Product Description

The secret of dressing like a Parisian starts with les bonnes adresses: the coveted, seldom-shared addresses of the best shops. When author Rebecca Magniant moved to Paris five years ago, she made it her mission to find the best boutiques in the city–and that she did. When some of her finds impressed her impossibly chic belle mere (mother-in-law), she knew she was on to something. She went on to found Paris’s premiere shopping service, Chic Shopping Paris, and now reveals her prized list of boutiques whose offerings embody quintessential Parisian style.
 
Even as the world seems to be getting smaller, with everything imaginable available on the Internet, there remain some things that can only be found where they are designed and made–in France. Chic Shopping Paris contains the best, offering clothing, jewelry, lingerie, makeup, shoes, hats, art supplies, toys, stationery, and more–more than eighty venues in all. So let the contents of Magniant’s little black book inspire you to bring back a piece of Paris in your bag.

Some of the shops include
•Da Rosa, an épicerie that supplies luxury products to some of the biggest restaurateurs in town
•Blanc d’Ivorie, a shop specializing in gorgeous French linens and housewares that are all in white, gray, or beige tones
•Fabrice, a boutique selling over-the-top, chunky costume jewelry
•Karine Dupont, a young, fun designer of bags known primarily to insiders
•J. C. Martinez, whose amazing collection of antique prints is as good as anything at the famous Paris flea market
•Sabbia Rosa, a designer of gorgeous silk or satin lingerie who will make things to order

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Shopping is one of the joys of travel ...

even if it's only window shopping.

My wife and I love travel and we have had the privilege in shopping in many of the great cities of the world: New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Rome, Milan, Houston, and many many others. Paris is without equal for shoppng in a number of respects: elegance, beauty, quality, knowledge of staff and the pure joy of seeing fine products in a beautiful setting.

We both admit that we are a little intimidated, and frankly it's only in Paris we have that feeling. Partly it's the attitude of the sales people -- worldly, fashionable, speaking impeccable French. Partly it's our awe that the French seem to have discovered how to imbue even the simplest product with a level of sophistication.

Chic Shopping Paris is a great passport to discovering the joys of shopping in that great city. The photographs by Alison Harris are beautiful -- the book is almost a postcard collection of beautiful products beautifully displayed. The text is descriptive, educated, loving even -- Rebecca Perry Magniant proves her learning not only in this sampling of her work, but also on her frequently updated website. If the following passage resonates with you to any degree, visit the website, and carefully consider buying this beautiful little book:

Nicole Lehmann
19, rue de Turenne, 4th arr.
01 42 77 57 21
Métro: Saint-Paul

Tuesday-Saturday 11am-7pm, Sunday 2pm-7pm, closed Monday
nlparis.com

Nicole Lehmann's new shop just a block away from the Place des Vosges is small but elegant, the perfect setting for showing off her luxurious purses. Each of her bags is entirely handmade, with attention to fine details, in high-quality leathers and skins with metal accents. The bags come in three basic styles: the cabas (tote), the pochette (clutch), and the besace (messenger). Each comes with either long or short straps and in different finishes (grained or smooth leather, suede, alligator, ostrich). Some have unique details such as a long chain strap that can be removed and worn as a necklace; another style has a slim leather closure strap that is interchangeable with straps of other colors, and any of the straps can be worn as a bracelet. A small line of jewelry, cuff links, and belts rounds out the collection."

And if this book doesn't interest you, at least visit the publisher's website; The Little Bookroom publishes a number of delightful books that will enhance your travel experiences.

Robert C. Ross 2008

Product Description

"It’s rare to find a cookbook that distills the spirit of a people and immerses us in the context of a particular cuisine. To cook creatively, we must uncover the soul of a place so that what we prepare has an identity. Because Teresa Barrenechea allows us to truly grasp Spanish cooking, we come away with much more than a few recipes, but with the essence of her country’s vital respect for food in our hands and in our hearts. A winner." --James Peterson, author of Sauces

"Teresa Barrenechea captures the essence of our country’s authentic regional cooking in a way never before accomplished. I am grateful to her for enlightening us with the wealth of our culinary legacy." --Ferran Adrià, Restaurante El Bulli

"Through Teresa's loving presentation of dishes culled from home cooks—including many recipes never before published in English--you will instinctively taste how vivid flavor and simple pleasure always have been and still are at the heart of the Spanish culinary ethos." --Maricel Presilla, author of The New Taste of Chocolate

"In an era of novelistic cookbooks and florid foodie memoirs, Teresa Barrenechea takes a refreshingly straightforward approach to her subject matter, which is nothing less than the many and varied cuisines of Spain. . . . Her main mission is to tell us how to accurately cook a great deal of honest, not overly complicated, unfailingly delicious food, and at this she succeeds superbly." --Colman Andrews, editor-in-chief, Saveur, and author of Catalan Cuisine

"Teresa Barrenechea’s love of and expertise on Spain’s traditional food is beautifully executed in this exciting book, with charming photos and delightful stories of the people, places, and ingredients." --Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, The River Café, London

With the world in a swoon over the gastronomic riches of Spain — from the brilliant array of its traditional tapa dishes to the daring preparations of its new generation of chefs —the timing couldn’t be better for the arrival of this long-awaited cookbook. In THE CUISINES OF SPAIN, Teresa Barrenechea, one of the country ’s most talented culinary ambassadors, showcases her culinary heritage through over 250 recipes culled from her extensive repertoire, and from friends and fellow chefs across Spain. The famed rice dishes of Valencia, the brilliant mojos of the Canary Islands, the hearty stews and braised meats of the interior — all of the classics are here in peak form, as are many lesser-known but equally important and intriguing regional dishes. Steeped in the history of her country, Barrenechea weaves a captivating narrative of Spain ’s diverse peoples, landscapes, and ingredients, revealing how such forces gave rise to the food traditions that we celebrate today. Over 150! full-color photographs from Barcelona-based photojournalist Jeff Koehler and renowned food photographer Christopher Hirsheimer put Spain’s culinary riches on brilliant display. With such a distinguished pairing of author and artists, THE CUISINES OF SPAIN is positioned to be one of the major cookbook releases of the year.

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Product Description

When Grace Young was a child, her father instilled in her a lasting appreciation of wok hay, the highly prized but elusive taste that food achieves when properly stir-fried in a wok. As an adult, Young aspired to create that taste in her own kitchen. Her quest to master wok cooking led her throughout the United States, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Along with award-winning photographer Alan Richardson, Young sought the advice of home cooks, professional chefs, and esteemed culinary teachers like Cecilia Chiang, Florence Lin, and Ken Hom. Their instructions, stories, and recipes, gathered in this richly designed and illustrated volume, offer not only expert lessons in the art of wok cooking, but also capture a beautiful and timeless way of life.

With its emphasis on cooking with all the senses, The Breath of a Wok brings the techniques and flavors of old-world wok cooking into today's kitchen, enabling anyone to stir-fry with wok hay. IACP award-winner Young details the fundamentals of selecting, seasoning, and caring for a wok, as well as the range of the wok's uses; this surprisingly inexpensive utensil serves as the ultimate multipurpose kitchen tool. The 125 recipes are a testament to the versatility of the wok, with stir-fried, smoked, pan-fried, braised, boiled, poached, steamed, and deep-fried dishes that include not only the classics of wok cooking, like Kung Pao Chicken and Moo Shoo Pork, but also unusual dishes like Sizzling Pepper and Salt Shrimp, Three Teacup Chicken, and Scallion and Ginger Lo Mein. Young's elegant prose and Richardson's extraordinary photographs create a unique and unforgettable picture of artisan wok makers in mainland China, street markets in Hong Kong, and a "wok-a-thon" in which Young's family of aunties, uncles, and cousins cooks together in a lively exchange of recipes and stories. A visit with author Amy Tan also becomes a family event when Tan and her sisters prepare New Year's dumplings. Additionally, there are menus for family-style meals and for Chinese New Year festivities, an illustrated glossary, and a source guide to purchasing ingredients, woks, and accessories.

Written with the intimacy of a memoir and the immediacy of a travelogue, this recipe-rich volume is a celebration of cultural and culinary delights.

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If I could have only one Chinese cook book...

...this might just be it. This book was clearly a labor of love for Grace. It was written with the home cook in mind. From reading this book, along with her earlier volume, "Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen," it is clear that Grace's family and mine have a lot in common--namely a love and reverence for traditional, home-style Chinese cooking. The recipes are clear, simple, and easy to follow. I love the fact that so many of them are gleaned from her aunties and uncles--just as they are in my family. And it's so much fun reading about the history and production of the wok--I'll never look at the 30-year old specimen handed down to me from my mom the same way again!

I have a good collection of Chinese cookbooks, including volumes by Barbara Tropp, Ken Hom, Yan Kit, and my own family (I come from a family of restauranteurs and chefs), and over the years gleaned pearls of wisdom from each, but like I said, if I had to choose only one, "Breath" might just be it. But please, don't ask me to actually do it...

What do we know about Chinise Cusine

After reading this book I think that the stuff we get in most Asian restaurants is really just the prefab grocery store stuff they sell at Asian markets. So now I have been left asking a lot of questions. So I purchased a cast iron wok from China like the books suggests and have come up with wonderful results. I followed the seasoning techniques and now have a wok that is better than any I could purchase. One has to remember anyone can assemble the ingredients for a dish and measure to perfect portions. It's really the technique that makes the dish. This is probably the first Chinese cookbook to do so. From that point you can really understand the cuisine start to create real Chinese Cuisine.

Comprehensive Guide to Your Wok

I have taken this book out of the library so many times that I finally broke down and bought the book. I am an avid stir-fry cook and this book has some great wok stir-fry recipes, but it has so much more. It is a comprehensive guide to wok history, culture, maintenance and cooking techniques-- and demonstrates how a wok can be used for so much more than stir-fry. The recipes are great and pretty foolproof. I also own The Chinese Kitchen, by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. I like that book and use it often, but especially on busy weeknights, I appreciate that the recipes in Breath of a Wok generally call for far fewer ingredients and taste just as good.

Product Description

Well over a thousand years old, the tradition of swordmaking in Japan is one of the most highly regarded metal crafts in the world. When all sword manufacture was prohibited in Japan for seven years after World War II, the age-old techniques were in danger of being lost forever. Today, in the hands of a new generation of practitioners, the craft is making a startling comeback. Connoisseurs say that the swords being produced now are the equal of anything made in Japan in the past few hundred years.

This book takes the reader into the workshops of four of Japan's leading sword craftsmen. Each craftsman has a different role in the manufacture of a blade. Yoshindo Yoshihara, the swordsmith, begins with raw steel made in a traditional charcoal-fueled smelter and refines it by folding and forging, gradually shaping it into a sword with a hardened edge. Okisato Fujishiro then sharpens and polishes the sword with fine stones to reveal the color and texture of the steel. Metalworker Hiroshi Miyajima makes the small copper-and-gold habaki collar that fits between the blade and the scabbard. Finally, Kazuyuki Takayama carves the hilt and the scabbard out of a single piece of wood. Black-and-white photographs show every stage of the manufacture, while important information on history, metallurgy, and modern-day appraisal is presented in an extensive introduction.

The swords made in Japan today are not, of course, intended for actual use. But their design, the quality of their steel, and the techniques used to create them still derive from the sword's historical function as a lethal hand-held weapon. A sword must be razor sharp, light, well balanced, and strong, but not so brittle it will break. In the perfect resolution of these qualities lie the beauty of the blade and the challenge of the craft.

This book demonstrates how brilliantly Japan's sword craftsmen today have met this technological challenge. The impulse of the craft now is to preserve the utilitarian object and yet create an enduring art for the modern age. While many fine books on sword appreciation exist, these deal primarily with older blades or problems of appraisal. The Craft of the Japanese Sword is the first book in English devoted entirely to contemporary sword manufacture, and will thus be of enormous value to metal artists everywhere, as well as to collectors and students of weaponry.

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Best intro for the beginner

This is probably the best book in English ever written for learning how to understand and appreciate the Japanese sword. When this book first appeared almost 20 years ago, there was little detailed information in English outside of specialist journals and similar publications on how they were made, especially the details of the hand-forging, heat-treating, and tempering methods which are still being done today just as they were thousands of years ago.

By varying the carbon content and temperature of the forge, the smith can either add or remove carbon or oxygen from the steel to get the right carbon content in the finished blade (about 0.7 percent). I enjoyed reading about the tatara, or iron smelter, which wasn't invented in Japan but seems to have originated in Manchuria and then brought to Japan by way of China or Korea. It's during this phase that certain impurities such as sulphur are removed as slag and carbon is added to produce steel, although the resulting steel is still low quality as the distribution of carbon isn't uniform enough to produce a strong sword.

It was also fascinating to learn about how the hamon or temper line is created and made to appear (it marks the boundary between the hard martensite edge and the softer baenite), and the rediscovery of how to create the utsuri, which was highly prized on swords of the Bizen school but was lost for hundreds of years until just recently, and involves another change in the crystalline structure of the steel between the side and the back of the blade. I also learned how to appreciate the different crystal structures (nie and nioi) and textures that make up the appearance of the blade (jintetsu) and what to look for in a good sword. There is also a detailed discussion of the different types of hamon and which are preferred and prized.

Some of the details are humorous and ironic. I learned that a modern swordsmith can legally only make two swords a month. This is because the great smith Mayairi could only make two a month when they standardized on this more than half a century ago. But that's because Mayairi insisted on cutting up his charcoal by hand to make it uniformly fine with a scissors, which took up most of his time. Most smiths crush the charcoal and then use a sieve to select just the right size pieces for the forging process. But because Mayairi was the greatest smith of his time the law was based on his output and has never changed since. This has resulted in many smiths travelling to Taiwan or China to make extra swords for the export market during part of the year to increase their income, since they can't sell them in Japan.

There are also chapters on every phase of the sword-making process, including sharpening and polishing, the making of the habaki, the construction of the saya or scabbard and the other koshirae, or fittings such as the tsuba (guard), and so on. Just the polishing process itself can take two weeks and involve many different steps in terms of the sequence of polishing stones and polishing methods. Also almost all of the stones used are still natural, just like in the old days, some of which can cost thousands of dollars. Dozens of steps are involved as the polisher goes from the coarsest to the finest stones and to the final polishing of the sword. This is the phase during which the hamon can be brought out most strikingly, and the final lines of the sword defined. The polishing of the tip of the sword is a special step by itself, and the mune or back and the groove are actually burnished or rubbed rather than polished, using several different hardened, sharp needles.

The book begins with a brief history of the Japanese sword which covers the different types and styles and covering the characteristics of the five main schools of classical swordmaking, of which the Bizen and Soshu schools today are the most important and prized. The book is profusely illustrated with many photos and drawings of swords and the different aspects and features of the blades, and what they are called. All in all still a fine book on the Japanese sword which has become a modern classic.

Product Description

"Consider, young Jedi: Why bake a plain old cookie when you can bake a super-Chewie Wookiee Cookie?" So begins the delightful Star Wars Cookbook. Aimed at young cooks, but fun for all ages, the cookbook provides recipes for treats such as Princess Leia Danish Dos, Twin Sun Toast, Tusken Raider Taters, Sandtrooper Sandies, and the Amazon.com house favorite, Boba Fett-uccine. (What better way to get young Jedi knights to eat their broccoli?) Author Robin Davis's directions are extremely thorough and safety oriented (as she notes, "the calm and perceptive mind of a Jedi warrior will enable you to prevent most mishaps in the kitchen"), and perfect for kids who are new to cooking. The spiral-bound pages are lightly plasticoated, so if you spill some milk while concocting C-3PO Pancakes, it's easily wiped off. The highlights of the book are Frankie Frankeny's terrific photographs of Star Wars action figures posing with the food--R2-D2 encounters giant frozen R2-D2 Treats that look remarkably similar to him, while Darth Vader raises his fist at Bossk the bounty hunter atop a wall of Bossk Brownies as Darth's henchmen look on. And who could resist a shot of Jabba Jiggle? There's Jabba the Hutt positioned on a pile of oozing lime Jell-O®. Whether you're a Star Wars fan or just looking for a way to get the kids to feel the Force in the kitchen, The Star Wars Cookbook is great fun, and tasty, too! --Rebecca A. Staffel

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A must buy for the true Star Wars fan.

This beautifully illustrated, spiral-bound, hardcover book is a must buy for any serious Star Wars fan who wants to add a touch of The Force to his or her life with the delicious recipes featured in it.
The book is divided into five sections for easy reference: Breakfasts, Beverages, Snacks and Sides, Main Courses and Desserts. Each Star Wars themed recipe is fully and clearly explained (ingredient measurements and preparation instructions) for easy understanding. The book also comes with a few foil stickers for storage and gift labeling and an introduction that contains practical advise on cooking safety and a guide of the cooking tools you'll need. As an added bonus, the pages of the book are laminated for easy, stain-free cleaning.
You will love all the recipes, and will probably recreate, the wonderfully photographed serving suggestions given in the book like the Han-Burgers, Crazy Cantina Chili and the Jabba Jiggle, which are decorated with the action figures of known characters of the original Star Wars movie trilogy. Other recipes' presentations feature enjoyable visual puns like the TIE Fighter Ties, the Twin Sun Toast and the R2-D2 Treats. Some are even very basic, but really tasty, recipes that have been given clever Star Wars-sounding names like Oola-la French Toast, Hoth Chocolate, Yoda Soda and Boba Fett-uccine.
Buy this book, and share the joy of cooking and your love of everything Star Wars with kids and adults, family and friends. And May The Force Be With You.
I would also recommend buying the Star Wars Cookbook II and The Star Wars Party Book along with this one as they all make a complete, excellent and fun idea source book for everyday cooking and Star Wars themed parties.
--Reviewed by Maritza Volmar

Product Description

The Tuscan house, whether a simple homestead or expansive villa, has become one of the most sought-after living environments. Its design is virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages, when landowners in the golden hills of Tuscany built country retreats with gardens, porticoes, and loggias. The landowners often drew upon the natural resources of the region-and it is these materials that give the Tuscan house its unique character. Tuscan Elements brings to life the colors, textures, and aesthetics of the Tuscan house-the magnificent stone and marble work; the hardwoods like chestnut, oak, and elm; earthy terra-cotta and brick; and the all-important water feature, used in ponds, fountains, and pools. This unique, visual sourcebook deconstructs the typical Tuscan home and examines its basic components in dazzling detail, from the tiled roof and floor, thick stone exterior walls, and vine-covered loggia to the exposed wooden beams, luminous frescoes, and the sunny courtyard garden with an ancient well or exquisite swimming pool. Filled with extraordinary photos by world-famous interiors photographer Simon McBride, Tuscan Elements emphasizes living life well with a home that nurtures and comforts, accentuates the importance of family and friends, and entertains with good food and drink. For anyone interested in infusing their present home and garden with a little bit of Tuscany, here is a delightful source of never- ending inspiration.

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Tuscan Style

I normally don't buy tabletop table books because I don't feel that they represent a value or add much to my understanding of a subject. Tabletop books full of incredible pictures just do not fully capture my imagination or attention. Consequently, most tabletop books get a cursory flipping through before I put them down.

However, `Tuscan Elements' is more than a book of pretty pictures and it is worth more than just a cursory flipping through. The author, Alexandra Black, has organized her effort to capture the elements of Tuscany. The four elements are stone, wood, earth, and water. These four elements are expressed in the homes, furniture, terracotta, and ponds, respectively, of Tuscany. To stand alongside the pictures of these four elements, Ms. Black takes the time to build a supporting story from a historical and literary point of view. Quoting D.H. Lawrence and Pliny the Younger, the story of how these elements have been woven into the ebb and flow of Tuscan life since before the Roman Empire emerges with an impressive clarity and vividness.

As a lover of Tuscany I am drawn to images of Tuscany and its way of life. The seductive beauty of the Tuscan landscape and the romance of the Tuscan lifestyle as expressed in the prose and images of this tabletop book is the stuff of dreams. This tabletop book provided me the fodder for those dreams and never once disappointed me.


dreaming

I have not been able to put this book down since I received it. I have always dreamed of visiting Italy, but until that time comes, I have been redecorating my home to reflect that dream. I now have a "Tuscan kitchen" that makes me very happy to be in. I bought this book for new ideas,and also to confirm that the elements in my home already are the correct ones. I was thrilled to find these "Tuscan elements" such as pottery, stones, tiles discussed throughout. And the photographs inspire me to pay attention to details. It's all about the textures of the walls, the colors, how you display your ceramics....the pictures are beautiful. I may not get to Italy any time soon, but this book helped bring my dream a little closer to home.

At least I can dream

Well, I'll never own a villa or even an old farmhouse in Tuscany, but this book gives me plenty of fodder for dreaming. Since Frances Mayes put Tuscany on the map with her Under the Tuscan book's phenomenal success, everybody wants to visit the region - and most covet some ole building, yearning to do what Mayse did: buy, renovate, live, and enjoy.
This book brings to life the colors, textures, and aesthetics of Tuscan houses - the magnificent stone work, the hardwoods used interiorly, the earthy terracotta and brick work, and water. Everywhere, water: ponds, fountains, pools... We can, on these pages, explore the tiled roofs, the thick stone exterior walls and the vine-covered loggia, the exposed wooden beams, luminous frescoes, courtyard gardens, ancient kitchens. It's all here in this seductive book that captures the essence of what is so special about the Tuscan style: stone, wood, earth, and water. Sit down with a cup of espresso and relax with Tuscan Elements, ripe for reading, browsing...and dreaming.

Product Description

Our contact with great architecture tends to be indirect, through representations. Few of us have seen the Taj Mahal, yet we all know exactly what it looks like. The useful act of photographing buildings can be an art, particularly when the photographer's presence seems to recede, and a great architectural shot suggests that you're seeing things as they are rather than through someone else's prism.

Julius Shulman has documented buildings in that seemingly transparent way for more than six decades. This meticulous and prolific craftsman was in the right place, California, at the right time, the golden age of West Coast modern residential architecture that spanned the 1930s to the 1960s. Richard Neutra helped him get his start, and he recorded early modernists such as Wright, Schindler, Soriano, Harris, Frey, Ain, Stone, Gropius, Kahn, and Neutra, as well as younger ones such as Goff, Lautner, Ellwood, Koenig, Drake, Killingsworth, Eames, Greene, Legoretta, and even early Frank Gehry. His view camera captured the glamour of hillside steel-and-glass houses cantilevered above the city lights, the serenity of desert vacation homes at dusk, and the clean-lined ingenuity of young architects working on modest budgets.

Shulman's text is a knotty quasi biography, but some good stories lurk there. This is a physically impressive book: its 300 large-format pages contain 500 superbly reproduced color and black-and-white photos that are worth more than the proverbial thousand words each. --John Pastier

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Stunning design, beautiful photography, entertaining memoir

An extraordinary and rare book. Master architectural photographer Julius Shulman showcases the stunning modern designs of Neutra, Koenig, Eames, and others with extraordinary talent and craft. The photographs literally glow. Many of them bowl you over with their beauty. Others have the camp value of '50s advertising: housewives in modern kitchens, families lounging at poolside, couples entertaining in open living spaces. Shulman adds considerable depth by recalling his relationships with the architects, his encounters with the homeowners, his notes on making the photographs. If you admire modern design, appreciate fine photography, and like a good story, this is a book you will cherish.

Excellent graphic material and a sensitive life story .

By pure chance my son browsed this book in Madrid and found it extremely interesting, so I decided to buy it through Amazon. To my surprise, I found that somehow it belongs to my own life story, because in 1966, in L.A. I met Julius and organized the trip to Uruguay mentioned in pages 211 th 217. In this highly valuable volume, the roots of the modern California architecture and its subsequent development are brightly displayed and wittingly evoked by a man who saw it happen and really played an important role in the process. Shulman's comments on people and places are acute, humorous and, I must say from my own experience, tell the real thing. About the photography. Every architect has a penchant to it, mainly regarding his works, so I strongly advice my colleages through the world to read this book and think how Shulman does it. This simple exercise will undoubtedly help them a lot. In brief, a book to occupy a privileged place in my library, to consult as a permanent reference whenever a new work is finished and needs to be documented.

Product Description

A distinguished chronicle of the Persian garden that explores its profound spiritual, historical, and virtually unacknowledged influence on the development of Western garden design in the 21st century

Gardens of Persia demonstrates world-renowned author Penelope Hobhouse's rare ability to combine meticulous research and a practical knowledge of gardens and plants with a love of garden history and travel. By telling the story of the development of gardens throughout the Persian culture's 5,000-year-old history, she imparts a passionate view of the Persian paradise garden as a model for today's gardeners.

Buildings, water, and plants combine to give the gardens of Persia a beautiful spiritual quality that has served to inspire garden design across time and diverse cultures. Indeed, Ms. Hobhouse begins with the oldest living garden, Pasargadae, created by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. It represented paradise on earth and spawned other gardens to be seen as settings for sacred contemplation and spiritual nourishment. In later centuries, these gardens evolved further around the world as representations for romance, power, prestige, and symbols of the afterlife.

Gardens of Persia is beautifully illustrated with Jerry Harpur's specially commissioned photographs of Persian gardens as well as with similarly inspired ones from around the world, and with lovely images of sumptuous carpets and Persian miniatures.

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Product Description

While Newport, Rhode Island, may not have been the birthplace of shingle style, it certainly became--somewhere around the 1860s--a stronghold for an approach that would become popular in American architecture. Established as a major shipping port in the mid-18th century, Newport went on to become a fashionable destination for the wealthy and the ambitious who took a liking to enormous houses (which they referred to as "cottages") which were built along the eastern shore of Aquidneck Island. Shingle Styles begins its case-by-case study of various American structures by focusing on a lasting monument in Rhode Island, the William Watts Sherman house, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson. Built in the 1870s, the Sherman house set the standard for many of the unifying themes of shingle style: long horizontal lines created by extended roof overhangs, rows of aligned windows, and a cantilevered upper gable. The decisive change in the Sherman house, however, and the strongest element of this new architectural style, was the use of wooden shingles for an exterior wall covering rather than red clay tiles or stone. As author Leland M. Roth points out, this simple change "opened up possibilities for variations in texture and surface, with the shingles cut and nailed in different patterns ... especially in the upper gables." Roth goes on to detail a total of 30 structures, including homes, clubs and lodges, churches, farms and barns, and a hotel. The story of shingle style is also told through more than 200 illustrations and photographs, mostly in color. Along the way we learn about Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois; James and Merritt Reid's Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, California; William Ralph Emerson's Felsted in Deer Isle, Main; and Greene & Greene's Gamble House in Pasadena, California. As an architectural characteristic, shingle style has its limitations. How much can be said, after all, about buildings which are unified only in their appearance of being covered entirely in wooden shingles? Roth helps to push appreciation to the next level, however, showing how the influences of craftsman, bungalow, prairie school, and postmodern touches have helped to enliven the style. --John Russell

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