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This is a natural and cultural history of the hippopotamus, the well-loved, cumbersome, rotund mammal famous for lounging around semi-submerged in muddy pools.

This monograph, the first full account of Eileen Agar's complete works, including paintings, collages, photographs and objects, comes at a time when there is a major revival of interest in surrealism in the UK and worldwide.

Forests--and the trees within them--have always been a central resource for the development of technology, culture, and the expansion of humans as a species. Examining and challenging our historical and modern attitudes toward wooded environments, this engaging book explores how our understanding of forests has transformed in recent years and how it fits in our continuing anxiety about our impact on the natural world. Drawing on the most recent work of historians, ecologist geographers, botanists, and forestry professionals, Charles Watkins reveals how established ideas about trees--such as the spread of continuous dense forests across the whole of Europe after the Ice Age--have been questioned and even overturned by archaeological and historical research. He shows how concern over woodland loss in Europe is not well founded--especially while tropical forests elsewhere continue to be cleared--and he unpicks the variety of values and meanings different societies have ascribed to the arboreal. Altogether, he provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary overview of humankind's interaction with this abused but valuable resource.

Over the last twenty years museums have proliferated, attracting new audiences and assuming new prominence in public life. The Return of Curiosity offers a fresh perspective on museums and what they may now be good for.

Drawing extensively on Tchaikovsky's uncensored letters and diaries, this biography explores the composer's life in the artistic culture of nineteenth-century Russian society, revealing how he became a figure of international renown.

Almost three tons of concrete are produced each year for every person on the planet; only water is consumed more per head of population. Now used almost universally in modern construction, concrete polarizes opinion: provoking intense loathing and fervent passion in others. Concrete and Culture

Berlin is a comprehensive short history and portrait of the German capital today.

A new critical biography of Joseph Beuys, arguably the most important and controversial German artist of the late twentieth century.

Thomas Hoerber illustrates how classical economic theory as well as a qualitative method in economics can enlighten our understanding of the present day economic environment.

Echoes of Valhalla is a unique account of modern adaptations of the Icelandic eddas (poems of Norse mythology) and sagas (ancient prose accounts of Viking history, voyages and battles).

People collect to connect with the past, personal and historic, to exercise some small and perfect degree of control over a carefully chosen portion of the world. The Grain of the Clay is Allen S. Weiss's engaging exploration of the meaning and practice of collecting through his relationship with Japanese ceramics.

A natural and cultural history of that most potent of arthropod, the scorpion.

Richly illustrated with many previously unpublished images, Photography and Germany is the first single-authored history of German photography, and deepens our understanding of how photography cultivates notions of a nation and its inhabitants.

If there is one thing we are short on these days, it's attention. Attention is central to everything we do and think, yet it is mostly an intangible force, an invisible thing that connects us as subjects with the world around us. We pay attention to this or that, let our attention wander--we even stand at attention from time to time--yet rarely do we attend to attention itself. In this book, Gay Watson does just that, musing on attention as one of our most human impulses. As Watson shows, the way we think about attention is usually through its instrumentality, by what can be achieved if we give something enough of it--say, a crisply written report, a newly built bookcase, or even a satisfied child who has yearned for engagement. Yet in losing ourselves to the objects of our fixation, we often neglect the process of attention itself. Exploring everything from attention's effects on our neurons to attention deficit disorder, from the mindfulness movement to the relationship between attention and creativity, Watson examines attention in action through many disciplines and ways of life. Along the way, she offers interviews with an astonishing cast of creative people--from composers to poets to artists to psychologists--including John Luther Adams, Stephen Batchelor, Sue Blackmore, Guy Claxton, Edmund de Waal, Rick Hanson, Jane Hirshfield, Wayne Macgregor, Iain McGilchrist, Garry Fabian Miller, Alice and Peter Oswald, Ruth Ozeki, and James Turrell. A valuable and timely account of something central to our lives yet all too often neglected, this book will appeal to anyone who has felt their attention under threat in the clamors of modern life.

'Llama' charts the history of llamas and their close relatives alpacas, guanacos and vicunas. The book recounts the animal's rich natural history as well as its presence in art, literature and film.

In this new critical biography Frida Beckman traces Gilles Deleuze's remarkable intellectual journey, mapping the encounters from which his life and work emerged.

Contains many fascinating facts about the world's fastest animal, including falcons in secret military projects and espionage; falcons nesting in the middle of cities; the history of the race to save the peregrine; and the colourful sport of falconry.

The zombie has shuffled with dead-eyed, remorseless menace from its beginnings in folklore and primitive superstition to become the dominant image of the undead. Roger Luckhurst sifts material from anthropology, folklore, long-forgotten pulp literature, B-movies, medical history and cultural theory to give a definitive introduction to the zombie.

Drawing on archaeological evidence and a wealth of oral and written history, this book reveals the journey Vietnamese food has traversed through history to become a much-loved cuisine today.

In this compelling journey through peaks both real and imaginary, Veronica della Dora explores how the history of mountains is deeply interlaced with cultural values and aesthetic tastes, with religious beliefs and scientific practices.

Edible Flowers is the fascinating history of how flowers have been used in cooking from ancient customs to modern kitchens. It also serves up novel ways to prepare and eat soups, salads, desserts and drinks. Discover something new about the flowers all around you with this surprising history.

Chillies traces the culinary journey of the spice and uncovers cultural and spiritual links between chillies and humans, from their use as an aphrodisiac, to the recent discovery that chilli heat shows promise as a treatment for neuropathic pain, prostate cancer and leukaemia.

An exploration of the issues that arise when philosophers ask 'how are we to eat?'

For those who visit the United Arab Emirates (UAE), staying in its the lavish hotels and browsing in the ultra-modern shopping malls of Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the country can be a mystery, a glass and concrete creation that seems to have sprung from the desert overnight. Keepers of the Golden Shore looks behind this glossy façade, illuminating the region's history, which stretches from the ancient Arabian tribes who controlled a desolate but economically important shoreline to the ostentatious architectural wonders--bankrolled by a massive wealth of oil--that characterize it today. As Michael Quentin Morton recounts, the region now known as the UAE likely began as a trading post between Mesopotamia and Oman, and since that time has been the stage of important economic and cultural exchanges. It has seen the rise and fall of a thriving pearl industry, piracy, invasions and wars, and the arrival of the oil age that would make it one of the richest countries on earth. Since the early 1970s, when seven sheikhs agreed to enter into a union, it has been a sovereign nation, carrying on the resourceful spirit--with resplendent fervor--that the brutally inhospitable landscape has long demanded of the people. Ultimately, Morton shows that the country is not only rich in oil and money but in an extraordinarily deep history and culture.

A new, critical biography of enigmatic French theorist, writer, actor and artist Antonin Artaud examining Artaud's work in relation to his life, as well as the many influential figures he came into contact with.

Meteorite: Nature and Culture is a unique, richly illustrated cultural history of these ancient and mysterious phenomena.

Ireland and Britain have an entwined and contentious past. Though southern Ireland broke with the Commonwealth in 1948, Northern Ireland remains a member of the United Kingdom to this day. As Fionna Barber shows in Art In Ireland since 1910, Ireland's relationship to its closest neighbor has played a key role in the development of its visual culture. Using the work of Jack B. Yeats, William Leech, John Lavery, William Orpen, F. E. McWilliam, Francis Bacon, and others, Barberlooks at how Ireland's art practice during the past century has been shaped by the twin forces of nationhood and modernity. Barber reveals that the drive to decolonization in the Irish Free State underpinned a predominance of images of remote landscapes and rugged peasantry. She moves beyond discussions of art in Northern Ireland--often reduced to a concern with the Troubles, the period of ethno-political conflict that began in 1969, and the significance of its status as part of Britain--to consider the region's art practice in relation to ideas of nation and the modern. Drawing parallels with artists from other former British colonies, she also looks at the theme of diaspora and migration in the work of Irish artists working in Britain during the 1950s. The first book to examine Irish art from the early twentieth century to the present day, this beautifully illustrated book adds a new dimension to our conception of this idyllic country.

As a colour, black is a single hue. It comes in no other shades. But despite its commonly accepted role as one half of a pair, in symbolic terms black envelops the entire spectrum of meaning. The Story of Black explores the ambiguous relationship the world's cultures have had with this often self-contradictory colour

Martha Jay traces the history of allium family - onions, shallots, garlic, chives, and leeks - back to the earliest civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and the recipes of ancient Mesopotamia.

A classic account of how landscape has been central to questions of 'Englishness' - of national identity, history and modernity, as well as concepts of citizenship and the body.