Socialite Edward James was a patron of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. Focussing on James' years in Mexico, Surreal Eden describes his estate of Las Pozas where he built one surrealist structure after another, providing full employment for the nearby town. From buttocks sticking out of a hillside to an elaborate aviary built on high-rise towers, Las Pozas is a surreal tribute to one of the most eccentric personalities of the early 20th century.

It was the war that changed everything, and yet it’s been mostly forgotten: in 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. It dominated newspaper headlines and newsreels. It inspired mass marches in Harlem, a play on Broadway, and independence movements in Africa. As the British Navy sailed into the Mediterranean for a white-knuckle showdown with Italian ships, riots broke out in major cities all over the United States. Italian planes dropped poison gas on Ethiopian troops, bombed Red Cross hospitals, and committed atrocities that were never deemed worthy of a war crimes tribunal. But unlike the many other depressing tales of Africa that crowd book shelves, this is a gripping thriller, a rousing tale of real-life heroism in which the Ethiopians come back from near destruction and win. Tunnelling through archive records, tracking down survivors still alive today, and uncovering never-before-seen photos, Jeff Pearce recreates a remarkable era and reveals astonishing new findings. He shows how the British Foreign Office abandoned the Ethiopians to their fate, while Franklin Roosevelt had an ambitious peace plan that could have changed the course of world history—had Chamberlain not blocked him with his policy on Ethiopia. And Pearce shows how modern propaganda techniques, the post-war African world, and modern peace movements all were influenced by this crucial conflict—a war in Africa that truly changed the world. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Reading Across the Pacific is a study of literary and cultural engagement between the United States and Australia from a contemporary interdisciplinary perspective. The book examines the relations of the two countries, shifting the emphasis from the broad cultural patterns that are often compared, to the specific networks, interactions, and crossings that have characterised Australian literature in the United States and American literature in Australia. In the 21st century, both American and Australian literatures are experiencing new challenges to the very different paradigms of literary history and criticism each inherited from the 20th century. In response to these challenges, scholars of both literatures are seizing the opportunity to reassess and reconfigure the conceptual geography of national literary spaces as they are reformed by vectors that evade or exceed them, including the transnational, the local and the global. The essays in Reading Across the Pacific are divided into five sections: 'National literatures and transnationalism', 'Poetry and poetics', 'Literature and popular culture', 'The Cold War', and 'Publishing history and transpacific print cultures'.

The angelic realm isn't pretend; it's real. It's all around us. Its creatures are beautiful--and deadly.

Surreal Things is the first book to examine in depth the influence of Surrealism on the wider fields of design and the decorative arts and its sometimes uneasy relationship with the commercial world. In Parts I and II, the work of artists and designers such as Hans (Jean) Arp, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray and Elsa Schiaparelli provides the means to explore Surrealism's relationship with the material world, while 45 star objects are given particular consideration in Part III. The range of objects covered in this book spans painting, sculpture, works on paper, jewellery, ceramics, textiles, furniture, fashion, film and photography.

Devastated by the death of the beloved grandfather who raised her, precocious young pianist Eleanor Rose heeds the words of the unknown woman in her dream. Leaving the security of her privileged life in Boston, she heads for Eden's Meadow, a Louisiana estate which she has never seen, and which has been closed since her grandmother died there mysteriously twenty-five years earlier. She longs for a tranquil haven in which to nurse her grief and concentrate on her music. At first Eden's Meadow seems to be just that. But Eleanor's shocking discovery of a forgotten painting, the timely arrival of a letter from a man who seems to hold the answers to the questions it raises, and her growing love for an enigmatic Russian musician draw her into a labyrinth of past and present deception, which ultimately threatens her sanity-and her life.

Surreal Beckett situates Beckett‘s writings within the context of James Joyce and Surrealism, distinguishing ways in which Beckett forged his own unique path, sometimes in accord with, sometimes at odds with, these two powerful predecessors. Beckett was so deeply enmeshed in Joyce’s circle during his early Paris days (1928 - late 1930s) that James Knowlson dubbed them his "Joyce years." But Surrealism and Surrealists rivaled Joyce for Beckett’s early and continuing attention, if not affection, so that Raymond Federman called 1929-45 Beckett’s "surrealist period." Considering both claims, this volume delves deeper into each argument by obscuring the boundaries between theses differentiating studies. These received wisdoms largely maintain that Beckett’s Joycean connection and influence developed a negative impact in his early works, and that Beckett only found his voice when he broke the connection after Joyce’s death. Beckett came to accept his own inner darkness as his subject matter, writing in French and using a first-person narrative voice in his fiction and competing personal voices in his plays. Critics have mainly viewed Beckett’s Surrealist connections as roughly co-terminus with Joycean ones, and ultimately of little enduring consequence. Surreal Beckett argues that both early influences went much deeper for Beckett as he made his own unique way forward, transforming them, particularly Surrealist ones, into resources that he drew upon his entire career. Ultimately, Beckett endowed his characters with resources sufficient to transcend limitations their surreal circumstances imposed upon them.

This book examines representations of home in literary and visual cultures in the 20th and 21st centuries. The collection brings together scholars working on literature, film, and photography with the aim of showcasing new research in a burgeoning field focusing on representations of domesticity. The chapters span a diverse range of contexts from across the world and use a variety of approaches to exploring representations of home including studies of space, material culture, sexuality, gender, multiculturalism, diaspora, memory and archival practice. They include explorations of the Finnish Suburban home on film, home and the diasporic imagination in Chinese Canadian women’s writing and the archiving practices and photographs used to document the homes of two gay writers from Australia and New Zealand. By bringing together this range of approaches and subjects, the book explores domestic imaginaries as part of a multi-faceted, mutable and amorphous conception of home in a modern, world context. This collection therefore seeks to further studies of home by investigating how the page, screen and photograph have constructed domestic imaginaries – experiencing, critiquing, reconfiguring and archiving home – in a global age.

This volume investigates crucial ways in which nature has been apprehended, understood and valued in different cultures and over time. It is grounded in current global concerns about growing threats to the natural environment. Through a critical appraisal of specific examples, it ranges widely over historical and contemporary attitudes and behaviours. It presents a wide ranging analysis of selected ideas and attitudes in the evolution mainly of western civilisation, from the time of the cave artists to the present day. It argues for preservation and conservation of the natural resources and beauty of the earth in the face of religious supernatural arguments and the rise of consumer capitalism and consumerism.

Traverse a lush and abandoned Eden, escaping the everyday for a world waiting to come to life A keen observer of the natural world and the mystical treasures contained within, Anders Nilsen uses lush, inky lines to craft an enchanting, meditative journey for your coloring tools. A Walk in Eden is a fantastical view of primeval creation, with an exquisite mix of sprawling landscapes and close-up examinations of plants, fungi, and minerals--think giant crystal formations emerging out of pools surrounded by lush vegetation and flowers the size of small trees. Though this is a world void of humans, here and there are small reminders of our presence. Informed by the designs of Ernst Haeckel and other early scientific and botanical illustration, Nilsen's world is intricate, playful, and inspired, waiting for you to make it your own. With 80+ full-page drawings, Nilsen invites you to join in the fun and bring the adult- and kid-friendly world of A Walk in Eden to life.