Böcker utgivna av Reaktion Books

A vivid, absorbing new biography of Dmitry Shostakovich.

A timely reappraisal of Indian writer, composer, musician, artist and activist Rabindranath Tagore.

A beautifully illustrated monograph on the innovative and at times controversial sculptor Donatello.

A natural and cultural history of the majestic yet endangered polar bear.

A beautifully illustrated, authoritative overview of humankind's fascination with the ringed planet Saturn.

An accessible introduction to photography's perhaps most contested, complex and emotive subject, war.

A new account of the controversial alchemist, physician and social radical known as Paracelsus.

A delightful global history of mustard, one of the world's most loved condiments.

The surprising and intriguing history of the much-loved goldfish.

Drawing on insights, images and unpublished diaries, Julia Frey explores Edouard Vuillard's private world.

The ultimate guide to fortified wines for discerning imbibers and modern mixologists everywhere.

A ground-breaking, beautifully illustrated study of the father of French painting, Nicolas Poussin.

The first comprehensive history in English of the food of Spain.

This wide-ranging book describes the importance, as well as the fragility of glaciers.

A highly original and wide-ranging study of 'the end' in art.

A fascinating reappraisal of Britain's `oldest ally', the House of Braganza.

A new critical biography of the singular writer Stendhal.

A full account of Renaissance artist Raphael's prodigious yet short-lived career.

A challenging, iconoclastic history of empire-building from the point of view of women.

A return by essential film critic Laura Mulvey to questions of film theory and feminism.

This incisive and illuminating biography follows the three themes that shaped the life of Leonardo da Vinci and, through him, forever changed Western art and imagination: nature, art, and self-fashioning. Nature and art helped form Leonardo. He spent his first twelve years in the Tuscan countryside before entering the most reputed artistic workshop of Florence. There he blossomed as one of the most promising painters of his time and promptly applied his skills to explore and question the world through science and invention. Leonardo was also self-fashioned: he received only a basic education and grew up around peasants and artisans. But from the 1480s onwards, he transformed himself into a court artist and became a familiar of kings and rulers. Following the chronology of Leonardo's extraordinary life, this book examines Leonardo as artist, courtier, and thinker, and explores how these aspects found expression in his paintings, as well as in his work in sculpture, architecture, theater design, urban planning, engineering, anatomy, geology, and cartography. François Quiviger concludes with observations on Leonardo's relevance today as a model of the multidisciplinary artist who combines imagination, art, and science--the original, and ultimate, Renaissance Man.

A global history of restaurants beyond white tablecloths and maître d's, Dining Out presents restaurants both as businesses and as venues for a range of human experiences. From banquets in twelfth-century China to the medicinal roots of French restaurants, the origins of restaurants are not singular--nor is the history this book tells. Katie Rawson and Elliott Shore highlight stories across time and place, including how chifa restaurants emerged from the migration of Chinese workers and their marriage to Peruvian businesswomen in nineteenth-century Peru; how Alexander Soyer transformed kitchen chemistry by popularizing the gas stove, pre-dating the pyrotechnics of molecular gastronomy by a century; and how Harvey Girls dispelled the ill repute of waiting tables, making rich lives for themselves across the American West. From restaurant architecture to technological developments, staffing and organization, tipping and waiting table, ethnic cuisines, and slow and fast foods, this delectably illustrated and profoundly informed and entertaining history takes us from the world's first restaurants in Kaifeng, China, to the latest high-end dining experiences.

"Art is often seen as a solitary, even a reclusive, endeavor. But visual artists, writers, and musicians often find themselves energized by a collective environment. Sharing ideas around a table has always provided a starting, and a continuing, place for fruitful exchanges between artists of all kinds. In her wide-ranging new book, Mary Ann Caws explores a rich variety of gathering places, past and present, which have been conducive to the release and sustenance of creative energies. Creative Gatherings surveys meeting locations across Europe and the United States, from cityscapes to island hideouts, from private homes to public cafes and artists' colonies. Examples include Florence Griswold's house in Old Lyme, Connecticut, meeting place of the Old Lyme Art Colony; Prague's Le Louvre caf, haunt of Kafka and Einstein; Picasso's modernist hangout in Barcelona, Els Quatre Gats; Charleston, gathering place of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa and Duncan Bell; and the caf s of Saint-Germain-des-Pr s and Montparnasse: the hangouts of Apollinaire, Sartre, and Patti Smith. Interweaving two hundred examples of collaborative artworks throughout the text, with more than one hundred in color, Creative Gatherings is a beautiful, erudite commingling as inspiring as the gathering places Caws depicts."--Publisher's description.

An accessible and entertaining portrait of humans as a brilliantly inventive, yet self-destructive animal.

An illuminating reappraisal of Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte.

Psyche on the Skin charts the secret history of self-harm. This book describes its many forms, from sexual self-mutilation and hysterical malingering in the late Victorian period, to self-castrating religious sects, to self-mutilation and self-destruction in art, music and popular culture.

Live Wires explores how five key electronic technologies revolutionized music.

For centuries common primroses have spread breathtaking carpets of pale lemon yellow across the globe, the first sign of spring. Abundant, edible, and beneficial for many ailments, they have supported civilization's social and cultural foundations. When undaunted plant hunters risked their lives to introduce the many Himalayan primroses of breathtaking beauty, the primrose gained iconic status. Capable of endless variation, primroses have captured the attention of gardeners, plant breeders, and scientists, while artists and poets have found them essential as both subject matter and muse. William Shakespeare introduced us to the "the primrose path," a pleasurable but destructive route, in several of his plays, and Charles Darwin spent more than thirty years working with primroses to solve an elegant evolutionary mystery. This book tells the story of how primroses became so successful, circling the Earth, adapting to human civilization, and yet holding their own on inaccessible craggy summits where they may never be seen. Bringing together facts, folklore, and beautiful images from around the world, Primrose is a delightful guide to this hugely popular flower.

"Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor's The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge - the lusts, fantasies, dreams, and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud's epistemophilia (or love of knowledge), and the curiously insistent links between madness, magical thinking, and the desire for knowledge. Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and "general knowledge," charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library. In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life."--Jacket flap.

Fat. Such a little word evokes big responses. While "fat" describes the size and shape of bodies--their appearance--our negative reactions to corpulence also depend on something tangible and tactile. As this book argues, there is more to fat than meets the eye. Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life offers reflections on how fat has been perceived and imagined in the West since antiquity. Featuring fascinating historical accounts as well as philosophical, religious, and cultural analyses--including discussions of status, gender, and race--the book digs deep into the past for the roots of our current notions and prejudices. Two central themes emerge: how we have perceived and imagined corpulent bodies over the centuries, and how fat--as a substance as well as a description of body size--has been associated with vitality and fertility as well as perceptions of animality. By exploring the complex ways in which fat, fatness, and fattening have been perceived over time, this book provides rich insights into the stuff our stereotypes are made of.