Examines the many reasons and motivations for the destruction of books throughout history, citing specific acts from the smashing of ancient Sumerian tablets to the looting of libraries in post-war Iraq.

"This is the first comprehensive examination of modern iconoclasm. Dario Gamboni looks at deliberate attacks carried out - by institutions as well as individuals - on paintings, buildings, sculptures and other works of art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Truly international in scope, "The Destruction of Art" examines incidents, some comic and others disquieting, in the USA, France, the former Soviet Union and other eastern bloc states, Britain, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere. Motivated in the first instance by the recent destruction of many monuments in Europe's former Communist states, which challenged the assumption that iconoclasm was truly a thing of the past, the author has discovered just how widespread the destruction of art is today, manifested in explicable and inexplicable vandalism, political protest and censorship of all sorts. Dario Gamboni examines the relationship between contemporary destructions of art, older forms of iconoclasm and the development of modern art. His analysis is illustrated by case studies from Europe and the United States, from Suffragette protests in London's National Gallery to the controversy surrounding the removal of Richard Serra's Tilted Arc in New York and the resultant debate on artists' moral rights. "The Destruction of Art" asks what iconoclasm can teach us about the place of works of art and material culture in society. The history of iconoclasm is shown to reflect, and to contribute to, the changing and conflicting definitions of art itself." -- BOOK JACKET.

Lianna Mercier has everything. She’s beautiful, well-educated, her father is rich, powerful and she works for him. The perfect little princess, raised to be just like daddy. A bloody, screwed up lie, and David Gethen is about to tear it all down and destroy Lianna in the process. He wants revenge, he wants to finish the plan his father started years ago but after he takes her, after he tortures her, he begins to realize just how wrong he may have been

The Holocaust virtually destroyed the Jews of Poland, once a community of more than three million, constituting ten percent of the population, and the oldest continuous Jewish community in a European country. On the Edge of Destruction looks at the rich and complex nature of that community and the tremendous pressures under which it lived before the tragic end.

These documents from the public hearing and the court proceedings are an essential primary source for scholars of art and law, providing a complete and moving record of censorship in the arts.

Crumbled shells of mosques in Iraq, the bombing of British cathedrals in World War II, the fall of the World Trade Center towers on September 11: when architectural totems such as these are destroyed by conflicts and the ravages of war, more than mere buildings are at stake. The Destruction of Memory reveals the extent to which a nation weds itself to its landscape; Robert Bevan argues that such destruction not only shatters a nation’s culture and morale but is also a deliberate act of eradicating a culture’s memory and, ultimately, its existence. Bevan combs through world history to highlight a range of wars and conflicts in which the destruction of architecture was pivotal. From Cortez’s razing of Aztec cities to the carpet bombings of Dresden and Tokyo in World War II to the war in the former Yugoslavia, The Destruction of Memory exposes the cultural war that rages behind architectural annihilation, revealing that in this subliminal assault lies the complex aim of exterminating a people. He provocatively argues for “the fatally intertwined experience of genocide and cultural genocide,” ultimately proposing the elevation of cultural genocide to a crime punishable by international law. In an age in which Frank Gehry, I. M. Pei, and Frank Lloyd Wright are revered and yet museums and temples of priceless value are destroyed in wars around the world, Bevan challenges the notion of “collateral damage,” arguing that it is in fact a deliberate act of war.

This skillfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. "Control the food and you control the people." This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms. The author cogently reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. Engdahl's carefully argued critique goes far beyond the familiar controversies surrounding the practice of genetic modification as a scientific technique. The book is an eye-opener, a must-read for all those committed to the causes of social justice and World peace.

The massive intentional destruction of cultural heritage during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War targeting a historically diverse identity provoked global condemnation and became a seminal marker in the discourse on cultural heritage. It prompted an urgent reassessment of how cultural property could be protected in times of conflict and led to a more definitive recognition in international humanitarian law that destruction of a people’s cultural heritage is an aspect of genocide. Yet surprisingly little has been published on the subject. This wide-ranging book provides the first comprehensive overview and critical analysis of the destruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s cultural heritage and its far-reaching impact. Scrutinizing the responses of the international community during the war (including bodies like UNESCO and the Council of Europe), the volume also analyses how, after the conflict ended, external agendas impinged on heritage reconstruction to the detriment of the broader peace process and refugee return. It assesses implementation of Annex 8 of the Dayton Peace Agreement, a unique attempt to address the devastation to Bosnia’s cultural heritage, and examines the treatment of war crimes involving cultural property at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). With numerous case studies and plentiful illustrations, this important volume considers questions which have moved to the foreground with the inclusion of cultural heritage preservation in discussions of the right to culture in human rights discourse and as a vital element of post-conflict and development aid.

A bold new conception of Heidegger’s project of Destruktion as a method of interpreting history For Martin Heidegger, our inherited traditions provide the concepts through which we make our world intelligible. Concepts we can also oppose, disrupt, and even exceed. First, however, if Western philosophy is our inheritance, we must submit it to Destruktion—starting with Aristotle. Heidegger and the Destruction of Aristotle: On How to Read the Tradition presents a new conception of Heidegger’s “destruction” as a way of reading. Situated between Nietzschean genealogy and Derridean deconstruction, this method uncovers in Aristotle the most vital originating articulations of the Western tradition and gives us the means to confront it. Sean D. Kirkland argues this is not a rejection of the past but a sophisticated and indeed timely hermeneutic tool—a complex, illuminating, and powerful method for interpreting historical texts at our present moment. Acknowledging the historical Heidegger as a politically compromised and still divisive figure, Kirkland demonstrates that Heideggerian destruction is a method of interpreting history that enables us to reorient and indeed transform its own most troubling legacies.