Showing titles in Library & Museum Studies

When Cathy and Noah first got together neither saw children in their future. Eight years later, they're happily married - and Cathy isn't so sure. With Noah's tolerance for his wife's ambivalence waning, her widowed mother in a world of her own and her best friend yearning for a second baby, Cathy feels increasingly adrift. Escaping into her work in the conservation studios of the National Gallery, she chips away at the layers of overpaint on a canvas from the collection. Will the discovery of an unexpected truth help her find the clarity she craves?

The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from...

Sitting on the banks of the river Seine, in the very heart of Paris, the Musée d'Orsay is known worldwide for its exceptional collection of impressionist paintings. These works were absolutely scandalous at the time and for some, they still obviously are. Also, it provides a genuine feeling of time travel by recreating the context in which every single work of art has been produced. Its history is also full of twists and surprises. All of this contributes to making the Musée d'Orsay one of the most alive and striking museums ever.

In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France's Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000 volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading.  

Libraries are much more than mere collections of volumes. The best are magical, fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve. Some still exist today; some are lost, like those of Herculaneum and Alexandria; some have been sold or dispersed; and some never existed, such as those libraries imagined by J. R. R. Tolkien, Umberto Eco and Jorge Luis Borges, among others.

Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. They remove books that patrons no longer check out, and they put back books they treasure. Annie Spence, who has a decade of experience as a Midwestern librarian, does this not only at her Michigan library but also at home, for her neighbors, at cocktail parties - everywhere. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she addresses those books directly.

The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum.

Although dinosaur fossils were first found in England, a series of dramatic discoveries during the late 1800s turned North America into a world center for vertebrate paleontology. At the same time, the United States emerged as the world’s largest industrial economy, and creatures like tyrannosaurus, brontosaurus, and triceratops became emblems of American capitalism. Large, fierce, and spectacular, American dinosaurs dominated the popular imagination, making front-page headlines and appearing in feature films.

Using information in its everyday, nonspecialized sense, Michael Buckland explores the influence of information on what we know, the role of communication and recorded information in our daily lives, and the difficulty (or ease) of finding information. He shows that all this involves human perception, social behavior, changing technologies, and issues of trust.  

We believe it is possible and transformative of society that people massively increase their use of audiobooks. We believe that people should get acquainted with listening to audiobooks in foreign languages. We believe that many people are unaware of the potential provided by this way of accessing the same content provided in print and electronic books.

The Psychic Lives of Statues explores both the toppling of colonial statues and the erection of postcolonial ones, illuminating how statues remain powerful and compelling forms of memorialization. Engaging with artists, scholars, and activists, Rao offers a fresh and exciting perspective on how we understand our past and present through iconography.

La historia inolvidable de cómo un grupo de apasionados desafió las reglas del béisbol y conquistó el mundo. A inicios de 2002, los Oakland Athletics, uno de los equipos más pobres de la liga profesional de béisbol, perdió a sus tres mejores jugadores. Sin embargo, unos meses más tarde...

The Lioness of Boston is a portrait of what society expected a woman's life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and was determined to live on her own terms.

In The Politics of Collecting, Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and colonialism situated the rise of United States museum collections and conceptual art forms. Investigating historical legal and property claims, she argues that regimes of expropriation—rather than merit or good...

Today, nearly one million books are published each year. But is the era of the book as we know it - a codex of bound pages - coming to an end? And if it is, should we celebrate its demise and the creation of a democratic digital future, or mourn an irreplaceable loss?

Flight is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy - "Zits" - who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful, swift prose, Flight follows the troubled teenager as he learns that violence is not the answer.

Walter Benjamin erzählt in seiner Rede über seine Sammelleidenschaft für Bücher. Nach jedem Umzug packt er seine Bibliothek aus. Hier stößt er auf die Verschiedenartigkeit in der Schrift, der Aufmachung und des Inhalts der Bücher. Regie: Julius Albert Flach

In its first four months of operation, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture surpassed one million visits and quickly became a cherished, vital monument to the African American experience. And yet this accomplishment was never assured. In A Fool's Errand, founding director Lonnie Bunch tells his story of bringing his clear vision and leadership to realize this shared dream of many generations of Americans.

An illuminating exploration of the relationship between the restitution of looted art, global status, and the international construction of national cultural heritage. Why is art restitution a matter of politics? How does the artwork displayed in national museums reflect the international status...

El Museo del Prado no es solamente la mejor pinacoteca del mundo; es también el álbum familiar de las dinastías españolas, los Austrias y los Borbones, que han regido los destinos de España desde hace cinco siglos. En este audiolibro, Juan Eslava Galán...