National Network for Equitable Library Service

Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was a man of many talents-a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar-but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari's extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari's visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift.

A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind - our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions - and how mind and brain relate to art. At the turn of the century, Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe. Artists and scientists met in glittering salons, where they freely exchanged ideas that led to revolutionary breakthroughs in psychology, brain science, literature, and art.

A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast.

"All we wanted to do was make art accessible, non-academic, non-elitist, gossipy and fun" - Russell Tovey, quoted in the New York Times Engaging, informative and open to everyone, Talk Art established itself as the must-listen cultural podcast in both the UK and the US, and it has now garnered 1.5 million downloads. With infectious enthusiasm, Russell and Robert have opened the doors to the art world and have welcomed people of all ages and backgrounds into the conversation.

The global boom in skyscrapers-why it's happening now, how they're made, and what they do to cities and people. We are living in a new urban age and its most tangible expression is the "supertall": megastructures that are dramatically bigger, higher, and more ambitious than any in history. In Supertall, TED Resident Stefan Al-himself an experienced architect who has worked on some of the largest buildings in the world-reveals the advancements in engineering, design, and data science that have led to this worldwide boom.

Did you know Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime and that during the last three months of his life he completed an average of one painting every day?Did you know that Michelangelo's David is covered in a dusting of human skin?Did you know Caravaggio murdered several people while he was painting some of the most glorious paintings of biblical scenes the world has ever known?Rembrandt Is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey is an invitation to discover some of the world's most celebrated artists and works, while presenting the gospel of Christ in a way that speaks to t

Our lives are saturated by color. We live in a world of colors, and color marks our psychological and social existence. But for all color's ubiquity, we don't know much about it. Authors David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing offer a fresh and imaginative exploration of one of the most intriguing and least-understood aspects of everyday experience. Kastan and Farthing, a scholar and a painter, investigate color from numerous perspectives: literary, historical, cultural, anthropological, philosophical, art historical, political, and scientific.

The rich, revealing, and thrilling story of five women whose lives and painting propelled a revolution in modern art, from the National Book Award finalist. Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting--not as muses but as artists.

Modern begins on a specific day—March 22, 1905—at a specific place: the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where works of art we recognize as modern were first exhibited. Drawing on his forty five-year fine art career, author Philip Hook illuminates how this new art came to be—and how truly shocking it was. We witness movement upon movement that burst forth in dizzying succession: Fauvism, Expressionism, Primitivism, Symbolism, Cubism, Futurism, and Abstract art.

As he entered his 70s, the great Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo despaired that his productive years were past. Anguished by the death of friends and discouraged by the loss of commissions to younger artists, this supreme painter and sculptor began carving his own tomb. It was at this unlikely moment that fate intervened to task Michelangelo with the most ambitious and daunting project of his long creative life.