What would it mean to speak of cuisine as a "fine art"? Combining an analysis of French cuisine with cutting-edge postmodernist critique, Feast and Folly provides a fascinating history of French gastronomy and cuisine over the past two centuries, as well as considerable detail regarding the preparation of some of the colossal meals described in the book. It offers a deep analysis of the social, political, and aesthetic aspects of cuisine and taste, exploring the conceptual preconditions, the discursive limits, and the poetics and rhetorical forms of the modern culinary imagination. Allen S. Weiss analyzes the structural preconditions of considering cuisine as a fine art, connects the diverse discursive conditions that give meaning to the notion of cuisine as artwork, and investigates the most extreme psychological and metaphysical condition of the aesthetic domain—the sublime—in relation to gastronomy.

For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women's clothes, sang obscene songs, swung censers that gave off foul-smelling smoke, played dice at the altar, and otherwise parodied the liturgy of the church. Afterward, they would take to the streets, howling, issuing mock indulgences, hurling manure at bystanders, and staging scurrilous plays. The problem with this popular account—intriguing as it may be— is that it is wrong.In Sacred Folly, Max Harris rewrites the history of the Feast of Fools, showing that it developed in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as an elaborate and orderly liturgy for the day of the Circumcision (1 January)—serving as a dignified alternative to rowdy secular New Year festivities. The intent of the feast was not mockery but thanksgiving for the incarnation of Christ. Prescribed role reversals, in which the lower clergy presided over divine office, recalled Mary's joyous affirmation that God "has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble." The "fools" represented those chosen by God for their lowly status.The feast, never widespread, was largely confined to cathedrals and collegiate churches in northern France. In the fifteenth century, high-ranking clergy who relied on rumor rather than firsthand knowledge attacked and eventually suppressed the feast. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historians repeatedly misread records of the feast; their erroneous accounts formed a shaky foundation for subsequent understanding of the medieval ritual. By returning to the primary documents, Harris reconstructs a Feast of Fools that is all the more remarkable for being sanctified rather than sacrilegious.

The Oxford Symposium on Food on Cookery is a premier English conference on this topic. The subjects range from the food of medieval English and Spanish Jews; wild boar in Europe; the identity of liquamen and other Roman sauces; the production of vinegar in the Philippines; the nature of Indian restaurant food; and food in 19th century Amsterdam.

Colour is architecture’s sharpest tool in the box. It has indexed everything from the feminine, cosmetic and vulgar to the pure, intrinsic and embodied. Colour has played a central role in the history of architecture. From the polychromy of the ancients to the great white interiors of high modernism. The figurative flourishes of postmodernism to the embedded sublime of contemporary building systems and facades. In contemporary architecture, colour has emerged as something powerful, both a mode of working and a political proposition. The second digital age has brought a fundamental shift in how architects engage colour. Employing the full range of colour puts forth a projective mode of action. It aids the democratisation of visual culture: opening the field to enable subjectivities, bring in new references and embrace new voices. This book explores the function of colour in contemporary architecture and argues it is not to present a vision of an idealised other world, but to prompt new imaginaries. Take in the full spectrum. Features: 100 Architects, Maya Alam, David Batchelor, Galo Canizares, Courtney Coffman, Fala Atelier, Marcelyn Gow, Sauerbruch Hutton, Sam Jacobs, Carolyn Kane, Guto Requena, Paulette Singley, Amanda Williams and Mimi Zeiger.

Transnational in scope, this much-needed volume explores how modernist writers and artists address and critique the dramatic changes to food systems that took place in the early twentieth century. During this period, small farms were being replaced with industrial agriculture, political upheavals exacerbated food scarcity in many countries, and globalization opened up new modes of distributing culinary commodities. Looking at a unique variety of art forms by authors, painters, filmmakers, and chefs from Ireland, Italy, France, the United States, India, the former Soviet Union, and New Zealand, contributors draw attention to modernist representations of food, from production to distribution and consumption. They consider Oscar Wilde’s aestheticization of food, Katherine Mansfield’s use of eggs as a feminist symbol, Langston Hughes’s use of chocolate as a redemptive metaphor for blackness, hospitality in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary, Ernest Hemingway’s struggles with gender and sexuality as expressed through food and culinary objects, Futurist cuisine, avant-garde cookbooks, and the impact of national famines on the work of James Joyce, Viktor Shklovsky, and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. Less celebrated topics of putrefaction and waste are analyzed in discussions of food as both a technology of control and a tool for resistance. The diverse themes and methodologies assembled here underscore the importance of food studies not only for the literary and visual arts but also for social transformation. The cultural work around food, the editors argue, determines what is produced, who has access to it, and what can or will change. A milestone volume, this collection uncovers new links between seemingly disparate spaces, cultures, and artistic media and demystifies the connection between modernist aesthetics and the emerging food cultures of a globalizing world. Contributors: Giles Whiteley | Aimee Gasston | Randall Wilhelm | Bradford Taylor | Sean Mark | Céline Mansanti | Shannon Finck

If it is true that "everything rises and falls on leadership," we have a problem. A recent international survey revealed that 86 percent of respondents believe we are facing a global leadership crisis. The study encompassed leadership in business, government, the non-profit sector, and religion. Non-profit and business leaders ranked highest in terms of public confidence. Government leaders ranked very low. The only leaders to rank lower than government leaders were religious leaders. This leadership crisis is not driven by an absence of leaders. Leaders are everywhere, yet we still have a leadership crisis. Nor is this crisis caused by a lack of leadership training. Who can keep up with the books, seminars, and training programs offering the latest trends and best thinking on leadership? And yet, we still have a leadership crisis. While the world is looking for better leadership methods, God is looking for better leaders--leaders shaped by wisdom. What use, after all, is getting things done, or even servant leadership, without wisdom? In Proverbs we discover an ancient training regimen for leaders, guiding them in the cultivation of virtuous character. Following Wisdom, Leading Wisely is an invitation to rediscover this ancient wisdom for today's leaders.