The book begins with Prophecies, followed by the Fables on animals, on lifeless objects, on plants, and the Studies on the Life and Habits of Animals, in which Leonardo presents a curious sequence of animals and their description. It ends with the Jests and Tales and the Final Prophecies. Among these delightful and amusing writings, we find satires, fables, aphorisms, anecdotes, prophetic sayings, and enigmatic statements, ingeniously created or reproduced by the unique mind of Leonardo da Vinci.

Found in the Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci's writings and drawings, 'The Prophecies' are a collection of enigmatic divinatory pronouncements, some punning and playful, others dire and ominous. While the author's intentions behind these utterances are unclear, they clearly attest to the artist's fevered and troubled imagination and offer a glimpse into a world very similar to that depicted in his lost painting The Battle of Anghiari.This volume also contains a further selection of Leonardo da Vinci's fragmentary writings, in the form of fables and aphorisms. Taken together, these pieces provide an invaluable insight into the thought processes of one of the Renaissance's most productive minds.

"Collection of ... [da Vinci's] stories, riddles, jests, and puzzles illustrated with his own drawings"--Dustjacket.

This study is the first to consider the whole body of Leonardo's works with an eye to a comprehensive interpretation that combines both cultural history and the history of ideas. According to Maiorino, Leonardo's was a mythmaking mode of activity that had a Daedalian range and affected art and technology alike. As both artist and inventor, Leonardo did not separate reason from experience, empiricism from abstraction, an attitude Maiorino characterizes as "Anti-Humanism". Rather than accepting the earlier view that the culture of the Renaissance was divided against itself or that it came to be divided, he argues that anti-Humanism was present from the start in such founders as Petrarch and Alberti and continued to be a current in later authors and artists; hence the significance of Leonardo to Humanism and to Baroque and Renaissance culture at large.

Best selling author Mario Reading brings together a complete new translation and an original interpretation of all the known quatrains.

The Unauthorized Dan Brown Update includes information about Digital Fortress, Angels & Demons, Deception Point, The Da Vinci Code (book and movie), The Solomon Key, and subsequent novels. It's a "mini" book in the sense that it is fairly thin - 96 pages to start with, although it will grow over time. (For example, detailed chapter-by-chapter analysis of The Solomon Key will be added soon after that novel is published.) This is a "meta" book in the sense that it complements, without trying to replace, the many worthy books that are already available about The Da Vinci Code. This book is unique in that it provides a "nimble," timely report on *all* of Dan Brown's activities, including everything that is known about The Solomon Key, "The Da Vinci Code" movie, and beyond.

Discover how accurate past visions of the future have turned out to be and explore the continuity of the prophetic tradition. This is a fascinating anthology of amazing and curious stories - such as clairvoyant dreams about the sinking of the Titanic and the Reichstaag Fire in Berlin. It includes features on ancient shamans and soothsayers, Egyptian dream analysis, Greek oracles and Roman auguries, the ancient roots of astrology, messianic visionaries, medieval seers, African systems of divination, Aztec prophecies of cataclysms, the mysteries of Pachacamac, Nostradamus and his "Centuries" and the futurism of H. G. Wells.

Christopher Columbus returned to Europe in the final days of 1500, ending his third voyage to the Indies not in triumph but in chains. Seeking to justify his actions and protect his rights, he began to compile biblical texts and excerpts from patristic writings and medieval theology in a manuscript known as the Book of Prophecies. This unprecedented collection was designed to support his vision of the discovery of the Indies as an important event in the process of human salvation - a first step toward the liberation of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim domination. This work is part of a twelve-volume series produced by U.C.L.A.'s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies which involved the collaboration of some forty scholars over the course of fourteen years. In this volume of the series, Roberto Rusconi has written a complete historical introduction to the Book of Prophecies, describing the manuscript's history and analyzing its principal themes. His edition of the documents, the only modern one, includes a complete critical apparatus and detailed commentary, while the facing-page English translations allow Columbus's work to be appreciated by the general public and scholars alike.