During the Age of Revolution, Paris came alive with wildly popular virtuoso performances. Whether the performers were musicians or chefs, chess players or detectives, these virtuosos transformed their technical skills into dramatic spectacles, presenting the marvelous and the outré for spellbound audiences. Who these characters were, how they attained their fame, and why Paris became the focal point of their activities is the subject of Paul Metzner's absorbing study. Covering the years 1775 to 1850, Metzner describes the careers of a handful of virtuosos: chess masters who played several games at once; a chef who sculpted hundreds of four-foot-tall architectural fantasies in sugar; the first police detective, whose memoirs inspired the invention of the detective story; a violinist who played whole pieces on a single string. He examines these virtuosos as a group in the context of the society that was then the capital of Western civilization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1999.

Printmaking exploded with creative energy at the end of the nineteenth century in France. Artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin and Odilon Redon were at the forefront of the avant-garde movement to reinvigorate the applied arts through colour printmaking.Prints Abound probes the phenomenal outpouring of print publications in late nineteenth-century France. Exploring the artistic, technical, economic, commercial and cultural circumstances of 1890s Paris, Prints Abound reaches a fuller understanding of Art Nouveau, which emphasised the fusion of exquisite design with the everyday. The achievements of Bonnard are stressed and his work is represented in depth, with spirited posters, contributions to solo and collective portfolios, designs for music primers and illustrated books, and an outstanding four-panel folding screen of a fashionable street scene in fin-de-siècle Paris.Phillip Dennis Cate, Director of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, has written the introduction and a text on illustrated books; Richard Thomson, Chair of the Art History Department at the University of Edinburgh, discusses single-artist print albums; and Gale B. Murray, Chair of the Art History Department at Colorado College, considers music illustration.Prints Abound will be fascinating reading for print collectors and dealers, art historians and all those with an interest in this important period of French culture.

Berbers, also known as Imazighen, are the ancient inhabitants of North Africa, but rarely have they formed an actual kingdom or separate nation state. Ranging anywhere between 15-50 million, depending on how they are classified, the Berbers have influenced the culture and religion of Roman North Africa and played key roles in the spread of Islam and its culture in North Africa, Spain, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Taken together, these dynamics have over time converted to redefine the field of Berber identity and its socio-political representations and symbols, making it an even more important issue in the 21st century. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Berbers contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, places, events, institutions, and aspects of culture, society, economy, and politics. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Berbers.