Few who walk past No. 4 Breestraat in Amsterdam would give this unassuming house a second glance. Yet for 20 years, this was the home of Rembrandt—one of the greatest painters in history, king of the Dutch Golden Age of art. This is the story of that house, the world Rembrandt observed in and around it and the special universe he created in his studio there. In this unique and imaginative portrait, Anthony Bailey pieces together the events and circumstances which shaped Rembrandt's career—from his beginnings in Leiden and early apprenticeship to his marriage and personal relationships; his restless artistic energy, creative triumphs, and, finally, his slow fall into financial hardship. With as many levels and hidden corners as the house Bailey describes, this is at once biography, travel writing, and history of a golden cultural age.

Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg's Stealing Rembrandts is a spellbinding journey into the high-stakes world of art theft Today, art theft is one of the most profitable criminal enterprises in the world, exceeding $6 billion in losses to galleries and art collectors annually. And the masterpieces of Rembrandt van Rijn are some of the most frequently targeted. In Stealing Rembrandts, art security expert Anthony M. Amore and award-winning investigative reporter Tom Mashberg reveal the actors behind the major Rembrandt heists in the last century. Through thefts around the world - from Stockholm to Boston, Worcester to Ohio - the authors track daring entries and escapes from the world's most renowned museums. There are robbers who coolly walk off with multimillion dollar paintings; self-styled art experts who fall in love with the Dutch master and desire to own his art at all costs; and international criminal masterminds who don't hesitate to resort to violence. They also show how museums are thwarted in their ability to pursue the thieves - even going so far as to conduct investigations on their own, far away from the maddening crowd of police intervention, sparing no expense to save the priceless masterpieces. Stealing Rembrandts is an exhilarating, one-of-a-kind look at the black market of art theft, and how it compromises some of the greatest treasures the world has ever known.

With her mother dead of the plague, and her beloved brother newly married, Cornelia must manage her father's household, though he teeters on the brink of madness. She knows that among Amsterdam's elite circles, people are gossiping about her father's fading artistic genius--and about her, too. Yet there are two young men who seem unfazed by the slander- and very much intrigued by Cornelia. Set within the vibrant community of the 17th century Dutch Masters, I Am Rembrandt's Daughter is a moving coming of age story filled with family drama and a love triangle that would make Jane Austen proud.

* The rise of the Fab Four - The Beatles in their fledgling years of fame * Incredible photos, many unseen, from the cameras of Terry O'Neill, Norman Parkinson, Michael Ward and Derek Bayes * With text by renowned Pop historian Tony Barrell * The perfect gift for any fan who keeps Beatlemania alive today The Beatles ascended like no band before, hurtling to the dizzy heights of international stardom in the early 1960s. Their counter-cultural vibes and unmistakable talent are still the subject of much discussion today - as is the rabid devotion of their fans. But how did one pop group become, as Lennon infamously quipped, "more popular than Jesus"? The work of four photographers provides an enlightening insight into the band's rise to fame. Ward captured the Fab Four when Beatlemania was still confined to their own home city - the band braved the icy Liverpool streets for a promotional shoot during the Big Freeze of '62-63. O'Neill crossed paths with The Beatles amid the buzz of the Swinging Sixties, resonating with the band in 1963 as a photographer of their generation. Parkinson delivered a deceptively relaxed shoot later that year, when the band were recording their second album; while Bayes captured never-before-published candid shots of The Beatles filming Help! in 1965. Accompanying these pictures, Tony Barrell's text delves into the Beatlemania phenomenon - the good, the bad, the ugly and the odd. From the creation of their early hit records to the hails of confectionery that peppered stages after John claimed George had eaten his jelly babies, Beatlemania: Four Photographers on the Fab Four reveals how one band became a lasting sensation.

The house on the Jodenbreestraat in Amsterdam, where Rembrandt lived for more than twenty years, was opened as a museum in 1911. The complete collection of the Rembrandthuis, comprising more than 250 etchings as well as a number of drawings and paintings

There is a popular and romantic myth about Rembrandt and the Jewish people. One of history's greatest artists, we are often told, had a special affinity for Judaism. With so many of Rembrandt's works devoted to stories of the Hebrew Bible, and with his apparent penchant for Jewish themes and the sympathetic portrayal of Jewish faces, it is no wonder that the myth has endured for centuries. Rembrandt's Jews puts this myth to the test as it examines both the legend and the reality of Rembrandt's relationship to Jews and Judaism. In his elegantly written and engrossing tour of Jewish Amsterdam—which begins in 1653 as workers are repairing Rembrandt's Portuguese-Jewish neighbor's house and completely disrupting the artist's life and livelihood—Steven Nadler tells us the stories of the artist's portraits of Jewish sitters, of his mundane and often contentious dealings with his neighbors in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, and of the tolerant setting that city provided for Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews fleeing persecution in other parts of Europe. As Nadler shows, Rembrandt was only one of a number of prominent seventeenth-century Dutch painters and draftsmen who found inspiration in Jewish subjects. Looking at other artists, such as the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael and Emmanuel de Witte, a celebrated painter of architectural interiors, Nadler is able to build a deep and complex account of the remarkable relationship between Dutch and Jewish cultures in the period, evidenced in the dispassionate, even ordinary ways in which Jews and their religion are represented—far from the demonization and grotesque caricatures, the iconography of the outsider, so often found in depictions of Jews during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Through his close look at paintings, etchings, and drawings; in his discussion of intellectual and social life during the Dutch Golden Age; and even through his own travels in pursuit of his subject, Nadler takes the reader through Jewish Amsterdam then and now—a trip that, under ever-threatening Dutch skies, is full of colorful and eccentric personalities, fiery debates, and magnificent art.

A sensitive innocent, Hendrickje Stoffels escapes the harsh realities of her garrison home-town to take up a servant's role in Rembrandt's household. She soon becomes his lover and closest confidante, and plays witness to the highs and lows of the great artist's life. But Hendrickje is fated to discover the hypocrisy and greed of society in Amsterdam's Golden Age. In sensuous prose, Matton paints a powerful fictional portrait of this impassioned relationship through the eyes of a remarkable woman.