Penguin Books Australia

A comprehensive survey that brilliantly captures the essence of Islamic culture.

Islamic Arts , a comprehensive survey covering a thousand years, highlights those characteristics that connect the various arts of the Islamic lands without minimizing the differences. The book is divided into three time periods - 600-900, 900-1500 and 1500-1800 - and each section analyses architecture, the arts of the...

When New Zealand forces arrived in Italy following the 1943 Armistice with the Allied forces, it was inevitable they would mingle with the local population. The Italians opened their homes and hearts to the New Zealand soldiers who delighted in finding young Italian signorinas everywhere.

A delightful and informative history of modern music.

Harmony is created by bringing sounds together. In music lessons, we learn how to do this in a formal way: we learn about chords and keys, and we are given rules for using them. This is the textbook way; this is legal harmony.  Everything else – including the sounds that constantly surround us, those of ticking clocks, dogs, traffic...

The magisterial and enigmatic Charles V, Emperor of Europe and the New World, is the central figure in the second volume of Hugh Thomas's great history of the Spanish Empire. It begins with the return of the remnants of Magellan's expedition around the world in 1522 and ends with Charles's death in 1558.

The definitive visual guide to 5,000 years of British history

The History of Britain & Ireland traces the key events that have shaped the British Isles. From the Elizabethan age of Shakespeare to the Iraq and Afghan wars of the 21st century, this beautifully illustrated book offers a definitive visual chronicle of the most colourful and defining episodes in British history.

'AN EXCELLENT POLITICAL OVERVIEW'
GUARDIAN

Over the centuries the Middle East has confounded the dreams of conquerors and peacemakers alike. This now-classic book, fully updated to 2009, follows the historic struggles of the region over the last two hundred years, from Napoleon's assault on Egypt, through the slow decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, to the painful emergence of modern nations, the...

The first complete monograph on the work of Swiss graphic designer Max Huber (1919-92), one of the most significant designers of the 20th century. Huber's work was consistently innovative, and by combining painting and photography with other graphic media, he remained avant-garde throughout his career, bringing the utopian vision of the modern masters to bear on corporate typography and identity design...

The most comprehensive survey and analysis of 20th-century Brazilian architecture.

Vitamin P is an image-heavy book offering an overview of the state of painting today, and documents the most recent concerns and ideas among contemporary painters. In the wake of new media such as installation, video, performance and digital art, the traditional medium of painting has enjoyed a renaissance among a recent generation of artists.

Approaches to the history of art are probably more varied and more debated than in any other branch of history, and a study of different historical approaches has become an increasingly important component of many student courses. This critical anthology brings together the work of 27 influential art historians and writers from the Renaissance to the present day; key texts have been chosen in which...

These extraordinary stories of the pioneering struggles and deep religious conflicts in four generations of Walker's family show...

The modern city of Shanghai rose up from truly 'muddy' origins, both in the soft subsoil its foundations were build upon and its early economy based on a trade in opium, or 'foreign mud'.  Forced open to the British by the unequal Treaty of Nanking in 1842, Shanghai did what it does best: it beat the odds to become a 'bawdy and gaudy' metropolis that, 168 years later, commands a place in the contemporary...

Twelve thousand New Zealand men and women served in the occupation of Japan immediately after the Second World War. This book records memories from those we know as 'J Force'.

Based on revealing interviews with soldiers, airmen, nurses and members of the New Zealand Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, The Occupiers explores Kiwi life in the former enemy territory between 1946 and 1948.

'So they went forth, and they were given over to death by the guns.'

—Rangipito, of Ngati Rahiri

In the two decades before the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand was ripped asunder by island-spanning waves of warfare, extreme violence and cannibalism. Great war parties surged the length of the land to avenge historic grievances, killing and burning as they went. Whole peoples were uprooted and found...

While their loved ones left to serve overseas, most New Zealanders spent the Second World War at home. This book tells the stories of those who stayed behind.

Based on frank, in-depth interviews, Home reveals the reality of civilian wartime life in New Zealand during the watershed years from 1939 to 1945.

Women and men remember, with disarming honesty, the experiences that unfolded for them, including...

A bestselling historian recounts the epic clash that ended the Renaissance and pushed Islam to the gates of Vienna

A uniquely comprehensive collection of work from the Religious Society of Friends, one of the most distinctive Christian sects in the English-speaking world