“Sexy, surprising, funny, insightful, and wildly entertaining” ( Huffington Post )—the definitive biography of Giacomo Casanova, the impoverished boy who became the famous writer, notorious libertine, and self-invented genius in decadent eighteenth-century Europe. Today, “Casanova” is a synonym for “great lover,” yet the real story of this remarkable figure is little known. A figure straight out of a Henry Fielding novel, Giacomo Casanova was erotic, brilliant, impulsive, and desperate for recognition; a self-destructive genius. Over the course of his lifetime, he claimed to have seduced more than one hundred women, among them married women, young women in convents, girls just barely in their teens, women of high and low birth alike. Abandoned by his mother, an actress and courtesan, Casanova was raised by his illiterate grandmother, coming of age in a Venice filled with spies and political intrigue. He was intellectually curious and read forbidden books, for which he was jailed. He staged a dramatic escape from Venice’s notorious prison, I Piombi, the only person known to have done so. He then fled to France, ingratiated himself at the royal court, and invented the national lottery that still exists to this day. He crisscrossed Europe, landing for a while in St. Petersburg, where he was admitted to the court of Catherine the Great. He corresponded with Voltaire and met Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte—assisting them as they composed the timeless opera Don Giovanni . And he wrote what many consider the greatest memoir of the era, the twelve-volume Story of My Life . Laurence Bergreen’s Casanova recounts this astonishing life in rich, intimate detail, and at the same time, paints a dazzling portrait of eighteenth-century Europe, filled with a cast characters from serving girls to kings and courtiers, “great fun for any history lover” ( Kirkus Reviews ).

Twenty years ago, Benjamin Moser followed a love affair to an ancient Dutch town. In order to make sense of this new place, he threw himself into the Dutch museums. Soon, he found himself unearthing the strange, inspiring and sometimes terrifying stories of the artists who shaped one of the most luminous moments in the history of human creativity, the Dutch Golden Age. As he explored the hidden world of the Dutch Masters (and one Mistress), Moser met a crowd of fascinating personalities- the stormy Rembrandt, the intimate Ter Borch, the mysterious Vermeer. Through their art, he got to know their country, too- from Pieter Saenredam's translucent churches to Paulus Potter's muddy barnyards, and from Pieter de Hooch's cozy hearths to Jacob van Ruisdael's tragic trees. Over the years, Moser found himself on increasingly intimate terms with these centuries-dead artists, and found that they, too, were struggling with the same questions he was. Why do we make art? What is art, anyway - and what is an artist? What does it mean to succeed as an artist, and what does it mean to fail? The Upside-Down World is an invitation to ask these questions, and to turn them on their heads- to look, and then to look again. It is a brilliant, colourful and learned book for anyone, whether lifelong scholar or curious tourist, who has ever felt the lure of the Dutch galleries. It shows us art, and artists, as we have never seen them before.

Rousseau and Revolution, " Volume 10 of Willand Ariel Durant's" Story of Civilization, " ranges over a Europe in ferment, but centers on the passionate rebel--philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the great exponent of the romantic impulse toward self-exploration and social revolt, who contended with the great rationalist, Voltaire, for the mind of Europe. Rousseau condemned civilization as a disease, glorified the noble savage, proclaimed to the world with equal intensity his own love affairs and the natural Rights of Man, and became the patron Saint of the Revolution and the worldwide social upheavals of two centuries.

"Voltaire's Coconuts is a wonderfully engaging and witty combination of history and biography which looks at how Europeans have been fascinated by all that it means to be English. Dutch by birth, Buruma came to live in England in 1990 for the third time in his life and noticed a new mood of introspection. Englishness was a subject of endless discussion. Fox hunting was debated, loyalty to English cricket a hot issue, and the future of the monarchy rarely out of the news. This worrying over Englishness resulted, in Buruma's words, 'in great balls of intellectual wool', obscuring the more practical reasons why Europeans have admired (or hated) Britain in the past: its liberal institutions, its civil liberties, its delicate balance between social order and the free pursuit of self-interest. In this brilliant and elegantly written book Buruma examines these ideas about Englishness and what Europeans admired or loathed about Britain. Voltaire wondered why British laws could not be planted in France, or even Serbia, like the precious seeds of coconut trees. Karl Marx thought the English were too stupid to start a revolution; Goethe worshipped Shakespeare; Baron de Coubertin's idea of the modern Olympic Games was inspired by Tom Brown's Schooldays; Theodor Herzl's dream of the Jewish state was fuelled by his love of British aristocracy; and the German Kaiser was convinced that Britain was run by Jews. Combining biographical stories of these European Anglophiles and Anglophobes with memories of his own Anglo-Dutch-German-Jewish family, Ian Buruma has found a wholly original way of describing the relationship between Britain and Europe. This is a dazzlingly clever book which through its exploration of anglomania shows how much Englishness and people's view of it has shaped modern Europe." --Descripción del editor.

"This new critical biography provides a complete picture of German novelist, playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It offers fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of all the major works, including novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Elective Affinities, plays such as Egmont and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Goethe's greatest work, Faust. Alongside these works the incidents of his life are analysed, including his love affairs and his meetings with the great people of the age, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Jeremy Adler shows how Goethe's encyclopedic interest in numerous fields influenced later thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim and Susan Sontag. Goethe has often been called the last Renaissance man. He was in fact the first of the moderns - a maker of modernity."--Page 4 of cover.

A witty and erudite love letter to a bygone age, from one of Europe's last great humanists. "A sparkling slice of eighteenth-century life" Paul Bailey, Independent In August 1785 Paris buzzed with scandal. It involved an eminent churchman, a notorious charlatan, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute and the hated Queen herself. At its heart was the most expensive diamond necklace ever assembled and the web of fraud, folly and self-delusion it had inspired. In Szerb's last major work, a witty and often surprising account of events, the story is used as a standpoint from which to survey the entire age. Written in war-torn Hungary in the early 1940s,it constitutes a remarkable gesture of defiance against the brutal world in which the writer lived and died. Antal Szerb (1901-1945) was born in Budapest. Though of Jewish descent, he was baptised at an early age and remained a lifelong Catholic. He rapidly established himself as a formidable scholar, through studies of Ibsen and Blake and histories of English, Hungarian and world literature. He was a prolific essayist and reviewer, ranging across all the major European languages. Debarred by successive Jewish laws from working in a university, he was subjected to increasing persecution, and finally murderedin a forced labour camp in 1945. Pushkin Press publishes his novels The Pendragon Legend , Oliver VII and his masterpiece Journey by Moonlight , as well as the historical study The Queen's Necklace and Love in a Bottle and Other Stories .