Country living evokes bucolic landscapes and picturesque villages rolling Connecticut countryside, verdant farmland, the sun-drenched hills of Malibu and the architecture that echoes these idyllic settings. These houses, ranging from family estates to weekend retreats, are the personal homes of decorators and tastemakers, including Jonathan Adler, Martyn Lawrence-Bullard, and Steven Gambrel. The properties exemplify varied design perspectives and provide fresh ideas about how country living is ideal for creative expression. This inspiring medley ranges from Tony Duquette s exotic pavilion-style California home to a charming New York Victorian, a modernist Palm Springs desert getaway by Neutra, a nineteenth-century Gothic cottage on Shelter Island, and an eighteenth-century Connecticut house. Along with design ideas for interiors, the book also covers the garden and pool areas. Since outdoor entertaining is an integral part of country living, a section devoted to tabletop display is included. These beautifully photographed inspirations encourage the reader to explore the design opportunities in the country guided by the best interior designers.

In Rooms to Inspire twelve trendsetters bring a fresh point of view to creating interiors for a spectrum of living spaces-from houses to apartments and country retreats. This selective group-some professional decorators and others renowned for their taste making-includes Marian McEvoy, Kelly Wearstler, Muriel Brandolini, Jonathan Adler, and Simon Doonan. They offer their own very personal perspectives and advice using their own homes as examples-many published here for the first time. These intimate and inviting, absolutely non-formulaic interior spaces express the personal style of these highly creative individuals. Today's designers show how to experiment freely with every detail. This extraordinary sampling features the designers' own homes, ranging stylistically from the theatrical to eclectically modern. Common design issues such as color, balance, and comfort, as well as innovative approaches to kitchens and bathrooms are addressed. The designers also offer their favorite resources. This inspirational guide for professionals and novices encourages us to infuse our living spaces with style and personality.

Reimagining the Educated Mind presents Student Choice Curriculum, a descriptive argument for a major change in high school education. This is a system where students select topics/subjects of interest and then, in negotiation with teachers, design the curriculum and assessment strategies they will follow. Four hypothetical students serve as models; thus, the reader sees both the overall structure of Student Choice Curriculum and the day-to-day educational practices within schools that might use it. Student Choice Curriculum will help students learn how to learn and how to situate that learning in the real world, something current educational paradigms do not accomplish.

A travel guide with a difference: a combination of regional tour and style file which presents the means of escape to the wonders of another age. Aimed at those who love travelling Britain to explore country houses and stately homes, or at a dedicated follower of historical architecture and style, this delightful book contains 500 illustrations and regional maps.

This collection of essays, which derive from a symposium held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005, tells the story of how medieval art was collected by both individuals and institutions in the American Midwest. This book will appeal to both medievalists and scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth century American history. In addition, it will also appeal to scholars who are interested in museum studies and the history of collecting. The essays in the first section, “Collecting and Displaying Medieval Art,” consider the formation of medieval art collections at influential cultural institutions in three of the most important centers of industry and culture in the Midwest: Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. The second section, “Medieval Art as Inspiration and Education,” examines the motives of both private donors and museum professionals in forming collections and establishing period rooms and cloistered spaces at museums in Toledo, Kansas City, and St. Louis, among others. At the opposite end of the spectrum was a new trend in curatorial practice, beginning in the 1930s, that favored the dismantling of period rooms and espoused displaying historical works of art in more distinctly modern settings, a theme that pervades section three, “Medieval Art and Modernism.” An essay on medieval art in Midwestern university art museums and another one that considers the impact of works from medieval collections in special exhibitions serve as a remarkable coda to the rest of the volume. Two appendices follow this, one that provides an overview of medieval art collections in Midwestern university museums and another which provides a biographical sketch of prominent dealers of medieval art from 1900-1950.