It owes much to James Lovelock, the originator of the concept of Gaia - the earth seen as a single coherent living interlocking system - who challenges those of faith to develop "a theology of creation that could include Gaia. Recognise that human rights and needs are not enough; those with faith could accept the Earth as part of God's creation and be troubled by its desecration." This book is written to accept that challenge.

"Exhibition Experiments" is a lively collection that considers experiments with museological form that challenge our understanding of - and experience with - museums.
Explores examples of museum experimentalism in light of cutting-edge museum theory
Draws on a range of global and topical examples, including museum experimentation, exhibitionary forms, the fate of conventional notions of 'object' and 'representation', and the impact of these changes
Brings together an international group of art historians, anthropologists, and sociologists to question traditional disciplinary boundaries
Considers the impact of technology on the museum space
tackles a range of examples of experimentalism from many different countries, including Australia, Austria, Germany, Israel, Luxembourg, Sweden, the UK and the US
Examines the changes and challenging new possibilities facing museum studies

Affect, Emotion and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires presents new approaches to Ottoman Safavid and Mughal art and culture. Taking artistic agency as a starting point, the authors consider the rise in status of architects, the self-fashioning of artists, the development of public spaces, as well as new literary genres that focus on the individual subject and his or her place in the world. They consider the issue of affect as performative and responsive to certain emotions and actions, thus allowing insights into the motivations behind the making and, in some cases, the destruction of works of art. The interconnected histories of Iran,Turkey and India thus highlight the urban and intellectual changes that defined the early modern period. Contributors are: Sussan Babaie, Chanchal Dadlani, Jamal Elias, Emine Fetvaci, Christiane Gruber, Sylvia Hougteling, Kishwar Rizvi, Sunil Sharma, and Marianna Shreve Simpson.

Malice Aforethought is the story of murder-one-the premeditated, cold-blooded killing and obliteration of the name and life-story of the world's greatest writing genius, William Shakespeare. This shameful tale has finally been unraveled, slowly but inexorably, piece by dramatic piece, during the last century. Whom did Shakespeare offend so grievously that he had to be eradicated forever from the rolls of life? Or was he only embroiled in high-stakes drama and malevolence by ill-fortune? Using well-known sleuthing techniques, the Great Shakespeare Hoax has been solved, the true genius identified and the diabolical perpetrators revealed. Their disgraceful deception, coerced on a gullible world, has been eminently successful for four centuries but no longer. The dastardly deed of filching and squelching Shakespeare's name, the immediate jewel of his soul, was a wanton act of assassination with malice aforethought, malum in se, malevolent by its very nature. The despicable act was motivated solely for reasons of endless appetite for power and wealth by individuals at the highest level of English government. Remarkably, a cover-up of the truth still continues today in the United States and England.

The Big Sandy River Valley of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia experienced a great coal boom at the end of the nineteenth century. The area attracted railroads, capital, corporations, and people. Isolated mountain communities became the sites of great mining operations, small regional commercial centers grew, and hundreds of coal company towns appeared almost overnight. Today, many of these once-vibrant coal towns are fading away, their populations a fraction of their heyday, their buildings, homes, and mine sites abandoned.
This guidebook takes the reader to some of these intriguing ghost towns. For each town, the author presents detailed directions and brief histories, notes what buildings and structures remain, and provides fascinating details about their people. A Guide to the Historic Coal Towns of the Big Sandy River Valley guides visitors through the streets and hollows of these communities, rich in Appalachian, African American, and immigrant culture. A must for anyone traveling through the valley, as well as for students of Appalachia, coal mining, railroads, and American history.
George D. Torok is a native of Buffalo, New York, and currently lives in El Paso, Texas, where he teaches history at El Paso Community College. He has published assorted works on Kentucky history, the early national era, and the American Southwest. When he and his wife Blanca are not touring the borderlands exploring program ideas for his television show Along the Rio Grande, they enjoy world travel, writing, photography, and the lifestyle of the American Southwest.