"The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is one of the first efforts of the human mind to place itself within the universe. It has exerted a living influence in China for three thousand years, and interest in it has been spreading in the West. First set down in the dawn of history as a book of oracles, the Book of Changes deepened in meaning when ethical values were attached to the oracular pronouncements; it became a book of wisdom, eventually one of the...

"Picasso and Truth offers a breathtaking and original new look at the most significant artist of the modern era. From Pablo Picasso's early The Blue Room to the later Guernica, eminent art historian T. J. Clark offers a striking reassessment of the artist's paintings from the 1920s and 1930s. Why was the space of a room so basic to Picasso's worldview? And what happened to his art when he began to feel that room-space become too confined--too little...

What does the face of power look like? Who getscommemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book-against a background of today's "sculpture wars"-Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famousin the western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the "twelve Caesars," from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing...