This early travelogue gives readers a fascinating glimpse into European life and customs in the Renaissance and early modern periods. The book recounts author Albrecht Durer's travels in and observations of Italy and the Netherlands on the cusp of the sixteenth century.

Bringing together ten utopian works that mark important points in the history and an evolution in social and political philosophies, this book not only reflects on the texts and their political philosophy and implications, but also, their architecture and how that architecture informs the political philosophy or social agenda that the author intended. Each of the ten authors expressed their theory through concepts of community and utopian architecture, but each featured an architectural solution at the centre of their social and political philosophy, as none of the cities were ever built, they have remained as utopian literature. Some of the works examined are very well-known, such as Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis, while others such as Joseph Michael Gandy’s Designs for Cottages, are relatively obscure. However, even with the best known works, this volume offers new insights by focusing on the architecture of the cities and how that architecture represents the author’s political philosophy. It reconstructs the cities through a 3-D computer program, ArchiCAD, using Artlantis to render. Plans, sections, elevations and perspectives are presented for each of the cities. The ten cities are: Filarete - Sforzina; Albrecht Dürer - Fortified Utopia; Tommaso Campanella - The City of the Sun; Johann Valentin Andreae - Christianopolis; Joseph Michael Gandy - An Agricultural Village; Robert Owen - Villages of Unity and Cooperation; James Silk Buckingham - Victoria; Robert Pemberton - Queen Victoria Town; King Camp Gillette - Metropolis; and Bradford Peck - The World a Department Store. Each chapter considers the work in conjunction with contemporary thought, the political philosophy and the reconstruction of the city. Although these ten cities represent over 500 years of utopian and political thought, they are an interlinked thread that had been drawn from literature of the past and informed by contemporary thought and society. The book is structured in two parts:

Landscape, as it appears and is described throughout the works of Bernardo Carvalho and Robert Walser, provides an excellent—yet virtually unexplored—pathway to the authors’ literary projects. The landscape functions here as a synthetic and unifying figure that triggers, at first, through the analysis of its description per se, the main and most evident elements of the authors’ works. However, when sustained as a methodological figure beyond the scope of its own description, the landscape soon reveals a darker, far more fascinating and far less explored side of the authors’ oeuvres: a vengeful, seemingly defeatist resentment against the status quo, which gives way to the more latent and biting elements of the authors’ prose, such as irony, the unheimlich, an anti-heroic agenda, the apocalyptic aesthetics of a disaster-prone fictional world, as well as an understanding of history and literature through the figures of failure and marginality. By drawing from diverse critical traditions from Latin-America and Europe, this comparative text seeks to unravel, in all of its complexity and scope, the fictional stage upon which Walser’s and Carvalho’s characters narrate, with their dying breath, a world that is slowly undoing itself.

What is an epaulette? What is a hanbok? These clothing items—and hundreds more—are entertainingly explained and vividly illustrated in this accessible guide. Whether in art or life, fashion makes a statement. It gives form to the temper of the times and the motives of the moment, charting shifts in society, status, technology, and economy. Fashion is shaped by both high and popular culture and reveals the influence of individuals from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Spanning the centuries and representing a global point of view, Looking at Fashion is a guide to the elements that make clothing practical, wearable, stylish, and distinctive. Created for scholars, students, fashionistas, and anyone who wants to expand their understanding of world culture through the history of dress, this book provides a rich and varied lexicon of the vocabulary that describes and explains the most essential components of garments and techniques of clothing construction. Ranging from basic pieces and their individual parts to structure, embellishments, and innovations, Looking at Fashion offers insights into the evolution of dress in terms of style, fit, and design. Gorgeous color illustrations, including paintings, photographs, historical garments, and custom drawings, reveal the interrelationship of fashion and art from antiquity to now.

Those who go about on the Riva always expect four times the value for anything, for they are the falsest knaves that live there. No one expects to get an honest service of them. For that reason some good people warned me to be on my guard against them. They told me that they cheat both man and beast, and that you could buy better things for less money at Frankfort than at Venice.