As treasure troves of creativity, the homes of artists reflect the intellectual worlds of their creators. Starting with the Villa Stuck in Munich--the aesthetic, conceptual cosmos and life's work of the aristocratic artist Franz von Stuck--this unique volume integrates the artist's house as a category into the international discourse and is the first to assign these buildings the status of major works. About 20 examples bring to life the fascination that these artistic fantasies hold for art lovers, including both existing projects and some which, although they have been lost, were of unique importance in their day and still retain their charisma. Along with paintings, sculptures and photographs, plans and models convey the interrelationship between art and life as well as the harmony of the arts expressed by Richard Wagner's historical concept of the total work of art. Among the houses featured are Sir John Soane's Museum, London; William Morris's Red House, Bexleyheath; Louis Comfort Tiffany's Tiffany House, New York City; Mortimer Menpes' flat, London; the Fernand Khnopff Villa, Brussels; Jacques Majorelle's villa and garden, Marrakesh; Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, Hanover; and Max Ernst's house, Arizona.

Leon Aron considers the “mystery of the Soviet collapse” and finds answers in the intellectual and moral self-scrutiny of glasnost that brought about a profound shift in values. Reviewing the entire output of the key glasnost outlets in 1987-1991, he elucidates and documents key themes in this national soul-searching and the “ultimate” questions that sparked moral awakening of a great nation: “Who are we? How do we live honorably? What is a dignified relationship between man and state? How do we atone for the moral breakdown of Stalinism?” Contributing both to the theory of revolutions and history of ideas, Aron presents a thorough and original narrative about new ideas’ dissemination through the various media of the former Soviet Union. Aron shows how, reaching every corner of the nation, these ideas destroyed the moral foundation of the Soviet state, de-legitimized it and made its collapse inevitable.

Back to Earth is the powerful, personal journey of a man in his middle years who senses that he has drifted away from the ideals of his youth and who must now search for coherence, belief, and a renewed spirituality following the breakup of his marriage and family. Living alone in a cabin in the woods, Temple searches his past and tells tales of experiences backpacking in Colorado, Dakota, New Mexico and Alaska. His reflections focus on the spiritual and redemptive qualities of nature, the American character, and the dilemmas of the split between matter and spirit, body and soul, God and creation. As an "earnest pilgrim with a short attention span", Temple's story chronicles his journey from an intimacy with the earth to an alienation from it, and the need of all humans to find a redemptive reunion. The book is a kind of pilgrimage as the author tries to get back home, to find God, to learn what our species once knew, and to rediscover the heart and soul of creation.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple weaves a “glorious and iridescent” tapestry of interrelated lives in this New York Times bestseller (Library Journal). Includes a new letter written by the author In The Temple of My Familiar, Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters, all dealing in some way with the legacy of the African experience in America. From recent African immigrants, to a woman who grew up in the mixed-race rainforest communities of South America, to Celie’s own granddaughter living in modern-day San Francisco, all must come to understand the brutal stories of their ancestors to come to terms with their own troubled lives. As Walker follows these astonishing characters, she weaves a new mythology from old fables and history, a profoundly spiritual explanation for centuries of shared African American experience. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author’s personal collection. The Temple of My Familiar is the 2nd book in the Color Purple Collection, which also includes The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy.

In the age of the selfie, this book traces self-portraiture in film and video from the Western tradition in painting and literature into present-day digital media. The essays assess the significance of the self-portrait in the moving image and new media by exploring a varied and international body of works.

"Impostors in the Temple is a hard-hitting, eye-opening book about the decaying moral and intellectual state of American universities and colleges today--about why things have gone so wrong, and what we can do to set them right." "The university is the intellectual engine of America. It is here future leaders are trained, national policy is framed, and standards for our huge educational infrastructure are established. Yet today, despite the staggering costs of a college education, our institutions are not making the grade. The fault lies not with the students, who are brighter than ever, but with the faculties, administrations, and trustees into whose hands we deliver our best young minds." "Martin Anderson--domestic policy adviser to two presidents and himself a member of the academic establishment for over three decades--takes American academics to task in this stirring book, sure to be hailed for its scope and clarity. Cutting through political excuses that have gone awry, Anderson addresses the simpler, unuttered truths: how irrelevant the work of our intellectals has become; how corrupt practices are rampant in our universities; how academic elitism has destroyed academic integrity; how too many of our professors are not qualified to teach; how too often it is not professors but students who are relegated to do the teaching; how trustees and administrators are shunning responsibility and looking the other way; and how, by accepting the status quo, Americans are mortgaging their children's educational futures." "In clear, vivid prose, Anderson names names, marshals statistics, turns conventional wisdom on its ear, and makes us understand how serious things have become. More important, he offers us dramatic solutions." "As provocative as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education, Martin Anderson's Impostors in the Temple is sure to raise hackles, spur debate, and fire our imaginations on how to revitalize an American community that processes millions of our young at so steep a cost."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

These days there is only one right answer when someone asks you what you are doing after work. Hitting the gym! With an explosion of apps, clothing, devices, and countless DVDs, fitness has never felt more modern, and the gym is its holy laboratory, alive with machinery, sweat, and dance music. But we are far from the first to pursue bodily perfection—the gymnasium dates back 2,800 years, to the very beginnings of Western civilization. In The Temple of Perfection, Eric Chaline offers the first proper consideration of the gym’s complex, layered history and the influence it has had on the development of Western individualism, society, education, and politics. As Chaline shows, how we take care of our bodies has long been based on a complex mix of spiritual beliefs, moral discipline, and aesthetic ideals that are all entangled with political, social, and sexual power. Today, training in a gym is seen primarily as part of the pursuit of individual fulfillment. As he shows, however, the gym has always had a secondary role in creating men and women who are “fit for purpose”—a notion that has meant a lot of different things throughout history. Chaline surveys the gym’s many incarnations and the ways the individual, the nation-state, the media, and the corporate world have intersected in its steamy confines, sometimes with unintended consequences. He shows that the gym is far more than a factory for superficiality and self-obsession—it is one of the principle battlefields of humanity’s social, sexual, and cultural wars. Exploring the gym’s history from a multitude of perspectives, Chaline concludes by looking toward its future as it struggles to redefine itself in a world in thrall to quick fixes—such as plastic surgery and pharmaceuticals—meant to attain the gym’s ultimate promises: physical fitness and beauty.

Poetry. Editors' Selection from the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. In THE TEMPLE, Michael Bazzett has created a testament to inhabiting, for a while, a body in this world. It's a hymnal to the absurdity of believing, and believing in the absurd. THE TEMPLE seeks glimpses of the great beyond, a heaven fashioned out of earth and questions, in the here and now.