What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today. Gaddis points out that while the historical method is more sophisticated than most historians realize, it doesn't require unintelligible prose to explain. Like cartographers mapping landscapes, historians represent what they can never replicate. In doing so, they combine the techniques of artists, geologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists. Their approaches parallel, in intriguing ways, the new sciences of chaos, complexity, and criticality. They don't much resemble what happens in the social sciences, where the pursuit of independent variables functioning with static systems seems increasingly divorced from the world as we know it. So who's really being scientific and who isn't? This question too is one Gaddis explores, in ways that are certain to spark interdisciplinary controversy. Written in the tradition of Marc Bloch and E.H. Carr, The Landscape of History is at once an engaging introduction to the historical method for beginners, a powerful reaffirmation of it for practitioners, a startling challenge to social scientists, and an effective skewering of post-modernist claims that we can't know anything at all about the past. It will be essential reading for anyone who reads, writes, teaches, or cares about history.

Landscape and History explores a complex relationship over the past five centuries. The book is international and interdisciplinary in scope, drawing on material from social, economic and cultural history as well as from geography, archaeology, cultural geography, planning and landscape history. In recent years, as the author points out, there has been increasing interest in, and concern for, many aspects of landscape within British, European and wider contexts. This has included the study of the history, development and changes in our perception of landscape, as well as research into the links between past landscapes and political ideologies, economic and social structures, cartography, art and literature. There is also considerable concern at present with the need to evaluate and classify historic landscapes, and to develop policies for their conservation and management in relation to their scenic, heritage and recreational value. This is manifest not only in the designation of particularly valued areas with enhanced protection from planning developments, such as national parks and world heritage sites, but in the countryside more generally. Further, Ian D. Whyte argues, changes in European Union policies relating to agriculture, with a greater concern for the protection and sustainable management of rural landscapes, are likely to be of major importance in relation to the themes of continuity and change in the landscapes of Britain and Europe.

This book explores many issues raised by the range of ideas and images of the natural world in Western art since the Renaissance. The whole concept of landscape is examined as a representation of the relationship between the human and natural worlds. Featured artists include Claude, Freidrich, Turner, Cole and Ruisdael, and many different forms of landscape art are addressed, such as land art, painting, photography, garden design, panorama and cartography.

A visual journey through the history of landscape design For thousands of years, people have altered the meaning of space by reshaping nature. As an art form, these architectural landscape creations are stamped with societal imprints unique to their environment and place in time. Illustrated History of Landscape Design takes an optical sweep of the iconic landscapes constructed throughout the ages. Organized by century and geographic region, this highly visual reference uses hundreds of masterful pen-and-ink drawings to show how historical context and cultural connections can illuminate today's design possibilities. This guide includes: Storyboards, case studies, and visual narratives to portray spaces Plan, section, and elevation drawings of key spaces Summaries of design concepts, principles, and vocabularies Historic and contemporary works of art that illuminate a specific era Descriptions of how the landscape has been shaped over time in response to human need Directing both students and practitioners along a visually stimulating timeline, Illustrated History of Landscape Design is a valuable educational tool as well as an endless source ofinspiration.

How did the United States become not only the leading contemporary art scene in the world, but also the leading market for art? The answer has to do not only with the talents of American artists or even the size of the American economy, but also--and especially--the skills and entrepreneurship of American art dealers. Their story has not been told...until now. Landscape with Figures is the first history of art dealing in the United States, following the profession from eighteenth-century portrait and picture salesmen in the colonies to the high-profile, jet-set gallery owners of today. Providing anecdotal and carefully researched biographies of the prominent dealers from more than two centuries of trade, author Malcolm Goldstein shows how magnanimous personalities and social networking helped to shape the way Americans have bought and valued art. These dealers range from Michael Paff, whose enthusiasm often overshadowed his expertise but nonetheless helped him sell faux Old Master paintings to major collectors in the early nineteenth century; to the imperious Joseph Duveen, dealer to magnates like Henry Clay Frick; to visionary Leo Castelli, who helped to usher in a revolution in modern art during the 1960s by showing such avant-garde artists as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. Goldstein also shows that the American art trade, while male-dominated, has been galvanized by female dealers, including the inimitable Edith Gregor Halpert, Peggy Guggenheim, and Mary Boone. Their fascinating stories unfold in the context of world art history, the rise of major art institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum, and the growing zeal of art collectors who would eventually pay millions for individual works of art. Unprecedented and critical to understanding today's art world, Landscape with Figures is a must for artists, art history students, and art lovers.

This book takes a view of New England's landscapes that goes beyond picture postcard-ready vistas of white-steepled churches, open pastures, and tree-covered mountains. Its chapters describe, for example, the Native American presence in the Maine Woods; offer a history of agriculture told through stone walls, woodlands, and farm buildings; report on the fragile ecology of tourist-friendly Cape Cod beaches; and reveal the ethnic stereotypes informing Colonial Revivalism. Taken together, they offer a wide-ranging history of New England's diverse landscapes, stretching across two centuries. The book shows that all New England landscapes are the products of human agency as well as nature. The authors trace the roles that work, recreation, historic preservation, conservation, and environmentalism have played in shaping the region, and they highlight the diversity of historical actors who have transformed both its meaning and its physical form. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including history, geography, environmental studies, literature, art history, and historic preservation, the book provides fresh perspectives on New England's many landscapes: forests, mountains, farms, coasts, industrial areas, villages, towns, and cities. Illustrated, and with many archival photographs, it offers readers a solid historical foundation for understanding the great variety of places that make up New England.

Landscape in American Guides and View Books: Visual History of Touring and Travel is vested in the American relationship to landscape and the role guidebooks and view books played in touring and travel experiences, including immigration. Early in the history of the republic, the relationship to landscape turns visual, that is, landscapes inspire artistic responses in the form of written descriptions and visual representations. The predominant element is the scene. From the 1820s on scenic thinking, within an emerging industrial economy, characterizes a major cultural and social development. As immigration increases, within the country and from abroad, publishers and trade groups create souvenir guidebooks and view books to facilitate the movement of people, and to encourage economic expansion and tourism. Guide and view book analysis centers on pictures of landscape transformations and includes the cultural basis of scenes changing from pastoral and picturesque expressions to the documentation of managed views. The general acceptance of managed views as replacements for romantic ones illustrates a commitment to landscapes that denote utility and the influence of commercial and industrial urban centers on American life. Guidebook and view book imagery, composed of durable schemas, promotes visual thinking across social classes and time. The primary medium for souvenirs is the photograph, which printing methods, like photolithography, transform into printed products. The visual history of touring and travel is part of America’s first visual culture, as well as the social formation of landscape, the emergence of a collective vision among souvenir producers and consumers, and the role visual information plays in landscape commentary, which is the literary context for printed souvenirs.