When filmmaker Carlos Saura was a young man, he desired to create a book about his native Spain that would transgress the propaganda imagery of the Franco regime. He strove to depict his country as seen through his camera when 0he set out on a journey through Andalusia and central Spain in his Fiat 600 in the late 1950s. The trip left a deep impression on his first documentary film, “Cuenca” (1958). Since his youth Saura has been fascinated not only by the process of photographing but also by its technology, as demonstrated by his museum-quality collection of hundreds of historical and self-made cameras. Torn between the two media at the beginning of his career, Saura eventually chose to become a 0filmmaker but has continued to take photographs. España años 50 offers a comprehensive insight into Saura’s photography with a focus on his black-and-white work of the 1950s: compelling images of landscapes, villages, bullfights 0and people of another era. Photographs of Saura’s diploma film project, “La Tarde de Domingo” (1957), are also present in the book, making it the definitive representation of his photographic oeuvre.

In a world troubled by religious strife and division, Chris Lowney's vividly written book offers a hopeful historical reminder: Muslims, Christians, and Jews once lived together in Spain, creating a centuries-long flowering of commerce, culture, art, and architecture. In 711, a ragtag army of Muslim North Africans conquered Christian Spain and launched Western Europe's first Islamic state. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella vanquished Spain's last Muslim kingdom, forced Jews to convert or emigrate, and dispatched Christopher Columbus to the New World. In the years between, Spain's Muslims, Christians, and Jews forged a golden age for each faith and distanced Spain from a Europe mired in the Dark Ages. Medieval Spain's pioneering innovations touched every dimension of Western life: Spaniards introduced Europeans to paper manufacture and to the Hindu-Arabic numerals that supplanted the Roman numeral system. Spain's farmers adopted irrigation technology from the Near East to nurture Europe's first crops of citrus and cotton. Spain's religious scholars authored works that still profoundly influence their respective faiths, from the masterpiece of the Jewish kabbalah to the meditations of Sufism's "greatest master" to the eloquent arguments of Maimonides that humans can successfully marry religious faith and reasoned philosophical inquiry. No less astonishing than medieval Spain's wide-ranging accomplishments was the simple fact its Muslims, Christians, and Jews often managed to live and work side by side, bestowing tolerance and freedom of worship on the religious minorities in their midst. A Vanished World chronicles this impossibly panoramic sweep of human history and achievement, encompassing both the agony of jihad, Crusades, and Inquisition, and the glory of a multicultural civilization that forever changed the West. One gnarled root of today's religious animosities stretches back to medieval Spain, but so does a more nourishing root of much modern religious wisdom.

On the evening of 3 May 2007, three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from her family's rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal. Left alone with her two younger siblings whilst her parents and their friends dined nearby, it was assumed that Madeleine had been abducted. A year on, Spanish-based veteran investigative journalist Danny Collins looks at the clues and the false leads gathered over 12 months of meticulous in-depth investigation in an attempt to piece together just what happened on that fateful night.

Every year, nearly one hundred thousand Japanese vanish without a trace. Known as the johatsu, or the “evaporated,” they are often driven by shame and hopelessness, leaving behind lost jobs, disappointed families, and mounting debts. In The Vanished, journalist Léna Mauger and photographer Stéphane Remael uncover the human faces behind the phenomenon through reportage, photographs, and interviews with those who left, those who stayed behind, and those who help orchestrate the disappearances. Their quest to learn the stories of the johatsu weaves its way through: A Tokyo neighborhood so notorious for its petty criminal activities that it was literally erased from the maps Reprogramming camps for subpar bureaucrats and businessmen to become “better” employees The charmless citadel of Toyota City, with its iron grip on its employees The “suicide” cliffs of Tojinbo, patrolled by a man fighting to save the desperate The desolation of Fukushima in the aftermath of the tsunami And yet, as exotic and foreign as their stories might appear to an outsider’s eyes, the human experience shared by the interviewees remains powerfully universal.

"The Great Auk, the Japanese Wolf, the Atlas Bear, the Cape Lion, the Elephant Bird, the Mauritius Giant Tortoise -- these are among the hundreds of beautiful birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish which the world will never see again. David Day and four leading wildlife artists have worked from expert research, museum records and contemporary sketches and notes, to recreate for the modern reader these beautiful and sometimes extraordinary creatures. The author's immediate and startling text describes the combination of cruelty, startling thoughtlessness and sheer commercial greed that largely led to the extinction of these species. His highly readable descriptions of each animal's appearance, behaviour and habitat, complemented by the authentic, breathtaking illustrations provide a dramatic historical record. David Day documents for the first time the extinction of almost 300 species and subspecies over the last 300 years. It is a fact that the rate of extinction during the last three centuries has multiplied several hundred times its previous rate and is still increasing ... Therefore, alongside reference maps and classification listings, David Day gives a "waiting list" of 400 critically endangered species ..."--Inside front cover

Every school and public library should update its resources on Spain with this lively and succinct narrative of Spain's long and rich historical experience. Emphasizing people rather than abstract developments, this narrative makes Spanish history readable and engaging. Based on the most recent scholarship, it examines the politics, society, economy, and culture of Spain chronologically, focusing on the last two centuries. Pierson, a noted authority on Spanish history, traces Spain's foundations in the Roman empire and Muslim conquest to its golden age in the late Middle Ages, its subsequent decline, and its struggle to build a democratic government and modern economy following the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The work provides a timeline of events in Spanish history, brief biographies of key figures, and a bibliographic essay of interest to students and general readers. An introductory chapter offers an overview of Spain today, its geography, government and politics, economy, religion, and culture. The next few chapters discuss its earliest cultures, its place in the Roman empire, its Christianization and years as a Germanic kingdom, and its incorporation in 711 C.E. by military conquest into the world of Islam. The energies developed in the Christian reconquest of Spain led to its embarkation on the conquest of an overseas empire in the Americas and the Philippines that lasted for more than 300 years and had a profound effect on global history. The interests of the Habsburg (1516-1700) and Bourbon (1700-1808, 1814-1868, and 1875-1931) dynasties on the Spanish throne made Spain a major player in European power politics into the years of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. By 1825, its resources drained, Spain painfully adjusted to straightened circumstances, endured civil wars and dictatorships, and struggled to build a democratic government and modern economy, which it has accomplished today.

In the years immediately before the First World War, Archibald Haswell Miller, a young artist, travelled Europe to study painting. While he was there he indulged his other great interest the military. On his travels he observed first-hand the soldiers of the European Armies in the last days of the colourful and elaborate uniforms that were giving way to grey and khaki across the continent. Realising that this was a great military heritage that was slipping away he set out to record these splendid uniforms. In those uncertain days before the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Haswell Miller sketched and painted hundreds of figures, each wearing a different uniform, from the armies of Britain, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Sweden. Just before the First World War the paintings were exhibited in Leipzig, and it seemed they might be published. But when war broke out they were returned home and lay forgotten for nearly one hundred years. Now published together at last, they represent a unique record of the uniforms of the last great age of military dress. Accompanied by, in Haswell Miller's own words, 'notes and memories of the days before “the lights went out in Europe” in the year 1914', this is a book of great historical importance.