Rembrandt’s Holland
“A savvy, succinct overview. Silver relates larger issues in politics and religion to specific works by Rembrandt. He is not afraid to go out on a limb, making his text all the more interesting. His sensitive descriptions of art works add depth to his account.”—Gary Schwartz, author of Meet Rembrandt
Cloth $22.50
Blaise Pascal
Miracles and Reason
With a Preface by Tom Conley
“Caws, one of the world authorities on the international avant-garde, both in poetry and in the visual arts, turns her attention to the life and work of a seemingly very different writer, the great seventeenth-century thinker Blaise Pascal. It is the quality of Pascal’s writing—his abrupt, abbreviated, aphoristic, gnomic utterance—so mysterious and yet so authoritative—that fascinates Caws, and her book is eloquent testimony to Pascal’s continuing relevance today. Caws gives us another beautiful book.”—Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University
Cloth $22.50
Petrarch
Everywhere a Wanderer
“The striking appeal of Celenza’s study is how the scattered worlds of Petrarch are brought together in vigorous unity—the passionate classicist haunted by a yearning for modernity, the Tuscan love poet whose melodious sonnets for Laura would be imitated for centuries, the restless Augustinian pilgrim, and the self-conscious yet enigmatic spider in a network of powerful friends and acquaintances. In his elegant and poetic style, Celenza combines reader-friendliness with scholarly sophistication and depth.”—Unn Falkeid, University of Oslo
Cloth $22.50
John Evelyn
A Life of Domesticity
Hunt takes a fresh look at the life and work of one of England’s greatest diarists, focusing particularly on Evelyn’s “domesticity.” The book explores Evelyn’s life at home, and perhaps even more importantly, his domestication of foreign ideas and practices in England. During the English Civil Wars, Evelyn traveled extensively throughout Europe, taking in ideas on the management of estate design while abroad to apply them in England. Evelyn’s greatest accomplishment was the import of European garden art to Britain, a feat Hunt puts into context alongside a range of Evelyn’s social and ethical thinking.
Cloth $22.50