Inspired by Darwin and von Humboldt, ARW travelled to the Amazon Basin and the Malay Archipelago. He published a paper on natural selection in 1858, a year before Darwin's Origin of Species... read more
Reframes the Silk Road as a diplomatic route, not simply a commercial thoroughfare, especially during the late Tang and Five Dynasties period. Draws on documents from Dunhuang.
A magnificent book by Chaucer's biographer: the forthright, funny, dynamic character from the Canterbury Tales is compared with some real medieval women, and is also traced in the work of la... read more
A new translation of Seneca's 'On The Shortness of Life', with the Latin on facing pages and an introduction. One of three niftily pocket-sized classical guides to life.
Fortitude and patience: Cicero's text in Latin and in English translation, with a commentary. One of three niftily pocket-sized philosophical guides from Princeton.
Selections from the man who threatened to bite scoundrels; with the Greek on facing pages and an introduction. One of three niftily pocket-sized classical guides to life from Princeton.
This eloquent little book offers a moving and erudite justification for the survival of high quality book shops and why they are essential places of discovery, refuge and fulfilment. Laced w... read more
Garments to tents in South Asia in the C16th-C17th. Richly illustrated, this book shows cloth participated in both political and social spheres, and reflected seasonal rhythms.
Beard on the faces of power through history. She asks why - for over two millennia - the striking, stony realism of Roman portraiture has been a touchstone for subsequent depictions of power... read more
Published in association with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which houses a superb collection of the ingenious printmaking technique that was so important in Enlightenment Europe... read more
Shows glass alongside paintings by the many American artists who found inspiration in Venice, and who carried aspects of the manufacture of Italian glass deep into American culture.
Genial mix of aesthetics, lit crit, philosophy, art and history. Rabelais, Vermeer, ancient Rome and a classical Greek text in 16 vols about a single meal. The latter would have given Proust... read more
A gorgeous, illustrated study of the ways in which shells were circulated, depicted, collected and valued during a time of remarkable global change, by aristocrats and apothecaries, scholars... read more
Macartney's 1793 mission was a failure, but the Dutch were better informed. This new study argues that the Qing court was not arrogant and narrow-minded, as the English concluded, but was in... read more
A biography of the man so vividly presented in Robert Edric's 2008 novel 'In Zodiac Light': the poet and composer who, following his experiences as a soldier in WW1, was confined to an asylu... read more