In this biography, Ross King rescues Machiavelli's legacy from caricature, detailing the vibrant political and social context that influenced his thought and underscoring the humanity of one of history's finest political thinkers.

Machiavelli (Eminent Lives)

ross-king

Biographies & Memoirs

HarperPress

The second novel, by the author of Brunelleschi's Dome, and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling is an elaborate historical mystery.Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries.As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold's hunt for one of these stolen volumes -- a lost Hermetic text -- soon casts him into an elaborate intrigue. His fortunes hang on the discovery of the missing manuscript but his search reveals that the elusive volume is not what it seems and that he has been made an unwitting player in a treacherous game.

Ex Libris

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Vintage

Architectural Conservation in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands National Experiences and Practice

William Chapman

Julia Gatley

John H. Stubbs

Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group

The bestselling author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling captures the excitement and spirit of the Renaissance in this chronicle of the life and work of "the king of the world's booksellers" and the technological disruption that forever changed the ways knowledge spread.The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings--the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.At the heart of this activity was a remarkable Vespasiano da Bisticci. Born in 1422, he became what a friend called "the king of the world's booksellers." At a time when all books were made by hand, over four decades Vespasiano produced and sold many hundreds of volumes from his bookshop, which also became a gathering spot for discussion and debate. Besides repositories of ancient wisdom by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, his books were works of art in their own right, copied by talented scribes and illuminated by the finest miniaturists. His clients included a roll-call of popes, kings, and princes across Europe who wished to burnish their reputations by founding magnificent libraries.Vespasiano reached the summit of his powers as Europe's most prolific merchant of knowledge when a new invention the printed book. By 1480, the king of the world's booksellers was swept away by this epic technological disruption, whereby cheaply produced books reached readers who never could have afforded one of Vespasiano's elegant manuscripts.A thrilling chronicle of intellectual ferment set against the dramatic political and religious turmoil of the era, including the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, Ross King's The Bookseller of Florence is also an ode to books and bookmaking that charts the world-changing shift from script to print through the life of an extraordinary man long lost to history--one of the true titans of the Renaissance.

The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance

Atlantic Monthly Press

The Bookseller of Florence: Vespasiano da Bisticci and the Manuscripts that Illuminated the Renaissance

The Bookseller of Florence captures the excitement and spirit of the Renaissance amid the technological disruption that forever changed the ways knowledge spread, from the bestselling author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling.\nThe Renaissance in Florence conjures images of the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.\nBorn in 1422, Vespasiano da Bisticci became what a friend called the king of the world's booksellers. At a time when all books were made by hand, for over four decades Vespasiano produced and sold hundreds of volumes from his bookshop, which also became a gathering spot for discussion and debate. His clients included a roll-call of popes, kings, and princes across Europe.\nVespasiano reached the summit of his powers as Europe's most prolific merchant of knowledge when a new invention appeared: the printed book. By 1480, the king of the world's booksellers was swept away by this epic technological disruption, whereby cheaply produced books reached readers who never could have afforded one of Vespasiano's elegant manuscripts.\nA thrilling chronicle of intellectual ferment set against the dramatic political and religious turmoil of the era, The Bookseller of Florence is also an ode to books and bookmaking that charts the world-changing shift from script to print through the life of one of the true titans of the Renaissance.

The Bookseller of Florence: Vespasiano Da Bisticci and the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance

Anchor Canada

Michelangelo and the Popes Ceiling(Signed)

Random House]

Even in an age of skyscrapers and sports stadiums, the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, with its immense dome, retains a rare power to astonish. Yet, for more than a century after work began on the cathedral in 1296, the proposed dome was regarded as impossible to build. It became the greatest architectural puzzle of the age, and when finally complete in 1436, was hailed as one of the wonders of the world. Ross King tells the full story of how the cupola was raised, from conception to consecration. He also tells the story of the dome's architect, the brilliant and volatile Filippo Brunelleschi. His ambition, ingenuity and rivalries are set in the context of the plagues, wars and political feuds of Renaissance Florence. It is a fascinating story.

Brunelleschi's Dome

Arts & Photography

Architecture

BOOKS-ON-TAPE, INC.

Brunelleschi's Dome (Lib)(CD)

BOOKS ON TAPE]

Michelangelo and The Pope's Ceiling

The author of the acclaimed BRUNELLESCHI'S DOME tells the extraordinary story of the four years during which Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Although the artist considered himself a sculptor, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo as a painter. With only scant knowledge of the art of fresco, Michelangelo created figures so beautiful that when they were unveiled in 1512, they stunned the onlookers. Ross King chronicles what went into this monumental project: not only Michelangelo's experiments with the composition of pigment and plaster, but also his ill health, financial difficulties, domestic problems, and bitter rivalry with Raphael, who was working on the neighboring Papal Apartments. A masterly picture of day-to-day life on the scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early sixteenth-century Rome.

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

History & Criticism

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism

Walker&Company

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