The Decameron


Book Description

In the time of a devastating pandemic, seven women and three men withdraw to a country estate outside Florence to give themselves a diversion from the death around them. Once there, they decide to spend some time each day telling stories, each of the ten to tell one story each day. They do this for ten days, with a few other days of rest in between, resulting in the 100 stories of the Decameron. The Decameron was written after the Black Plague spread through Italy in 1348. Most of the tales did not originate with Boccaccio; some of them were centuries old already in his time, but Boccaccio imbued them all with his distinctive style. The stories run the gamut from tragedy to comedy, from lewd to inspiring, and sometimes all of those at once. They also provide a detailed picture of daily life in fourteenth-century Italy.




The Gift of the Magi


Book Description

"The Gift of the Magi" is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money. As a sentimental story with a moral lesson about gift-giving, it has been popular for adaptation, especially for presentation at Christmas time.




The Devil


Book Description

Mother Rapet, the greedy nurse to a dying old woman, finds a way to make a bigger profit from the job.




The Book of the Courtier


Book Description




The Book of Theseus


Book Description

A collection of eight short stories in which a variety of special characters experience the transfiguring power of love.




The Art of Renaissance Europe


Book Description

Works in the Museum's collection that embody the Renaissance interest in classical learning, fame, and beautiful objects are illustrated and discussed in this resource and will help educators introduce the richness and diversity of Renaissance art to their students. Primary source texts explore the great cities and powerful personalities of the age. By studying gesture and narrative, students can work as Renaissance artists did when they created paintings and drawings. Learning about perspective, students explore the era's interest in science and mathematics. Through projects based on poetic forms of the time, students write about their responses to art. The activities and lesson plans are designed for a variety of classroom needs and can be adapted to a specific curriculum as well as used for independent study. The resource also includes a bibliography and glossary.




European Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art


Book Description

This beautifully produced volume is the first to survey the Metropolitan Museum's world-renowned collection of European furniture. One hundred and three superb examples from the Museum's vast holdings are featured. They originated in workshops in England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Russia, or Spain and date from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century. A number of them belonged to such important historical figures as Pope Urban VIII, Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, and Napoleon. The selection includes chairs, tables, beds, cabinets, commodes, settees and sofas, bookcases and standing shelves, desks, fire screens, athéniennes, coffers, chests, mirrors and frames, showcases, and lighting equipment. There is also one purely decorative piece, a superb vase made for a Russian noble family who, according to one awestruck viewer, "owned all the malachite mines in the world." The makers of some of the objects are unknown, but most of the pieces can be identified by label, documentation, or style as the work of an outstanding European designer-craftsman, such as André-Charles Boulle, Thomas Chippendale, David Roentgen, or Karl Friedrich Schinkel.




Democracy


Book Description

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year “This absolutely splendid book is a triumph on every level. A first-rate history of the United States, it is beautifully written, deeply researched, and filled with entertaining stories. For anyone who wants to see our democracy flourish, this is the book to read.” —Doris Kearns Goodwin To all who say our democracy is broken—riven by partisanship, undermined by extremism, corrupted by wealth—history offers hope. Democracy’s nineteen cases, honed in David Moss’s popular course at Harvard and taught at the Library of Congress, in state capitols, and at hundreds of high schools across the country, take us from Alexander Hamilton’s debates in the run up to the Constitutional Convention to Citizens United. Each one presents a pivotal moment in U.S. history and raises questions facing key decision makers at the time: Should the delegates support Madison’s proposal for a congressional veto over state laws? Should Lincoln resupply Fort Sumter? Should Florida lawmakers approve or reject the Equal Rights Amendment? Should corporations have a right to free speech? Moss invites us to engage in the passionate debates that are crucial to a healthy society. “Engagingly written, well researched, rich in content and context...Moss believes that fierce political conflicts can be constructive if they are mediated by shared ideals.” —Glenn C. Altschuler, Huffington Post “Gives us the facts of key controversies in our history—from the adoption of the constitution to Citizens United—and invites readers to decide for themselves...A valuable resource for civic education.” —Michael Sandel, author of Justice




The Greatest Classics Ever Written


Book Description

e-artnow presents to you this meticulously edited and formatted collection of the greatest world classics: Les Misérables (Victor Hugo) The Call of the Wild (Jack London) Walden (Henry David Thoreau) Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy) Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky) Art of War (Sun Tzu) Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol) Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) Dona Perfecta (Benito Pérez Galdós) A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen) Gitanjali (Rabindranath Tagore) The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Anonymous) Life is a Dream (Pedro Calderon de la Barca) The Divine Comedy (Dante) Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio) The Prince (Machiavelli) Arabian Nights Hamlet (Shakespeare) Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe) Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen) Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) Great Expectations (Charles Dickens) Ulysses (James Joyce) Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw) Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott) Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson) Peter and Wendy (J. M. Barrie) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain) Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman) The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe) Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery) Iliad & Odyssey (Homer) The Republic (Plato) Faust, a Tragedy (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) Siddhartha (Herman Hesse) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Jules Verne) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo) The Flowers of Evil (Charles Baudelaire) The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) The Poison Tree (Bankim Chandra Chatterjee) Shakuntala (Kalidasa) Rámáyan of Válmíki (Válmíki) Tao Te Ching (Laozi) The Analects of Confucius (Confucius) Hung Lou Meng or, The Dream of the Red Chamber (Cao Xueqin) Two Years in the Forbidden City (Princess Der Ling) Bushido, the Soul of Japan (Inazo Nitobé) The Book of Tea (Kakuzo Okakura) Botchan (Soseki Natsume)…