Mr. and Mrs. Polka-Dot are a young couple ready to settle down. With real estate agent Mr. Weevil, they search for their dream home. In this deliriously funny house-hunting marathon, the Polka-Dots view bizarre options: a moldy mushroom, a snail shell, a cork floating on the river, a crumbling sand castle, a rotten apple, an inhabited burrow, and a “loft-style” broken bottle. Will they ever find a nest? Davide Cali’s humorous story is made all the more hilarious by Marc Boutavant’s quirky characters and detail-filled illustrations that children will pore over again and again.

An exquisitely photographed collection of the great houses and mansions of the South. In the tradition of Rizzoli’s Historic Houses of the Hudson Valley and Great Houses of New England, Great Houses of the South features a stunning array of newly photographed homes that range over three centuries and are distinctive examples of the architecture of the region. While in popular imagination the "Southern Style" is embodied in the classic Southern plantation house with its Greek Revival detailing—its stately white columns, wide porch, and symmetrical shape—the houses themselves are much more various and engaging, as shown in this important volume. From stately Stanton Hall of Natchez, Mississippi, one of the most magnificent and palatial residences of antebellum America; to Longue Vue House and Gardens of New Orleans, the luxurious Classical Revival–style home of Edgar and Edith Stern; to the fabled Biltmore of Asheville, North Carolina, the opulent French Renaissance–inspired chateau and Gilded Age estate of George Washington Vanderbilt, this lavish volume is comprehensive in scope and a landmark work of enduring interest to homeowners, architects, architecture historians, and all those who love fine architecture.

Rediscovering the lives of enslaved people in Jamaica A combination of archaeological and historical study, The Old Village and the Great House examines life within enslaved, and later free, laborer households at a Jamaican sugar plantation. Douglas V. Armstrong draws on excavations in house-yard areas to create a case study comparison between the lives of enslaved workers and the planter class. As Armstrong shows, archaeological analysis and historical research reveal a firsthand record of people's lives and the emergence of an African-Jamaican community. Detailed descriptions of artifacts, structural remains, and dietary refuse combine with written accounts to provide insight into the lives of enslaved people and African-Jamaican transformations.

Inside the Great House explores the nature of family life and kinship in planter households of the Chesapeake during the eighteenth century—a pivotal era in the history of the American family. Drawing on a wide assortment of personal documents—among them wills, inventories, diaries, family letters, memoirs, and autobiographies—as well as on the insights of such disciplines as psychology, demography, and anthropology, Daniel Blake Smith examines family values and behavior in a plantation society. Focusing on the emotional texture of the household, he probes deeply into personal values and relationships within the family and the surrounding circle of kin. Childrearing practices, male-female relationships, attitudes toward courtship and marriage, father-son ties, the character and influence of kinship, familial responses to illness and death, and the importance of inheritance—all receive extended treatment. A striking pattern of change emerges from this mosaic of life in the colonial South. What had once been a patriarchal, authoritarian, and emotionally restrained family environment altered profoundly during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The personal documents cited by Smith clearly point to the development after 1750 of a more intimate, child-centered family life characterized by close emotional bonds and by growing autonomy—especially for sons—in matters of marriage and career choice. Well-to-do planter families inculcated in their children a strong measure of selfconfidence and independence, as well as an abiding affection for their family society. Smith shows that Americans in the North as well as in the South were developing an altered view of the family and the world beyond it—a perspective which emphasized a warm and autonomous existence. This fascinating study will convince its readers that the history of the American family is intimately connected with the dramatic changes in the lives of these planter families of the eighteenth-century Chesapeake.

Two children receive an invitation from their Great-Aunt Martha to visit her incredible house and she sets them a treasure hunt to solve as they explore the rooms. Join the children on their treasure hunt around the great house, lifting more than 50 flaps and solving riddles on every page, whilst learning about famous historical and cultural objects as you go. Find out about instruments in the music room, the history of jeans in the bedroom, see a velociraptor skeleton in the Cabinet of Curiosities and Shakespeare's plays in the library. This magical book is a treasure hunt through the house of every child's dreams that will inspire a love of history. Ideal for anyone who loves exploring houses or playing with doll’s houses.

Discover all the foul facts about fifty gruesome great houses in this brand new Horrible Histories book. From Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh to Buckingham Palace in London, HORRIBLE HISTORIES: GRUESOME GREAT HOUSES covers the history of Britain and Ireland from the time of the savage Stone Age right up until the present day. Full of dark mysteries, gruesome ghost stories and terrible tales of betrayal and revenge, it's a seriously horrible read with all the gore and more.