Reaktion Books imprint: 753 books
by John Sutherland, John Crace
Language: English
Release Date: October 15, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: October 15, 2018
What is Nigel Farage’s favorite novel? Why do Brexiteers love Sherlock Holmes? Is Philip Larkin the best Brexit poet ever? Through the politically relevant sideroad of English Literature, writ large, John Sutherland quarries the great literary minds of English history to assemble the ultimate reading...
by Bettina Bildhauer
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2013
In this groundbreaking account of film history, Bettina Bildhauer shows how from the earliest silent films to recent blockbusters, medieval topics and plots have played an important but overlooked role in the development of cinema.
Filming the Middle Ages is the first book to define medieval...
Abandoned Images
Film and Film's End
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2010
Broadway Avenue in downtown Los Angeles contains an extraordinary collection of twelve abandoned film palaces, all built between 1910 and 1931. In most cities worldwide such a concentration of original cinema houses would have been demolished long ago—but in a city whose identity is inseparable...
Projected Cities
Cinema and Urban Space
Language: English
Release Date: February 3, 2004
In this illuminating and provocative survey, Stephen Barber examines the historical relationship between film and the urban landscape. Projected Cities looks with particular focus at the cinema of Europe and Japan, two closely linked cinematic cultures which have been foremost in the use of urban...
by Lars Svendsen
Language: English
Release Date: November 1, 2008
Language: English
Release Date: November 1, 2008
Surveillance cameras. Airport security lines. Barred store windows. We see manifestations of societal fears everyday, and daily news reports on the latest household danger or raised terror threat level continually stoke our sense of impending doom. In A Philosophy of Fear, Lars Svendsen now explores...
Art of Death
Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual c.1500 - c.1800
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2013
How did our ancestors die? Whereas in our own day the subject of death is usually avoided, in pre-Industrial England the rituals and processes of death were present and immediate. People not only surrounded themselves with memento mori, they also sought to keep alive memories of those who had gone...
by Ziyad Marar
Language: English
Release Date: January 4, 2004
Language: English
Release Date: January 4, 2004
The dream of a happy life has preoccupied thinkers since Plato, and in modern times it has become one of the signature tunes of our age – the rise of therapists, gurus, New Age cults and the use of Prozac are familiar indicators of how ubiquitous the pursuit of happiness has become within Western...
Beyond Vision
Essays on the Perception of Art
Language: English
Release Date: August 15, 2006
Beyond Vision is the first English-language collection of essays on art by Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), Russian philosopher, priest, linguist, scientist, mathematician – and art historian. In addition to seven essays by Florensky, the book includes a biographical introduction and an examination...
Vermeer's Wager
Speculations on Art History, Theory, and Art Museums
Language: English
Release Date: October 1, 2000
Vermeer's Wager stands at the intersection of art history and criticism, philosophy and museology. Using a familiar and celebrated painting by Johannes Vermeer as a case study, Ivan Gaskell explores what it might mean to know and use a work of art. He argues that art history as generally practiced,...
Tango
Sex and Rhythm of the City
Language: English
Release Date: July 15, 2013
Born on the unlit streets of Buenos Aires, tango was inspired by the music of European immigrants who crossed the ocean to Argentina, lured by the promise of a better life. It found its home in the city’s marginal districts, where it was embraced and shaped by young men who told stories of prostitutes,...
by Susie Green
Language: English
Release Date: September 15, 2006
Language: English
Release Date: September 15, 2006
Contrary to popular belief, it is the tiger, not the lion, who is the true king of the jungle. A male tiger can grow to eleven feet in length and weigh more than 650 pounds. Sleek, powerful, and mysterious, the tiger is revered as a potent symbol of sexuality and ferocity in many cultures around the...
Lords of the Sea
A History of the Barbary Corsairs
Language: English
Release Date: February 15, 2013
The escalation of piracy in the waters east and south of Somalia has led commentators to call the area the new Barbary, but the Somali pirates cannot compare to the three hundred years of terror supplied by the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean and beyond. From 1500 to 1800, Muslim pirates from...
Eyewitnessing
The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence
Language: English
Release Date: January 27, 2006
Eyewitnessing evaluates the place of images among other kinds of historical evidence. By reviewing the many varieties of images by region, period and medium, and looking at the pragmatic uses of images (e.g. the Bayeux Tapestry, an engraving of a printing press, a reconstruction of a building), Peter...
The Destruction of Art
Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2013
Last winter, a man tried to break Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain sculpture. The sculpted foot of Michelangelo’s David was damaged in 1991 by a purportedly mentally ill artist. With each incident, intellectuals must confront the unsettling dynamic between destruction and art. Renowned art historian...