"A magisterial history of the centuries-long conflict between 'progress' and 'tradition' in the world's largest international institution. The story of Roman Catholicism has never followed a singular path. In no time period has this been more true than over the last two centuries. Beginning with the French Revolution, extending to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and concluding with present-day crises, John T. McGreevy chronicles the dramatic...

An investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. In the richest, most technically advanced, most health-obsessed society ever, all is not well. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, chronic illnesses were on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure....

If there is one genre of art that seems to have played a greater role than any other, it is the nude. For at least 30,000 years, humans have represented the naked form in a variety of ways. From the ideal to the real, the romantic to the surrealist, there have been almost no end of works devoted to the unclothed human body. This series - presented by writer and broadcaster Tim Marlow - will examine those artworks, the societies that produced them...

Bill Bryson's bestselling biography of William Shakespeare takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship-updated with a new introduction by the author to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild...

First published in 1837, Carlyle initially was asked to write this account by his overworked friend John Stuart Mill. Taking the commission to heart, Carlyle proceeded to write a historical masterpiece, combining a scrupulous consideration for facts with a unique style of writing. Rather than a detached account of this turbulent time, Carlyle uses poetic prose that makes readers feel almost as though they are participants in the riots, public executions,...

The historian John Lukacs offers a concise history of the twentieth century-its two world wars and cold war, its nations and leaders. The great themes woven through this spirited narrative are inseparable from the author's own intellectual preoccupations: the fading of liberalism, the rise of populism and nationalism, the achievements and dangers of technology, and the continuing democratization of the globe. The historical twentieth century began...

How does art work? How does it move us, inform us, challenge us? Internationally renowned painter David Salle's incisive essay collection illuminates the work of many of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Engaging with a wide range of Salle's friends and contemporaries-from painters to conceptual artists such as Jeff Koons, John Baldessari, Roy Lichtenstein, and Alex Katz, among others-How to See explores not only the multilayered...