The earth is beautiful because of water, says John Jerome, who sets out to explore the most ravishing examples of the element he can find. The search takes him from Oklahoma swimming holes to Adirondack lakes, from Canada to the Caribbean and from his earliest water memories to his mature reflections on what it is about water in its natural state that humans find so compelling.

Colour works by one of America's greatest social documentary photographers.

Poetry. A former winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Morri Creech is one of America's finest poets. His fourth collection, BLUE ROOMS, explores the uncertain terrain between conscious perception and the objective world. This new collection includes powerful lyric sequences that examine Magritte's surreal investigations of the elusive self, Cezanne's attempts to limn the dynamic nature of reality, and Goya's unflinching depictions of cosmic and historical horrors--all while balancing rich language with an exacting formal control. "In these poems, Morri Creech, one of our finest formal poets, confronts the fundamental mystery of language--the way the world is captured by and transformed into words. In the tradition of Wallace Stevens, he combines philosophical insight with eloquence and wit, as he marvels at how the mind is able 'to conjure matter purely through perception.'"--Adam Kirsch "BLUE ROOMS is a clear-sighted book, arresting in the beauty of its imaginative and linguistic artistry, but also in the elegiac power it wrings from the poet's dead-level doubts about the whole idea of arresting beauty with imagination and language. Creech pushes these anxieties past conventional literary paradox into the realm of human consequence, till they open out, naturally, into a number of serial meditations that furnish the poet with occasions to ponder the limits of memory, experience, perception, and reality itself, all with his usual tact and acuity. Then, in the same book, Creech can turn around and give us, in a less speculative vein, 'The Confession,' a devastating monologue, spoken by one of the perpetrators of a lynching, that affirms the promise of good poetry as a spur to serious moral reflection. Morri Creech engages and challenges his reader, and himself, at the intellectual, philosophical, and emotional levels, and the result is a truly dynamic and remarkable book."--Joshua Mehigan "These lucid, elegant poems suggest an indebtedness to Wallace Stevens and Anthony Hecht, but it is primarily the late Howard Nemerov whose temperament and genius Morri Creech has so brilliantly rechanneled in BLUE ROOMS. Like his precursor, Creech attends to the everyday (what he calls 'the modest raptures of the ordinary') with grace and gravity, to move us 'beyond the reach of language.' This stunning, compact volume delicately leads us from the familiar to the infinite, blending together seamlessly the imagined and the real. I loved reading this book."--Willard Spiegelman

Formerly known as the President's House, then the Executive Mansion, and now for a long time the White House, this famous structure has a fascinating architectural history of ongoing change. The white painted facade of James Hoban's original structure has been added to and strengthened for more than 200 years, and its interior is a repository of some of America's greatest treasures. Artists such as Benjamin Latrobe, Pierre-Antoine Bellange, the Herter Brothers, Louis Tiffany, Charles McKim, Lorenzo Winslow, Stephane Boudin, Edward Vason Jones, and a host of others fashioned interiors that welcomed and inspired visitors both foreign and domestic. This meticulous history, featuring more than 325 photographs, diagrams and other illustrations, captures each stage of the White House's architectural and decorative evolution.

The Earth is poised to make a great disclosure. Its a hierophant. But whats a hierophant? A person who reveals the holy light. But it can also be a landscape or a planet. And whats the holy light? It is the structure of reality and consciousness, a map of the heavenly realms, the engineering blueprint of Creation. Some people call this imminent disclosure the Apocalypse and run for cover. But that is mistaken. Apocalypse means the revelation of the divine revelation. It means the end of our picture of the world as we know it. The world itself will be fine, even better than fine. Splendid. Illumined. The Architect of reality lays down His cards, face up, and you see the whole deck. Here is the truth of yourself and the Earth. How will this disclosure work? What we call sacred sites and holy landscapes will start revealing themselves in full to us in all their geomantic and visionary richness. Thats the inner patterning of their design, their arrays of Light temples and subtle palaces primed for our visionary adventures and edification. The Earth needs us to have these adventures and visions because thats how we keep the planet healthy. Hierophantic Landscapes visits five landscapes from Norway and England to California and Mexico, providing firsthand reports on the visions and adventures of a small band of geomancers as they seek to unravel the mysteries of the Earth. Maybe not such a small band, because along the way we encounter angels, landscape devas, Nature Spirits, and otherworldly mentors, and revel in vistas of the ancient past of the Earth when that revelation was as fresh as a sunrise, as it will soon be again.

Three lords, one destiny. Good and evil are no longer black and white. The lords of destiny must navigate through shades of gray, where betrayal hides, and live with decisions they are forced to make. Arc takes his Lion Army on a crusade of vengeance against an empire that murdered his family. As guardian of Avolonia, Davos must prevail over new enemies and ghosts from his past to prevent the fledgling nation from being clawed apart by greed and religion. The Dragon Warrior searches for a forgotten zodiac. Dark forces pursue Axan and his companions on their voyage of adventure and adversity.