Thames&Hudson Lives of the Great Photographers Hacking Juliet

Loaded with hundreds of photographs of high-end homes and interiors, these gorgeous books is a treat for lovers of residential architecture and a resource for people planning to build their own house • Featuring some of the world's most aesthetically creative and environmentally conscious residential design and construction, this gorgeous collection reflects homes with a deep reverence for their natural and cultural contexts, from coastal dwellings to contemporary urban dwellings and mountain cottages With 30 leading pioneers of the green movement, this informed overview spotlights architects from such firms as Christopher Wright, Coates Design Architects, Nathan Good or Robert Hutchison

A major publication on Hokusai's remarkable late work, incorporating fresh scholarship on the sublime paintings and prints the artist created in the last thirty years of his life • An acknowledged master during his lifetime, Hokusai created sublime works during the last thirty years of his life, right up to his death at the age of ninety. Exhibitions since the 1980s have presented his long career as a chronological sequence. This publication, which will coincide with an exhibition at the British Museum, takes a fresh approach based on innovative scholarship: thematic groupings of late works are related to the major spiritual and artistic quests of Hokusai's life • Hokusai's personal beliefs are contemplated here through analyses of major brush paintings, drawings, woodblock prints, and illustrated books

The Russian Empire was among the most mysterious of the world's great powers, profoundly torn between a rural population living almost medieval lives and industrial and social change in the cities. The tsar's gigantic realm struggled with the advent of modernity and with its own internal contradictions between Asia and Europe, faith and science, different ethnic groups, and the divergent interests of the aristocracy, the middle classes, the urban workers, and the rural poor: a continent of contradictions from abject poverty to fairy-tale wealth captured by authors from Tolstoy to Chekhov, from Gogol to Gorky. Twilight of the Romanovs opens a door into the world of pre-revolutionary Russia using original photographs taken during the last decades of Romanov rule

Founded by Egyptian-born Gaby Aghion in 1952, Chloe pioneered luxury ready-to-wear that was all about ease and femininity, offering an elegant haute bohemian style for the modern, liberated Parisienne. Resolutely contemporary, the house spotted and hired a young Karl Lagerfeld as early as the 1960s: he stayed for over two decades, achieving fame and recognition worldwide through his Chloe work, before Stella McCartney (and her then assistant Phoebe Philo) succeeded him straight out of fashion school • This definitive publication opens with a concise history of the house of Chloe before exploring the collections themselves, which are organized chronologically. Each new era in Chloe’s history opens with a brief overview and biography of the new designer, while individual collections are introduced by a short text unveiling their influences and highlights, and illustrated with carefully curated catwalk images

The best-selling Chanel Catwalk was the first book to gather every Chanel collection ever created by Karl Lagerfeld in a single volume. Now fully updated to include Lagerfeld’s final collections for the house and those of his right-hand and successor, Virginie Viard, this revised edition includes twenty-eight new collections. This definitive publication features a concise history of Karl Lagerfeld and Virginie Viard’s time at Chanel as well as brief biographical profiles of each designer. The collections (from Haute Couture and Ready-to-Wear to Cruise and Metier d’arts) are organized chronologically. Each one is introduced by a short text unveiling its influences and highlights and illustrated with carefully curated catwalk images, showcasing hundreds of spectacular clothes, details, accessories, beauty looks and set designs – and of course the top fashion models who wore them on the runway

Through his intense vision Van Gogh was able to create paintings that speak directly to us all, and today this disturbed and rejected misfit is the most universally loved of all artists • The story of his thirty seven years of poverty, loneliness and failure is in fact a triumphant saga of absolute dedication and the final realization of genius • This extravagantly illustrated volume in the hugely popular New Horizons series, includes the story of his life; his relationships with his brother Theo and contemporaries such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and Gauguin; his descent into madness and his eventual suicide • As well as the many reproductions of paintings and drawings by Van Gogh and his contemporaries, extensive documentary evidence includes extracts from his letters, critical writings and documentary photographs

New in the bestselling Catwalk series: the first comprehensive overview of Versace`s womenswear collections, from Gianni Versace`s debut in 1978 to today

The Great Kings of Persia ruled over the largest Empire of antiquity, stretching from Libya to the Steppes of Asia, and from Ethiopia to Pakistan. At the heart of the Empire was the fabled palace-city of Persepolis where the Achaemenid monarchs held court in unparalleled grandeur. From here, Cyrus the Great, Darius, Xerxes, and their heirs passed laws, raised armies, and governed their multicultural Empire of enormous diversity • The Achaemenids, however, were one of the great dysfunctional families of history. Brothers fought brothers for power, wives and concubines plotted to promote their sons to the throne, and eunuchs and courtiers vied for influence and prestige • Our understanding of the Persian Empire has traditionally come from the histories of Greek writers such as Herodotus - and as such, over many centuries, our perspective has been skewed by ancient political and cultural agendas

Skulduggery, power struggles and politics, The Private Lives of the Saints offers an original and fascinating re-examination of life in Anglo-Saxon England. Taking them down from the clouds of their heavenly status, Sunday Times bestselling author and renowned Oxford historian Dr Janina Ramirez explores the real lives of the legendary, seminal saints • This landmark book provides a unique and captivating new lens through which to explore the rich history of the Dark Ages

A magnificently told, thrilling account of one of the most dramatic events in British history • There had, of course, been other fires, Four Hundred and fifty years before, the city had almost burned to the ground. Yet the signs from the heavens in 1666 were ominous: comets, pyramids of flame, monsters born in city slums. Then, in the early hours on 2 September, a small fire broke out on the ground floor of a baker's house in Pudding Lane. In five days that small fire would devastate the third largest city in the Western world • Adrian Tinniswood's magnificent new account of the Great Fire of London explores the history of a cataclysm and its consequences. It pieces together the untold human story of the Fire and its aftermath - the panic, the search for scapegoats, and the rebirth of a city

Even in an age of soaring skyscrapers and cavernous sports stadiums, the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence still retains a rare power to astonish. Yet the elegance of the building belies the tremendous labour, technical ingenuity and bitter personal strife involved in its creation. For over a century after work on the cathedral began in 1296, the proposed dome was regarded as all but impossible to build because of its enormous size. The greatest architectural puzzle of its age, when finally completed in 1436 the dome was hailed as one of the great wonders of the world. It has gone down in history as a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture • This book tells the extraordinary story of how the cupola was raised and of the dome's architect, the brilliant and volatile Filippo Brunelleschi

A fascinating history of World War I in the words of those who were there - 'an extraordinary and immensely moving book' Stephen Fry • This unique landmark oral history uses first-hand accounts from ordinary men and women who were there. Gripping, poignant, surprising and even humorous, the personal experiences of these soldiers, civilians, marines and medics from both sides tell us what it was really like to live through what was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Skilfully assembled by acclaimed author and historian Max Arthur using the IWM's remarkable sound archive, Forgotten Voices of the Great War became an instant classic on first publication with close to half a million copies sold • In 1972, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous and important task