Examining ways that letters of the alphabet have been assigned value in political, spiritual, and religious belief systems through the ages, a volume filled with rare images draws on a variety of sources to explore the history of written language. BOMC & QPB Alt. Reader's Subscription Main.

A pioneering exploration of the roots of our attitudes toward nature, Paul Shepard's most seminal work is as challenging and provocative today as when it first appeared in 1967. Man in the Landscape was among the first books of a new genre that has elucidated the ideas, beliefs, and images that lie behind our modern destruction and conservation of the natural world. Departing from the traditional study of land use as a history of technology, this book explores the emergence of modern attitudes in literature, art, and architecture--their evolutionary past and their taproot in European and Mediterranean cultures. With humor and wit, Shepard considers the influence of Christianity on ideas of nature, the absence of an ethic of nature in modern philosophy, and the obsessive themes of dominance and control as elements of the modern mind. In his discussions of the exploration of the American West, the establishment of the first national parks, and the reactions of pioneers to their totally new habitat, he identifies the transport of traditional imagery into new places as a sort of cultural baggage.

The following is inscribed on page 308 of the author's copy of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy : ' During this chapter decided to write a history of landscape architecture, at 10.05am Sunday 23rd May 1958' , and ' completed at Taormina, Feb. 1975 ' Ten years later the idea of translating his great work The Landscape of Man into visible form was formulated at Seattle on the evening of 19 May 1985. The sketch plan, with little future deviation, was completed in time for breakfast the following morning. The Historical Gardens that this book describes are only part of a multi-million twenty year programme initiated by the Moody Foundation for the enrichment of Galveston, Texas - a city destroyed by inundation in 1900 and now materially recovered. The site of the gardens themselves is twenty-five acres of flat land adjoining sea marshes. This will be divided by artificial mountains into West and East. There will be fifteen cultures and the guide will take the visitor through the

Argues that much of what surrounds Americans is depressing, ugly, and unhealthy; and traces America's evolution from a land of village commons to a man-made landscape that ignores nature and human needs.

Geoffrey Jellicoe has long been regarded internationally as the pre-eminent landscape architect of our time. The recipient of many honors, including a knighthood, he now ranks among the century's leading artists in any medium. His working career spans more than six decades, and embraces a truly staggering variety of landscapes and gardens. Project by project, this authoritative monograph examines the definitive canon of Jellicoe's work. Divided into three major sections, the book chronicles Jellicoe's progress towards his remarkable late flowering after 1964, when he finally freed himself from the demands of running a formal practice to concentrate on developing his own unique vision and philosophy of man's relationship to his environment. The author's introduction provides an invaluable guide to the underlying vocabulary and idioms of Jellicoe's work: water, viewpoints, axes, paths, routes, groves, landmarks, secret gardens, elevation and gradation. Over fifty projects, both planned and fully realized, are described in detail, often with a preamble by the author, followed by Jellicoe's own comments, either drawn from his own unpublished papers or from his classic texts on landscape design. The projects include his masterworks: Shute House, Sutton Place, the Moody Gardens and the Atlanta Historical Gardens. Several complete designs have been specially photographed by Hugh Palmer to show the development of Geoffrey Jellicoe's work over years of growth and change, notably at Ditchley, St. Paul's Walden Bury and Shute. Where available, Geoffrey Jellicoe's own plans have been reprinted in full color, some on 6-page foldouts; many of these have never been reproduced in book form before.Michael Spens has enjoyed the benefit of considerable assistance from Geoffrey Jellicoe, whose own contribution to the book has been substantial. As a survey of the work of the century's foremost landscape architect, this volume is as important a contribution to the literature of landscape and garden design as his own The Landscape of Man, also published by Thames and Hudson.

National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson returns to future Earth in a sharply wrought satire of art and truth in the midst of colonization. When the vuvv first landed, it came as a surprise to aspiring artist Adam and the rest of planet Earth — but not necessarily an unwelcome one. Can it really be called an invasion when the vuvv generously offered free advanced technology and cures for every illness imaginable? As it turns out, yes. With his parents’ jobs replaced by alien tech and no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv’s miraculous medicine, Adam and his girlfriend, Chloe, have to get creative to survive. And since the vuvv crave anything they deem classic Earth culture (doo-wop music, still life paintings of fruit, true love), recording 1950s-style dates for the vuvv to watch in a pay-per-minute format seems like a brilliant idea. But it’s hard for Adam and Chloe to sell true love when they hate each other more with every passing episode. Soon enough, Adam must decide how far he’s willing to go — and what he’s willing to sacrifice — to give the vuvv what they want.

Twenty-two essays that provide a forum for assessing the tenets, accomplishments and limits of modernism in landscape architecture and for formulating ideas about possible directions for the future of the discipline These twenty-two essays provide a rich forum for assessing the tenets, accomplishments, and limits of modernism in landscape architecture and for formulating ideas about possible directions for the future of the discipline. During the 1930s Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley, and JamesRose began to integrate modernist architectural ideas into their work and to design a landscape more in accord with the life and sensibilities of their time. Together with Thomas Church, whose gardens provided the setting for California living, they laid the foundations for a modern American landscape design. This first critical assessment of modem landscape architecture brings together seminal articles from the 1930s and 1940s by Eckbo, Kiley, Rose, Fletcher Steele, and Christopher Tunnard, and includes contributions by contemporary writers and designers such as Peirce Lewis, Catherine Howett, John Dixon Hunt, Peter Walker, and Martha Schwartz who examine the historical and cultural framework within which modern landscape designers have worked. There are also essays by Lance Neckar, Reuben Rainey, Gregg Bleam, Michael Laurie, and Marc Treib that discuss the designs and legacy of the Americans Tunnard, Eckbo, Church, Kiley, and Robert Irwin. Dorothée Imbert takes up Pierre-Emile Legrain and French modernist gardens of the 1920s, and Thorbjörn Andersson reviews experiments with stylized naturalism developed by Erik Glemme and others in the Stockholm park system.