2009, ISBN: 9780676973617

Taschenbuch, Gebundene Ausgabe

Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press ; [Tuscon] : Published in Cooperation With the University of Arizona Southwest Center, 2001. First Edition. Hardcover. At the beginning of th… Mehr…

Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press ; [Tuscon] : Published in Cooperation With the University of Arizona Southwest Center, 2001. First Edition. Hardcover. At the beginning of the third millennium, Las Vegas, Nevada has become a new model of consumer entertainment--the total pleasure market in which everything is for sale. Hancock's superb photographic eye chronicles the pop-culture fantasy playground that is Las Vegas, a physical location as much as an idea, a place that deliberately blurs politics, money, art, religion, entertainment, sex, and anything else architects can imagine and marketeers can sell. The range of Hancock's images is as diverse as the city itself: the town's neon-saturated nights; the glitzy, monumental hotel-palaces; the decaying buildings yielding to wrecking crews; the billboards that sell everything and convey unexpected truths; and a sampling of all that draws a worldwide audience seeking to be entertained. Accompanying Hancock's startling images and perceptive introductory essay is Gregory McNamee's thoughtful reconsideration of Las Vegas. His essay relates in words what Hancock narrates visually, exposing in the process a city caught between opulence, glamour, fantasy and poverty, decay, and despair. Together text and image in this book convey the essence of Las Vegas--the magic of illusion. This book is ultimately about material and spiritual alchemy--the transformation of fantasies into reality and the purification of consumption. Las Vegas is a visceral city, an exaggerated feast for the eye, and at the same time it is a community fractured by consumerism--in which buying and selling set all our choices. No book to date offers the intense emotional experience of Las Vegas found in ""American Byzantium."" An exceptional copy; fine in an equally fine dw. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new and still in the publisher's protective shrink-wrap; 8vo 8"" - 9"" tall; 111 pages; Description: 111 p. : chiefly col. Ill. ; 23 x 28 cm. Subjects: Performing arts --Nevada --Las Vegas --Pictorial works. Performing arts --Social aspects --Nevada --Las Vegas. Performing arts --Economic aspects --Nevada --Las Vegas. Las Vegas (Nev. ) --Pictorial works. Las Vegas (Nev. ) --Description and travel. Series: University of Arizona Southwest Center book, Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press ; [Tuscon] : Published in Cooperation With the University of Arizona Southwest Cent, 2001, 0, Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, 2008. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine copy bound in colour-printed boards. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new and still in the publisher's protective shrink-wrap.; 8vo 8"" - 9"" tall; 239 pages; Description: 239 p. : numerous photos (chiefly col.) ; 26 x 30 cm. Published in conjunction with the exhibition ""Nuevas Historias: Contemporary Photography from Spain"", Kulturhuset, Stockholm, October 4, 2008 - January 25, 2009. Subjects: Photography, Artistic -- Exhibitions. Photography -- Spain -- Exhibitions. Video art -- Spain -- Exhibitions. Summary: For years, contemporary photography and video art have played a substantial role in the avant-garde sector of Spain's multifaceted culture. Their unique quality is grounded in a power of emotion that inscribes in the hues and colors, politics and history a certain something which constitutes Spain's identity. This publication is a collection of works by thirty-one contemporary artists and reflects the cornucopia and continuity of this robust visual culture. Unchecked by academic tendencies, Spanish photography has been gradually developing since the early nineties, finally achieving a breakthrough that established it as an independent medium. The selection of artists here sheds some light on how much this movement has grown and simultaneously established its own methods of expression which can be regarded as unmistakably Spanish., Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, 2008, 0, Random House of Canada, Limited, 2001. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Soft cover. New. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Synopsis: The setting is Sri Lanka. Steeped in centuries of cultural achievement and tradition, the country has been ravaged in the late twentieth century by bloody civil war. As in The English Patient, Ondaatje's latest novel follows a woman's attempt to piece together the lost life of a victim of war. Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka but educated in England and the U.S., is sent by an international human rights group to participate in an investigation into suspected mass political murders in her homeland. Working with an archaeologist, she discovers a skeleton whose identity takes Anil on a fascinating journey that involves a riveting mystery. What follows, in a novel rich with character, emotion, and incident, is a story about love and loss, about family, identity and the unknown enemy. And it is a quest to unlock the hidden past - like a handful of soil analyzed by an archaeologist, the story becomes more diffuse the farther we reach into history., Random House of Canada, Limited, 2001, 6<

2001, ISBN: 9780676973617

Tight, clean and unmarked-" The definitive account of the Great War and national bestseller from one of our most eminent military historians, John Keegan. The First World War created the … Mehr…

Tight, clean and unmarked-" The definitive account of the Great War and national bestseller from one of our most eminent military historians, John Keegan. The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society--and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. The First World War probes the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict and takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. Keegan reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent. But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequaled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend--Verdun, the Somme, and Gallipoli among them--and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe--from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg, and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded--"the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable." By the end of the war, three great empires--the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ottoman--had collapsed. But as Keegan shows, the devastation extended over the entirety of Europe, and still profoundly informs the politics and culture of the continent today. His brilliant, panoramic account of this vast and terrible conflict is destined to take its place among the classics of world history." Review: "Despite the avalanche of books written about the First World War in recent years, there have been comparatively few books that deliver a comprehensive account of the war and its campaigns from start to finish. The First World War fills the gap superbly. As readers familiar with Keegan's previous books (including The Second World War and Six Armies in Normandy) know, he's a historian of the old school. He has no earth-shattering new theories to challenge the status quo, no first-person accounts to tug on the emotions--what he does have, though, is a gift for talking the layperson through the twists and turns of a complex narrative in a way that is never less than accessible or engaging. Keegan never tries to ram his learning down your throat. Where other authors have struggled to explain how Britain could ever allow itself to be dragged into such a war in 1914, Keegan keeps his account practical. The level of communications that we enjoy today just didn't exist then, and so it was much harder to keep track of what was going on. By the time a message had finally reached the person in question, the situation may have changed out of all recognition. Keegan applies this same "cock-up" theory of history to the rest of the war, principally the three great disasters at Gallipoli, the Somme, and Passchendaele. The generals didn't send all those troops to their deaths deliberately, Keegan argues; they did it out of incompetence.", Vintage Canada, 2000, 3, New. 1st Edition.1st Printing Synopsis: The setting is Sri Lanka. Steeped in centuries of cultural achievement and tradition, the country has been ravaged in the late twentieth century by a bloody civil war. As in The English Patient, Ondaatje's latest novel follows a woman's attempt to piece together the lost life of a victim of war. Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka but educated in England and the U.S., is sent by an international human rights group to participate in an investigation into suspected mass political murders in her homeland. Working with an archaeologist, she discovers a skeleton whose identity takes Anil on a fascinating journey that involves a riveting mystery. What follows, in a novel rich with character, emotion, and incident, is a story about love and loss, family, identity, and the unknown enemy. And it is a quest to unlock the hidden past - like a handful of soil analyzed by an archaeologist, the story becomes more diffuse the farther we reach into history.", Vintage Canada, 2001, 6<