Carpeted in boreal forests, dotted with lakes, cut by rivers, and straddling the Arctic Circle, the region surrounding the White Sea, which is known as the Russian North, is sparsely populated and immensely isolated. It is also the home to architectural marvels, as many of the original wooden and brick churches and homes in the region's ancient villages and towns still stand. Featuring nearly two hundred full color photographs of these beautiful centuries-old structures, Architecture at the End of the Earth is the most recent addition to William Craft Brumfield's ongoing project to photographically document all aspects of Russian architecture. The architectural masterpieces Brumfield photographed are diverse: they range from humble chapels to grand cathedrals, buildings that are either dilapidated or well cared for, and structures repurposed during the Soviet era. Included are onion-domed wooden churches such as the Church of the Dormition, built in 1674 in Varzuga; the massive walled Transfiguration Monastery on Great Solovetsky Island, which dates to the mid-1550s; the Ferapontov-Nativity Monastery's frescoes, painted in 1502 by Dionisy, one of Russia's greatest medieval painters; nineteenth-century log houses, both rustic and ornate; and the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Vologda, which was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in the 1560s. The text that introduces the photographs outlines the region's significance to Russian history and culture. Brumfield is challenged by the immense difficulty of accessing the Russian North, and recounts traversing sketchy roads, crossing silt-clogged rivers on barges and ferries, improvising travel arrangements, being delayed by severe snowstorms, and seeing the region from the air aboard the small planes he needs to reach remote areas. The buildings Brumfield photographed, some of which lie in near ruin, are at constant risk due to local indifference and vandalism, a lack of maintenance funds, clumsy restorations, or changes in local and national priorities. Brumfield is concerned with their futures and hopes that the region's beautiful and vulnerable achievements of master Russian carpenters will be preserved. Architecture at the End of the Earth is at once an art book, a travel guide, and a personal document about the discovery of this bleak but beautiful region of Russia that most readers will see here for the first time.

#1 New York Times Bestseller Oprah's Book Club Selection The “extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece” (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett’s already phenomenal career—and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning, ended. “Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner,” extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett’s unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal. The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known . . . of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect—a man divided in his soul . . . of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame . . . and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother. A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett’s historical masterpiece.

For almost ten thousand years, unbaked earth has been used to build remarkable structures, from simple dwellings to palaces, temples, and fortresses both grand and durable. Jean Dethier spent fifty years researching this landmark global survey, which spans five continents and 250 sites. The Art of Earth Architecture demonstrates the wide-ranging applications and sustainability of this building material, while presenting a manifesto for its ecological significance. Featuring raw-earth masterpieces, monumental structures, and little known works, the book includes the temples and palaces of Mesopotamia, the Great Wall of China, large-scale urban developments in Tenochtitlan in Mexico, the medinas of Morocco, and housing in Marrakech and Bogota. This definitive reference features many UNESCO World Heritage sites and contains essays on the historical, technical, and cultural aspects of raw-earth construction from twenty experts in the field, as well as hundreds of photographs, illustrations, and architectural drawings.

"The ground we walk on and grow crops in also just happens to be the most widely used building material on the planet. Civilizations throughout time have used it to create stable warm low-impact structures. The world's first skyscrapers were built of mud brick. Paul Revere Chairman Mao and Ronald Reagan all lived in earth houses at various points in their lives and several of the buildings housing Donald Judd's priceless collection at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa Texas are made of mud brick." "While the vast legacy of traditional and vernacular earthen construction has been widely discussed, little attention has been paid to the contemporary tradition of earth architecture. Author Ronald Rael founder of Eartharchitecture.org provides a history of building with earth in the modern era focusing particularly on projects constructed in the last few decades that use rammed earth mud brick compressed earth cob and several other interesting techniques. Earth Architecture presents a selection of more than 40 projects that exemplify new creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet."--BOOK JACKET.

In 1981, while working as New Mexico State Historian, Stanley M. Hordes began to hear stories of Hispanos who lit candles on Friday night and abstained from eating pork. Puzzling over the matter, Hordes realized that these practices might very well have been passed down through the centuries from early crypto-Jewish settlers in New Spain. After extensive research and hundreds of interviews, Hordes concluded that there was, in New Mexico and the Southwest, a Sephardic legacy derived from the converso community of Spanish Jews. In To the End of the Earth, Hordes explores the remarkable story of crypto-Jews and the tenuous preservation of Jewish rituals and traditions in Mexico and New Mexico over the past five hundred years. He follows the crypto-Jews from their Jewish origins in medieval Spain and Portugal to their efforts to escape persecution by migrating to the New World and settling in the far reaches of the northern Mexican frontier. Drawing on individual biographies (including those of colonial officials accused of secretly practicing Judaism), family histories, Inquisition records, letters, and other primary sources, Hordes provides a richly detailed account of the economic, social and religious lives of crypto-Jews during the colonial period and after the annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1846. While the American government offered more religious freedom than had the Spanish colonial rulers, cultural assimilation into Anglo-American society weakened many elements of the crypto-Jewish tradition. Hordes concludes with a discussion of the reemergence of crypto-Jewish culture and the reclamation of Jewish ancestry within the Hispano community in the late twentieth century. He examines the publicity surrounding the rediscovery of the crypto-Jewish community and explores the challenges inherent in a study that attempts to reconstruct the history of a people who tried to leave no documentary record.

Dreaming of building an adobe home? This classic guide, with floor plans ranging from a small casita to larger ones gives 18 comprehensive period designs for the traditional adobe (the earthern "bricks" used all over the world) house adapted to building materials, plumbing, heating and small lot sizes of today. Thousands of readers have found this a valuable handbook. The authors also venture into actual adobe brick-making, construction techniques, furnishing, even how to make a horno, a traditional Indian oven. Illustrated, detailed diagrams, house plans. The first seeds for the concept for this book on adobe architecture were sown as early as 1916, when Wilfred Stedman was a student at the Art Students League in New York City. It was there that he saw Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips' paintings of adobe homes in villages in and around Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico. When in the early 1920s and 1930s Wilfred and Myrtle came to see and experience this area for themselves, they met Mary Austin, Alice Corbin Henderson, Will Shuster, Frank Applegate, Josef Bakos and Mabel Dodge Luhan-all famous artists and writers of that time. These people made themselves and their friends from all over the world feel at home in this vernacular architecture. While nowhere in the United States is the Earth Building spirit as revered as in Santa Fe and Taos, new interest is spreading all over the world. New research and new technology is being combined with the traditional in keeping with an overall awakening to the natural resources and beauty of our planet and with a new personal sense of responsibility on the part of individuals in regard to better planning in the use of these. There is a new sense of joy in finding out how much one can do oneself with natural materials. * * * * * Myrtle Stedman was known as an "Artist in Adobe," designing, building, and remodeling adobe homes under a contractor's license. She was also a well-known artist whose academic training started in 1927 when she was a student in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts school. Her English born husband, Wilfred Stedman, whose background was in architecture as well as in painting and illustrating was recognized as one of the most outstanding artists of the American Southwest. Adobe architecture in New Mexico was one of Wilfred's favorite topics of conversation and Myrtle was instilled with the love of adobes from the moment they were married. After his death in 1950, Myrtle went on to become one of the foremost authorities on adobe construction. Myrtle Stedman was a member of PEN New Mexico, a branch of PEN Center USA West of International PEN and believed that there is no end to what the mind can do with the eye and hand, in time and in spirit. She is also the author of "Artists in Adobe," "A House Not Made With Hands," "Adobe Remodeling and Fireplaces," "Of One Mind," "Of Things to Come," "Ongoing Life," "Rural Architecture," "The Ups and Downs of Living Alone in Later Life," and "The Way Things Are or Could Be," all from Sunstone Press.

Since its initial publication in 1993, A History of Russian Architecture has remained the most comprehensive study of the topic in English, a volume that defines the main components and sources for Russia's architectural traditions in their historical context, from the early medieval period to the present. This edition includes 80 new full-page color separations, many of which are published here for the first time, as well as a new Prologue and elegant photographic essay drawn from the author's research and fieldwork over the past decade in remote areas of the Russian north and Siberia. Subject to influences from east and west, Russian architecture's distinctive approaches to building are documented in four parts of this definitive study: early medieval Rus up to the Mongol invasion in the mid-twelfth century; the revival of architecture in Novgorod and Muscovy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries; Peter the Great's cultural revolution, which extended through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and the advent of modern, avant-garde, and monumental Soviet architecture. Beautifully illustrated and carefully researched, A History of Russian Architecture provides an invaluable cultural history that will be of interest to scholars and general audiences alike. View the William C. Brumfield Russian Architecture Collection online at http://content.lib.washington.edu/brumfieldweb/index.html

This book is an example of how dramatic innovations frequently have their origins in the distant past. By rediscovering the most ancient of all building materials -- earth -- homebuilders can now create structures that set new standards for beauty, durability, and extraordinarily efficient use of natural resources. Rammed earth marks a step into a sustainable future, when houses combine aesthetics and practicality with a powerful sense of place. The solid masonry walls permit design flexibility while providing year-round comfort and minimal need for added heating or cooling. From the equatorial tropics to the coldest northern latitudes, the builder and resident of a rammed earth house will experience the satisfaction of creating permanence in a world dominated by the disposable.

"This catalogue to accompany the museum exhibition traces the emergence of the artistic impulses to use the earth as material, land as medium, and to locate works in remote sites, beyond familiar art contexts. Significantly, "Ends of the Earth" challenges many myths about Land art--that it was primarily a North American phenomenon, that it was foremost a sculptural practice, and that it exceeds the confines of the art system. Featuring over 100 artists hailing from countries including Great Britain, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States, the exhibition constitutes the most comprehensive survey of Land art to date"--Provided by publisher.