Public libraries have strangely never been the subject of an extensive design history. Consequently, this important and comprehensive book represents a ground-breaking socio-architectural study of pre-1939 public library buildings. A surprisingly high proportion of these urban civic buildings remain intact and present an increasingly difficult architectural problem for many communities. The book thus includes a study of what is happening to these historic libraries now and proposes that knowledge of their origins and early development can help build an understanding of how best to handle their future.

Herbert James Rowse (1887-1963) was an extraordinary architect who shaped the city of Liverpool with his array of exquisite buildings, plans, and infrastructure. Practicing in an eclectic manner that was influenced by American Beaux Arts and later using simpler geometries of monumental bare brick, his large body of work reveals a modernity that was concerned with luxurious materials, restrained but contemporary decoration and sculpture, and bold forms often with a sense of theatre and performance. His work has endured passing trends and fashions, retaining a seductive appeal and resonance with visitors and occupants alike, despite its often monumental massing and extraordinary scale. This book aims to discern not only the architectural merits and advances of his work, but also their wider significance. Through Rowse's work we gain a glimpse into some of the broader agendas of the time and place, not least through the corporate and banking commissions that accompanied the large docks and shipping firms in Liverpool, where Rowse produced some of his most distinctive work. In addition to these commercial ventures Rowse contributed to the post-war housing debates through his proposals that looked to rows of cottages set around village greens, rather than high-rise living. Published in association with The Twentieth Century Society.

Public libraries have strangely never been the subject of an extensive design history. Consequently, this important and comprehensive book represents a ground-breaking socio-architectural study of pre-1939 public library buildings. A surprisingly high proportion of these urban civic buildings remain intact and present an increasingly difficult architectural problem for many communities. The book thus includes a study of what is happening to these historic libraries now and proposes that knowledge of their origins and early development can help build an understanding of how best to handle their future.

This two-volume catalogue is the second Part of the catalogue raisonne devoted to the large corpus of architectural and topographical drawings from the Paper Museum. The first Part (A.IX), published in 2004, was dedicated to drawings of ancient Roman topography and architecture, while the present one covers Renaissance and seventeenth-century architectural drawings. Commissioned and collected by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) and his younger brother Carlo Antonio (1606-89), these drawings are today divided between the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the British Museum's Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, and numerous other institutions and private collections worldwide. Bringing them here together emphasises the remarkable range and quality of the collection as a whole and provides an opportunity to bring to public attention drawings that are for the most part unpublished and unidentified. As a collection of mostly earlier material acquired rather than commissioned by Cassiano and Carlo Antonio, the drawings provide a comprehensive coverage of Renaissance architecture and architectural ornament, including churches, palaces, villas and military fortifications, as well as designs for architectural fitments and decorative schemes. Many of the drawings are of particular scholarly interest as actual project drawings from the hands, workshops or immediate circles of distinguished sixteenth- and seventeenth-century architects, including Raphael, Giulio Romano, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Pirro Ligorio, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Gianlorenzo Bernini. As such they are connected with some of the most famous buildings constructed or remodelled during this period, among them St Peter's and St John Lateran in Rome and the princely palaces in Mantua, Piacenza and Granada in Spain. A smaller group of drawings is associated with architectural theory and includes a remarkable series of facade schemes here attributed to Sebastiano Serlio. A general introductory essay in Volume One explores the distinctive character of the dal Pozzo collection of modern architectural drawings and is followed by the catalogue entries grouped into schemes for whole buildings, with plans and elevations (or both) of ecclesiastical and secular works arranged according to their location in Italy or, occasionally, France, Spain and elsewhere. Volume Two is devoted principally to architectural fitments, such as church furnishings, doorways and chimneys, as well as painted decorations and carved ornaments. It then moves to military subjects, cataloguing drawings of fortifications, sieges and related subjects, followed by three drawings of topographical views and two drawings, omitted in A.IX, of ancient decorative designs.

Warfare and Politics: Cities and Government in Renaissance Tuscany and Venice brings together a group of prominent contributors to consider the topics of government and warfare in Tuscany and Venice in the Renaissance. The essays cover a remarkably broad geographical and topical range as they analyse the economic, military, political, and diplomatic history of Florence, Rome, Venice, and the Italian peninsula in general through the Renaissance and early modern period.