A pulse-pounding real-life chase for an ancient masterpiece of immeasurable value . . .

Sotheby's. New York City. June 19, 1990.

Nothing of its kind had been sold to the public in more than a century. On a warm June evening on Manhattan's Upper East Side, with the auction-house showroom crammed with the wealthy, the curious, and the press, history was made when an anonymous man in a green golf sweater paid an unprecedented three quarters of a million dollars to win the twenty-five-hundred-year-old chalice. After that night, this historical artifact disappeared, its whereabouts a mystery. "Until now."

It is among the most prized of antiquities: the Greek artist Euphronios's wine cup depicting the death of Zeus's son Sarpedon at Troy. Lost for more than two millennia, the chalice--one of only six of its kind found intact--mysteriously surfaced in the collection of a Hollywood producer, who then sold it to a Texas billionaire. Coveted by obsessed private collectors, dealers, and museum curators, it was also of intense interest to the Italian police, who believed it belonged to their country, where it had first been dug up earlier in the twentieth century.

In this breathtaking tale of history, adventure, and intrigue, archaeologist and journalist Vernon Silver pieces together the extraordinary tale of the lost cup and offers a portrait of the modern antiquities trade: a world of tomb raiders, smugglers, wealthy collectors, ambitious archaeol-ogists, rapacious dealers, corrupt curators, and international law enforcement. Spanning twenty-five hundred years, "The Lost Chalice" moves from the mythic battlefield of the Trojan War to the countryside of twentieth-century Tuscany, the dusty libraries of Oxford University to the exhibition halls of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the cramped law-enforcement offices of the Carabinieri to the tony rooms of New York's auction houses to solve the mystery of the world's rarest masterpiece.

As Silver learns, the discovery of the chalice exposes another riddle--and an even greater missing treasure. Epic and thrilling, "The Lost Chalice" is a driving true-life detective story that illuminates a big-money, high-stakes, double-dealing world, which is as fascinating as it is unforgettable. Silver's thrilling tale opens a window onto Italian history, culture, and life rarely seen.

Toby Gotesman Schneier has become enormously popular as a writer over the past several years. Her now infamous blog, I AM GODDESS XREBBITZIN, has earned her international acclaim, as well as being noted as "one of the top three blogs on spiritualism in the world." She pushes the envelope in ways that are charming, hilarious, and extremely edgy. This "fictional memoir" will keep the reader guessing, laughing, crying, and wanting more. This story, the first in a series of four, examines the life and times of famed exrebbetzin Missy Gold Meinfeld, her exploits, her meandorings, and her indefatigable spirit and humor. It is breathtakingly honest and reflective, setting forth a plethora of situations and convoluted life circumstances.

"Bertie's story is a testament to the 3 T's--tenacity, talent, and triumph. She just kept on fighting and we are all the better for it.--Willa Sorensen, retired principal and school board member.

The captivating tale of the plans and personalities behind one of New York City's most radical and recognizable buildings Considered the crowning achievement of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan is often called iconic. But it is in fact iconoclastic, standing in stark contrast to the surrounding metropolis and setting a new standard for the postwar art museum. Commissioned to design the building in 1943 by the museum's founding curator, Baroness Hilla von Rebay, Wright established residence in the Plaza Hotel in order to oversee the project. Over the next 17 years, Wright continuously clashed with his clients over the cost and the design, a conflict that extended to the city of New York and its cultural establishment. Against all odds, Wright held fast to his radical design concept of an inverted ziggurat and spiraling ramp, built with a continuous beam-a shape recalling the form of an hourglass. Construction was only completed in 1959, six months after Wright's death. The building's initial critical response ultimately gave way to near-universal admiration, as it came to be seen as an architectural masterpiece. This essential text, offering a behind-the-scenes story of the Guggenheim along with a careful reading of its architecture, is beautifully illustrated with more than 150 images, including plans, drawings, and rare photographs of the building under construction.

Custom and Innovation: John Miller + Partners is the first publication devoted to the work of John Miller + Partners, and explores Miller's work from his student days at the Architectural Association, to his present practice as a multi-award winning firm. The book provides an insight into the contemporary fascination with museum buildings as well as the revived interest on post-war modernism both in Europe and the USA. John Miller + Partners is responsible for some of the most highly regarded museum and university projects of the past 25 years, such as the Queen's Building and the extension to Tate Britain, as well as schemes for the Fitzwilliam Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.
Custom and Innovation: John Miller + Partners takes a close look at the architects' body of work, and examines its working practices, such as John Miller's indebtedness to Modernism and its proponents, such as Le Corbusier. Further, the book sets out the practice's departure from its precedents by showing its work to be wholly contemporary and of its moment.
Fascinating texts by respected architects and writers elucidate the firm's contribution to modern architecture. Kenneth Frampton, well known for his writing on twentieth century architecture, looks at the work of John Miller in the context of the museum building, and other typologies he works with. Robert Maxwell, Emeritus Professor of Architecture at Princeton, writes extensively on architecture, combining consultancy and architectural criticism, and here looks at the historical context of John Miller + Partners' work. Finally, Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum, London, focuses on the early work produced by John Miller through his student days to his partnership with Alan Colquhoun.

Thinking About Remodeling? Whether it's big or small, a room addition, a new kitchen, an in-law suite, a new facade, a porch, whole house makeover - or whatever - this unique book will help you arrive at the correct design solution for your specifi c home. Written and illustrated by a licensed architect, nationally recognized for his expertise in the fi eld, this book is specifi cally written to help steer you clear of the many pitfalls encountered in remodeling. Whether you're a do-it-yourselfer, or you intend to engage professional contractors, this is a step by step guide organized to help you make the correct design choices for your home. With over 1000 illustrations and 300 different plans there is likely a plan, or many different plans, that should satisfy your budget as well as your needs.

In 2015, a volume in the Anthologie series was published on the buildings by this Lucerne architect, who is originally from the Upper Valais region. Since then, many further projects and an impressive number of new buildings have followed. They all demonstrate a respectful, gentle further development of the settlements and locations. The Kronengasse building in Sempach is exemplary: in it, the architect seeks a connection between traditional anonymous construction and a sophisticated finesse in designing the building. Text in English and German.

Since he followed it all of his life, Richard Neutra (1892-1970) must have relished the maxim of the Greek philosopher Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." In his books, articles, lectures, correspondence, and even casual conversations, Neutra constantly examined, not only his own life, but the lives of others - present and past - and the human and natural world they inhabited. Nowhere was this truer than in his autobiography "Life and Shape," first published in 1962, which now, after years of being out of print, has again happily come back to life.

As opposed to "Survival Through Design" (1954), his superb collection of densely philosophical essays, Neutra took a different tack in "Life and Shape," following a lighter and more deliberately relaxed approach. It was as if the usually serious and intense Neutra was giving himself permission to reveal his richly ironic sense of humor and to probe areas in his personal experience which he had not examined as closely before. These included hitherto unrecorded memories of his parents, siblings, and his childhood and education in imperial Vienna, his numbing experiences as an Austrian artillery officer in World War I, and the beginnings of his architectural consciousness in his response to the work of Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Erich Mendelsohn, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

As in the autobiographies of Sullivan and Wright, "Life and Shape" concentrates on Neutra's earlier years, both in Europe and America. While he naturally recounts his memories of such well-known commissions as the Lovell Health House (1929), his own Van der Leeuv Research House (1933) and the von Sternberg House (1935), he also muses on such less famous buildings as the small, and now virtually forgotten, Mosk House (1933). "Life and Shape" also confirms Neutra's obsession with the passage of time and his firm resolution never to waste it.

Like Sullivan and Wright, Neutra eschewed writing a factual chronicle, and - at the age of 70 - composed instead a meditation on the aspects of his life and work that seemed, in retrospect, to be the most interesting and significant. He felt no need to try to "include everything" but rather to present an honest recounting of his memory of his life. In writing my own "Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture" Oxford University Press, 1982; Rizzoli Press, 2006], I relied on "Life and Shape" when I wanted an account of Neutra's experiences told in his own authentic voice. For future generations of architects, historian, and readers, it is good to have it back.

- Thomas S. Hines, UCLA Professor Emeritus of History and Architecture

On an autumn night in 1992 a Chicago Artist made a sketch of a young woman. A woman he had never seen, in a country he had never visited. Two years later they would meet and fall in love on the war ravaged streets of Sarajevo. A whirlwind romance amid the longest military siege in modern times. As winter closes in and the siege tightens, they ponder a desperate escape from the city, running a deadly gauntlet of snipers, landmines and death. Had fate carried them together across an ocean and through a war only to tear them apart again? Were they prepared to sacrifice everything for love? Their story made headlines. But here, for the first time, is the incredible true story of impossible lovers, and their powerful story of hope and survival. Everything for Love corrects the historical record, revealing a world in which love reigns supreme and remains as humanity's greatest virtue.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, THE LAST VERMEER, STARRING GUY PEARCE: A revelatory biography of the world's most famous forger--a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush--and a deliciously detailed story of deceit in the art world. It's a story that made Dutch painter Han van Meegeren famous worldwide when it broke at the end of World War II: A lifetime of disappointment drove him to forge Vermeers, one of which he sold to Hermann Goering in mockery of the Nazis. And it's a story that's been believed ever since. Too bad it isn't true. Jonathan Lopez has drawn on never-before-seen documents from dozens of archives for this long-overdue unvarnishing of Van Meegeren's legend. Neither unappreciated artist nor antifascist hero, Van Meegeren emerges as an ingenious, dyed-in-the-wool crook. Lopez explores a network of illicit commerce that operated across Europe: Not only was Van Meegeren a key player in that high-stakes game in the 1920s and '30s, landing fakes with famous collectors such as Andrew Mellon, but he and his associates later cashed in on the Nazi occupation.

Text in German. There is a copious and wide-ranging body of literature on Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Germany's most important 19th-century architect. But there is not a single work that records and assembles material on buildings by Schinkel that are still standing today, one hundred and sixty years after his death, after two world wars and major political upheavals. This volume is intended to fill the gap by providing the fullest possible compilation. It is surprising how many buildings by Schinkel still exist. There are over 170 of them in 112 different places, 62 in Germany and 49 in Poland and Russia, with Berlin and Potsdam each counting as a single location. The picture is very varied as far as the individual buildings are concerned. The churches make up the greatest number: about 86 of them are still standing. Then come 34 museums, theatres, guardhouses, schools and similar buildings, 18 palaces, castles and manor houses, 12 memorials, 12 tombs, 6 interiors and 4 fonts. A glance at a map of the former state of Prussia shows clearly that the buildings are not distributed evenly. In the west, the Rhineland and Westphalia, there were and are relatively few buildings by Schinkel. There is a decided cluster, the first regional concentration, in the present Saxony-Anhalt, between Magdeburg and Weimar. Further to the east come major accumulations in Berlin and Potsdam, and then the Oderbruch in the east of Brandenburg as another cluster. There are also concentrations of buildings by Schinkel in the Posen area as well as in West and East Prussia. Pomerania and Silesia have far fewer. Heinz Schonemann provides an introductory essay about Schinkel in his day, Helmut Borsch-Supan has contributed accounts of the way in which Schinkel's legacy is being handled today. The catalogue texts are by Martina Abri, Elke Blauert, Eva Borsch-Supan, Bernd Evers, Hillert Ibbeken and Heinz Schonemann.

"A career in music ... is a calling with such a strong pull; you'd think a tide was sucking you under. It becomes an intense obsession of such great intensity that you can almost think of nothing else, it drives you with a fever and fervor."

In the early 70s, an idealistic young man - Brian Torff - arrived in New York to pursue his passion for music. During an excursion to Long Island, Brian found his dream instrument: a 1775 re-built Nicola Galliano bass.

Such was the beginning of a career that led Torff from Cafe Carlyle to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the White House. He has toured worldwide with the greatest: from Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, George Shearing, and Erroll Garner to Stephane Grappelli, Benny Goodman, Mary Lou Williams, and Marian McPartland.

As Brian notes, "bass players do a lot of observing from the back of the bandstand." It is this supportive role that qualifies Torff to share his insight into jazz music, and its many personalities. Torff takes us beyond the music by adding depth with his vision of American music, and paints vivid portraits of the musicians with whom he played.

Torff's memoir is one of creativity, and determination mixed with timing, and plain good luck. His sharp narrative not only brings the legends of jazz to life, but reading about them here will certainly motivate you to add some music to your collection.

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Millions have visited the museums that bear her name, yet few know much about Madame Tussaud. A celebrated artist, she had both a ringside seat at and a cameo role in the French Revolution. A victim and survivor of one of the most tumultuous times in history, this intelligent, pragmatic businesswoman has also had an indelible impact on contemporary culture, planting the seed of our obsession with celebrity.

In "Madame Tussaud," Kate Berridge tells this fascinating woman's complete story for the first time, drawing upon a wealth of sources, including Tussaud's memoirs and historical archives. It is a grand-scale success story, revealing how with sheer graft and grit a woman born in 1761 to an eighteen-year-old cook overcame extraordinary reversals of fortune to build the first and most enduring worldwide brand identified simply by reference to its founder's name: Madame Tussaud's.

Fernando Romero graduated from architecture school in Mexico City in 1995, and then worked with Enric Miralles, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas before setting up his own firm in 1999, called Laboratorio de la Ciudad de Mexico. LCM soon became influential, as one of few offices--if not the only one--carrying out experimental projects in Mexico City's economically vulnerable environment. In 2005, Romero founded the Laboratory of Architecture, LAR. Translation divides LCM and LAR's projects into three categories. "Fluid Bodies" are long-lasting private projects, addressing specific situations with high-tech resources. The Modern Wetdream project from 2001, a villa with a view of the Pacific Ocean, is a perfect illustration of this. "Revised Boxes" are public buildings whose technology is based on industrial products. For example, at the Inbursa bank on Paseo de la Reforma, one of the most prestigious avenues in Mexico City, Romero used laminated glass which looks either opaque or transparent depending on where one stands. "Boxes," the third category of projects, create cheap, low-tech architecture and rapidly applicable designs from commercial wholesale products, the better to attain LAR's goal of addressing contemporary society via a process of architectural translation.

Digital Fabrications is a collection of essays and half-true stories about design software and hardware. Written from the perspective of architectural design, each piece expands on emerging trends, devices, foibles, and phenomena engendered by an increased reliance on interactions with interfaces in the discipline. The essays ask: how do we characterise our post-digital design labour? What are the politics of design software? How is architecture adapting to a world largely dependent on platforms and scripts? What are the spatial mechanisms of the internet and VR? Using storytelling techniques, this book accepts that software is everywhere, and narrows in on a few ways it has taken command of our cultural products. From the perspective of architectural design, a field traditionally associated with sketching and its own myths of creativity, computers are an essential workplace tool. Projects rely on a wide assortment of software packages and standalone applications, but rarely do architects reflect on the structure of those programs or how they have infiltrated our disciplinary conventions. PDFs and JPGs are as much a part of our vocabulary as plans, sections, and elevations. A drawing today might refer to a rendering, a CAD document, a proprietary BIM file, or anything that describes a project visually. While one way of examining this disciplinary shift might be to re-imagine what digital drawing can be, this collection of essays puts forth another way: to look at the behaviours, phenomena, collective trends, and oddities emerging as a result of global software proliferation. In other words, this book accepts that software is everywhere, and narrows in on a few ways it has taken command of our cultural products.

The first biography in English of the Japanese artist who was a central figure in the dazzling artistic milieu of 1920s Paris When we think of expatriates in Paris during the early decades of the twentieth century, certain names come to mind: Hemingway, Picasso, Modigliani--and Foujita, the Japanese artist whose distinctive works, bringing elements of Japanese art to Western oil painting, made him a major cultural figure in 1920s Montparnasse. Foujita was the only Japanese artist to be considered part of the "School of Paris," which also counted among its members such prominent artists as Picasso and Modigliani. Noteworthy, too, was Foujita's personal style, flamboyant even for those flamboyant times. He was best known for his drawings of female nudes and cats, and for his special white color upon which he could draw a masterful line--one that seemed to outline a woman's whole body in a single unbroken stroke.
With the advent of the Second World War, Foujita returned to Japan, where he allied himself with the ruling Japanese mili-tarists and painted canvases in support of the war effort. After Japan's defeat, he was scorned for his devotion to the military cause and returned to France, where he remained until his death in 1968. Acclaimed writer and translator Phyllis Birnbaum not only explores Foujita's fascinating, tumultuous life but also assesses the appeal of his paintings, which, in their mixture of Eastern and Western traditions, are memorable for their vibrancy of form and purity of line.

"Art is the signature of a civilization." (Beverly Sills) In times of heated discussions about the allocation of public money, the reduction of funds for cultural organizations in Germany is often demanded by critics and feared by numerous arts institutions. Whatever one's opinion may be, here, we are talking about the cultural identity of a people. Hence it is important to explore alternatives to raise money in order to ensure the financial basis for the promotion of the arts. In this context it suggests itself to look at successful financing models in foreign countries. Moreover, corporations are facing increasing difficulties in addressing their stakeholders effectively. Constant information overload by the media is a huge challenge for external corporate communications. Yet also internal communication strategies play a crucial role in order to reach the highest possible degree of staff satisfaction and consequently optimal output. In view of these aspects, this paper draws a comparison between arts financing and particularly arts sponsorship in Germany and the USA. It is focused on the political and social integration of the arts in society on the one hand and the promotion of the cooperation between the arts and the business world on the other hand. Three practical examples are presented: the Stuttgart State Opera, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the San Francisco Opera.

In the spring of 1970, artist Ralph Steadman went to America in search of work and found more than he bargained for when he met Hunter S. Thompson at the Kentucky Derby. Their remarkable collaboration resulted in the now-legendary Gonzo Journalism, which would document the civil rights movement, the Nixon administration, Watergate, and the many bizarre and great events that shaped the second half of the twentieth century. When Thompson committed suicide in 2005, it was the end of a unique friendship filled with both betrayal and understanding. A rollicking, no-holds-barred memoir, The Joke's Over is the definitive inside story of the Gonzo years.