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The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century
"The art historian after Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich is not only participating in an activity of great intellectual excitement; he is raising and exploring issues which lie very much at the centre of psychology, of the sciences and of history itself. Svetlana Alpers's study of 17th-century Dutch painting is a splendid example of this excitement and of the centrality of art history among current disciples. Professor Alpers puts forward a vividly argued thesis. There is, she says, a truly fundamental dichotomy between the art of the Italian Renaissance and that of the Dutch masters. . . . Italian art is the primary expression of a 'textual culture,' this is to say of a culture which seeks emblematic, allegorical or philosophical meanings in a serious painting. Alberti, Vasari and the many other theoreticians of the Italian Renaissance teach us to 'read' a painting, and to read it in depth so as to elicit and construe its several levels of signification. The world of Dutch art, by the contrast, arises from and enacts a truly 'visual culture.' It serves and energises a system of values in which meaning is not 'read' but 'seen,' in which new knowledge is visually recorded."—George Steiner, Sunday Times"There is no doubt that thanks to Alpers's highly original book the study of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century will be thoroughly reformed and rejuvenated. . . . She herself has the verve, the knowledge, and the sensitivity to make us see familiar sights in a new light."—E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books.
Price: $22.99
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Early Embraces: True Life Stories of Women Describing Their First Lesbian Experience (Early Embraces)
An excerptRSVP by Julia Willis "Can you come to a fish fry?" you asked. Leaving me there in that windowed stairwell where we'd been talking, you rushed away to your next class after the final bell rang. I watched you below dart out of the building and down the sidewalk, stop, turn, look up, and catch me watching you. Then embarrassed from being caught, I waved, casually, friendly, you know -- but instead of going on your way, you dashed right back into the building and called up the stairwell to me. "Can you come to a fish fry?" I thought you were joking. "A fish fry?" I laughed. "We're having one at my house." That house you shared in town with three other women -- Susan, who would end up spending all the money she'd collected for the utility bills before moving in with her married and gray-haired abnormal-psychology professor; Lisa, whose childhood had been nastily scarred by a father's promise to have TV's Annie Oakley at her eighth birthday party (he brought home the actress while she was on a 10-city promotional tour--a grown-up lady in a suit, a lady no one recognized without her trademark pigtails, guns, fringed vest and cowgirl boots, and ten little girls wept bitterly); and finally Margaret, your best friend from high school, who I and most people assumed you were or had been lovers with, since the air around you both was so thick with longing that we could all taste it. "Bring everybody from Duchess house, if you want," you said. Duchess House being that collapsing country farmhouse I lived in with Dick and Diana, a young married couple -- too young and too married--and an assortment of other revolving students. The house was so named because our English teacher, Dick's and mine, said all great literature made use of religion, sex, or the aristocracy, hence the greatest sentence ever written would go something like: "My God," said the duchess to the bishop, "take your hand off my thigh." Duchess. House. We wrote and painted and acted, your household and mine--all of us talented, all of us terrified of that talent, that it wouldn't be enough (as indeed it wouldn't be) or that it might be too much (as it most certainly would). You were a visual artist, but your father was head.
Price: $3.84
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Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists
This book is a guide for linguistic fieldworkers who wish to write a description of the morphology and syntax of one of the world's many underdocumented languages. It offers readers who work through it one possible outline for a grammatical description, with many questions designed to help them address the key topics. Appendices offer guidance on text and elicited data, and on sample reference grammars that readers might wish to consult. This will be a valuable resource to anyone engaged in linguistic fieldwork..
Price: $31.64
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Early Embraces 3: More True-life Stories of Women Describing Their First Lesbian Experience (Early Embraces)
A good story is always worth telling, which is why it has taken three volumes (so far) to contain the sweet, sexy, funny, passionate, and heartwarming words of women describing their first lesbian experience. From first kiss to last gasp, these stories will thrill you with their honesty, candor, and passion. Lindsey Elder is the editor of Early Embraces, Early Embraces II, and Beginnings. She lives in Montana and loves to tell stories. .
Price: $8.12
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The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe
Out of the diverse traditions of medical humanism, classical philology, and natural philosophy, Renaissance naturalists created a new science devoted to discovering and describing plants and animals. In order to distinguish and catalog new plant and animal species, they developed new techniques of observing and recording, created botanical gardens and herbaria, and exchanged correspondence and specimens within an international community. Drawing on published natural histories, manuscript correspondence, garden plans, travelogues, watercolors, and drawings, The Science of Describing reconstructs the evolution of this discipline of description through four generations of naturalists. Illustrated with woodcuts, engravings, and photographs, The Science of Describing is the first broad interpretation of Renaissance natural history in more than a generation and will appeal widely to an interdisciplinary audience. “Ogilvie shows that history has much to teach us. . . . [He] has done more than just write about the Renaissance science of describing; he has written the story of how science constantly reinvents itself, seen through the lens of the pre-Linnaeans.”—Sandra Knapp, Nature“A book that . . . breaks with tradition even as it builds on it. Brian Ogilvie argues convincingly that we need to discard, once and for all, the idea that natural history remained largely static from the era of Aristotle until the birth of the modern world.”—Jim Endersby, Times Literary Supplement“In this beautifully illustrated, fascinating book, Brian Ogilvie shows how the natural sciences developed in a vigorous and quite different way to the experimentalism of the ‘hard’ sciences.”—Adrian Barnett, New Scientist .
Price: $16.99
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Describing Species
New species are discovered every day -- and cataloguing all of them has grown into a nearly insurmountable task world-wide Now, this definitive reference manual acts as a style guide for writing and filing species descriptions. New collecting techniques and new technology have led to a dramatic increase in the number of species that are discovered. Explorations of unstudied regions and new habitats for almost any group of organisms can result in a large number of new species discoveries -- and hence the need to be described. Yet there is no one source a student or researcher can readily consult to learn the basic practical aspects of taxonomic procedures. Species description can present a variety of difficulties: Problems arise when new species are not given names because their discoverers do not know how to write a formal species description or when these species are poorly described. Biologists may also have to deal with nomenclatural problems created by previous workers or resulting from new information generated by their own research. This practical resource for scientists and students contains instructions and examples showing how to describe newly discovered species in both the animal and plant kingdoms. With special chapters on publishing taxonomic papers and on ecology in species description, as well as sections covering subspecies, genus-level, and higher taxa descriptions, Describing Species enhances any writer's taxonomic projects, reports, checklists, floras, faunal surveys, revisions, monographs, or guides. The volume is based on current versions of the International Codes of Zoological and Botanical Nomenclature and recognizes that systematics is a global and multicultural exercise. Though Describing Species has been written for an English-speaking audience, it is useful anywhere Taxonomy is spoken and will be a valuable tool for professionals and students in zoology, botany, ecology, paleontology, and other fields of biology. .
Price: $44.18
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