Changing how we look at and think about the color grey Why did many of the twentieth century’s best-known abstract painters often choose grey, frequently considered a noncolor and devoid of meaning? Frances Guerin argues that painters (including Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Agnes Martin, Brice Marden, Mark Rothko, and Gerhard Richter) select grey to respond to a key question of modernist art: What is painting? By analyzing an array of modernist paintings, Guerin demonstrates that grey has a unique history and a legitimate identity as a color. She traces its use by painters as far back as medieval and Renaissance art, through Romanticism, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernism to show how grey is the perfect color to address the questions asked by painting within art history and to articulate the relationship between painting and the historical world of industrial modernity. A work of exceptional erudition, breadth, and clarity, presenting an impressive range of canonical paintings across centuries as examples, The Truth Is Always Grey is a treatise on color that allows us to see something entirely new in familiar paintings and encourages our appreciation for the innovation and dynamism of the color grey.

True Storytelling is a new method of studying, planning, facilitating, ensuring, implementing and evaluating ethical and sustainable changes in companies, organizations and societies. True Storytelling is both a method with seven principles and a mindset to help managers and researchers to work with change. True Storytelling stresses that we need to balance the resources of the Earth, our wellbeing and the economy when we are dealing with change. It is not only a book about how to prevent climate change, it is also a book about how we can navigate through crisis, create less stress and achieve better life in organizations and in society as a whole. You will learn how to create innovative start-ups with a purpose and fund money for sustainable projects and good ideas. The book combines practical cases, interviews with managers and CEOs, theory and philosophy to define the method and to teach the Seven True Storytelling Principles: 1 You yourself must be true and prepare the energy and effort for a sustainable future 2 True storytelling makes spaces that respect the stories already there 3 You must create stories with a clear plot, creating direction and helping people prioritize 4 You must have timing 5 You must be able to help stories on their way and be open to experiment 6 You must consider staging, including scenography and artefacts 7 You must reflect on the stories and how they create value This book is a guide to implementing these core principles to boost leadership practices, create a storytelling culture and staff buy-in. The method is also useful as an analytical tool for organizations, managers and consultants in order to prepare, plan and execute the implementation of strategies. It is valuable reading for researchers and students at master level as well as leaders and consultants in charge of ethical and sustainable changes.

Many people consider themselves Christian, while everything in their life speaks of an un-Christlike existence, using the world's measurement of right and wrong rather than the black and white truths found in the Bible. Author A.J. Hawks' book, Living in a Grey World: Rediscovering the Black and White Truth of the Word is a call to arms against this kind of diluted, a la carte Christianity. Using Scripture as the basis for each argument, he goes head-to-head with the controversial issues prevalent in society today, proving that in order to be a Christian, you cannot just talk the talk, but must be willing to truly walk the walk. Living in a Grey World: Rediscovering the Black and White Truth of the Word addresses a variety of topics on the sin spectrum, from gossip and lying to sex, drugs, and homosexuality. Hawks speaks out to his fellow generation and asks: How do we manage to justify behavior that the Bible clearly outlines as sinful? How do we continually fail in our pursuit of the 'What Would Jesus Do' lifestyle? Living in a Grey World invites readers to get real with themselves, taking an honest look at their lives in comparison to the lives they as Christians are called to lead.

Dan W. Clanton, Jr. examines the presence and use of religion and Bible in Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels and stories and their later interpretations. Clanton begins by situating Christie in her literary, historical, and religious contexts by discussing “Golden Age” crime fiction and Christianity in England in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. He then explores the ways in which Bible is used in Christie's Poirot novels as well as how Christie constructs a religious identity for her little Belgian sleuth. Clanton concludes by asking how non-majority religious cultures are treated in the Poirot canon, including a heterodox Christian movement, Spiritualism, Judaism, and Islam. Throughout, Clanton acknowledges that many people do not encounter Poirot in his original literary contexts. That is, far more people have been exposed to Poirot via “mediated” renderings and interpretations of the stories and novels in various other genres, including radio, films, and TV. As such, the book engages the reception of the stories in these various genres, since the process of adapting the original narrative plots involves, at times, meaningful changes. Capitalizing on the immense and enduring popularity of Poirot across multiple genres and the absence of research on the role of religion and Bible in those stories, this book is a necessary contribution to the field of Christie studies and will be welcomed by her fans as well as scholars of religion, popular culture, literature, and media.

Humankind has a special relationship with rain. The sensory experience of water falling from the heavens evokes feelings ranging from fear to gratitude and has inspired many works of art. Using unique and expertly developed art-historical case studies – from prehistoric cave paintings up to photography and cinema – this book casts new light on a theme that is both ecological and iconological, both natural and cultural-historical. Barbara Baert’s distinctive prose makes Looking Into the Rain. Magic, Moisture, Medium a profound reading experience, particularly at a moment when disruptions of the harmony among humans, animals, and nature affect all of us and the entire planet. Barbara Baert is Professor of Art History at KU Leuven. She teaches in the field of Iconology, Art Theory & Analysis, and Medieval Art. Her work links knowledge and questions from the history of ideas, cultural anthropology and philosophy, and shows great sensitivity to cultural archetypes and their symptoms in the visual arts.

An engagement with the relation between the world in which an artwork is created—a world that perishes or decays over time—and the new world that the artwork opens up. Gerhard Richter explores the relation between two worlds: the world in which an artwork is created, that is, a world that over time perishes or decays beyond interpretive understanding, and the new world that the artwork opens up. The multiple relations between these worlds are examined in a number of central thinkers and in various modes of aesthetic production, including poetry, painting, music, film, literature, and photography. It is precisely in and through the work of art, Richter shows, that central elements of the thinking of world as world are negotiated in the most essential and moving ways. Exploring the relationship between these worlds through art and European philosophy, Richter offers bold new interpretations of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida. The book also provides stimulating new insights into the works of heterogeneous artists such as Paul Celan, Friedrich Hölderlin, Werner Herzog, Arnold Schönberg, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Andrew Moore, Botho Strauß, Didier Eribon, and even prehistoric cave painters. In each case, Richter’s readings are guided by a consideration of the conceptual constraints and singular interpretive demands imposed by the specific genre and medium.

Seen through the eyes of Grey Eyes, a Seminole Indian, historic events are intertwined into a readable story that is partly historic fiction, but mostly fact. A cattle drive from Colerain, Georgia to New Smyrna, Florida, the Minorcan settlers, a terrible Florida war, and a black slave uprising all mix into a little known part of Florida's early history. The little known story of the Black Seminoles is told here along with the events that shaped Florida along Old Kings Road.