Omens, Alchemy, and Occult Wisdom in the Works of the Great Bard Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are steeped in magic and esoteric lore. So Potent Art explores fascinating examples of astrology, alchemy, and Hermeticism in addition to herbalism, witchcraft, fairies, ghosts, and divine intervention. This book also reveals the deeper archetypal structures of the plays and shows how the sacred architecture of the historical theater space enhances Shakespeare's magical themes. Author Emily Carding, a Wiccan initiate and theater professional who specializes in staging Shakespeare, discusses the influence of esoteric writers such as Ovid, Agrippa, and John Dee on The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Macbeth, and other Shakespearean works. Each chapter is accompanied by practical suggestions, rituals, and exercises for you to try, enhancing your understanding not only of the great bard’s writings but also of yourself.

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

Bruce Cook of the Washington Post Book World has written that: Bohemia has become an acceptable, even desirable lifestyle all around America, and indeed the world over. But to understand how this happened, how an alternative lifestyle became so mainstream, and also to visit what many consider to be Bohemia's golden age, there is no better source than Gold.

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874) was the first artist to journey into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. He did so as the commissioned expedition artist for William Drummond Stewart (1795-1871), a Scottish nobleman and veteran of a five-year hunting tour in America. Their destination would be the annual fur traders' rendezvous at Horse Creek, near the present-day border of Colorado and Wyoming. Miller, Stewart, and the rest of their party departed from Independence, Missouri, in mid-May 1837. They arrived at the rendezvous two months later and, after a week among the trappers and traders, headed into the Wind River Mountains to the source of the Green River. There, they spent the waning summer hunting moose and elk before returning to St. Louis in early October. Miller executed some one hundred watercolor and pen-and-ink sketches during the expedition, and he later reworked them into finished watercolors and oils for a variety of patrons. Over the past two decades, much valuable scholarship has emerged on how western American art has reflected American nationalist or expansionist ideologies. In Sentimental Journey: The Art of Alfred Jacob Miller, Lisa Strong takes a new approach, however, by examining how Miller tailored his western scenes to suit the specific needs and interests of local American audiences. She also crosses national boundaries to explore how Miller's paintings helped promote a vision of Scottish aristocratic identity.

The canonical work of cultural criticism by the “profoundly influential critic” (Artnet), in a beautiful thirtieth-anniversary edition, featuring a new foreword by esteemed visual artist Mickalene Thomas Called “one of the country’s most influential feminist thinkers” by Artforum, bell hooks and her work have enjoyed a huge resurgence of popularity since her passing in 2021. Her 2018 book All About Love has sold upwards of 700,000 copies, and posthumous tributes have credited her with being “instrumental in cracking open the white, western canon for Black artists” (Artnet). To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of her groundbreaking essay collection Art on My Mind, The New Press will publish a handsome, celebratory edition, featuring a new foreword by Tony-nominated producer and all-around creative phenom Mickalene Thomas and a new cover featuring original photos of bell hooks shot by African American photojournalist Eli Reed. This classic work, which, as the New York Times wrote, “examines the way race, sex and class shape who makes art, how it sells and who values it,” includes what Artforum calls “incisive essays” on the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Isaac Julien, Carrie Mae Weems, and Romare Bearden, among others. Her essays on Black vernacular architecture, representation of the Black male body, and the creative process of women artists, are complemented by conversations with Carrie Mae Weems, Emma Amos, Margo Humphrey, and LaVerne Wells-Bowie, which Kirkus Reviews calls “excellent indeed,” and “a real contribution to our understanding of the situation of black women artists.”