Simon Schama

Una obra fundamental sobre una cultura, un pueblo y un mundo de uno de los historiadores más prestigiosos y estimulantes de la actualidad Simon Schama narra la historia de los judíos a lo largo de tres milenios, desde sus origenes como una tribu en la Antiguedad hasta el presente; una historia unica, de resistencia a la desaparicion, de creatividad bajo opresion, alegria en medio de las desgracias y afirmacion de la vida contra pronostico. Schama recorre los siglos y los continentes, desde la India a Andalucia, de los bazares de El Cairo a las calles de Oxford; y visita lugares inimaginables: un reino judio en las montañas del sur de Arabia; una sinagoga siria recubierta por brillantes murales; las palmeras de los enterramientos judios en la catacumbas romanas. Y logra que las voces se oigan nitidas: la severidad y el gozo de los autores de la Biblia, o la poesia amorosa de los aficionados al vino en un jardin de la España musulmana. En La historia de los judios el Talmud arde en las calles de Paris, los patibulos presiden las plazas del Londres medieval, un artesano mallorquin dibuja el mundo de nuevo; se encienden velas, se cantan salmos, se cargan mulas y naufragan barcos llenos de especias y joyas. Asi se despliega una historia

Ever wondered if there s any truth behind planting by the moon Or why wassailing is still a common folk practice in some parts of the world In Gardener s Folklore the record of these practices is unveiled with plenty of tips and tricks to try in your own 21st century garden for blooming bushes and plentiful potatoes

An epic story of humanity s struggle against pandemics from the renowned historian and broadcaster

One of the great landmarks of modern history publishing, simon schamas citizens: a chronicle of the french revolution is the most authoritative social, cultural and narrative history of the french revolution ever produced.. monumental ... provocative and stylish, simon schamas account of the first few years of the great revolution in france, and of the decades that led up to it, is thoughtful, informed and profoundly revisionist eugen weber, the new york times book review. the most marvellous book i have read about the french revolution richard cobb, the times. dazzling - beyond praise - he has chronicled the vicissitudes of that world with matchless understanding, wisdom, pity and truth, in the pages of this marvellous book bernard levin, sunday times. provides an unrivalled impression of the currents and contradictions which made up this terrible sequence of events antony beevor, express. simon schama is university professor in art history and history at columbia university in new york, and one of the best-known scholars in britain in any field. he is the prize-winning author of numerous books, including dead certainties (unwarranted speculations), landscape and memory, rembrandts eyes and three volumes of a history of britain. he is also the writer-presenter of historical and art-historical documentaries for bbc television. he lives outside new york city with his wife and children.

Historia y ficción se entrelazan en este libro, que contiene dos narraciones sobre dos muertes violentas. La primera parte se centra en la muerte en el campo de batalla del general Wolfe, en Quebec, en 1759, acontecimiento historico abordado por varios personajes: un anonimo soldado; el pintor Benjamin West, autor de un famoso lienzo sobre este tema, y el historiador Francis Parkman. La segunda muerte es la del tio del historiador, el doctor George Parkman, asesinado en 1849 por un pacifico profesor de quimica de la Universidad de Harvard endeudado con el, que despues troceo el cuerpo; un macabro crimen que conmovio a la sociedad bostoniana de la epoca. La obra recrea estos dos hechos estrictamente historicos desde una multiplicidad de puntos de vista, entremezclando realidad y ficcion. Pero no estamos ante una tipica novela historica al uso, sino ante una propuesta mucho mas osada. El libro es un extraordinario experimento en los limites entre el ensayo historico y la novela, una narracion de gran virtuosismo literario que contiene, ademas, una sugestiva reflexion sobre la historia y sus interpretaciones. Escrita con el concurso de diversas tecnicas literarias, que incluyen la biografia, el ensayo, la epistola, la cronica policial..., la obra es una atrevida apuesta a caballo entre dos generos. En ella se suceden documentos autenticos (incluido abundante material grafico) y reconstrucciones puramente imaginarias de los hechos, dando como resultado un libro lleno de ingenio, cuya lectura resulta apasionante.

This dazzling, unconventional biography shows us why, more than three centuries after his death, Rembrandt continues to exert such a hold on our imagination. Deeply familiar to us through his enigmatic self-portraits, few facts are known about the Leiden miller's son who tasted brief fame before facing financial ruin (he was even forced to sell his beloved wife Saskia's grave). The true biography of Rembrandt, as Simon Schama demonstrates, is to be discovered in his pictures. Interweaving of seventeenth-century Holland, Schama allows us to see Rembrandt in a completely fresh and original way.

"El gran arte tiene unas maneras espantosas...” observa Simon Schama al comienzo de su magistral exploración sobre los momentos clave de la historia del arte. Un respetuoso paseo por un museo puede l

In November 2008 the United States will elect a new President...

Con un estilo narrativo poderosamente vivo, Schama explora las personalidades de los artistas y el espíritu de los tiempos en los que vivieron, capturando el extravagante teatro de la vida burguesa en Amsterdam, la pasion y la paranoia del Paris revolucionario o la carniceria y el patetismo en la España de la Guerra Civil.

Abarcando dos siglo, cruzando el imperio en toda su amplitud y cubriendo una vasta extensión de temas, desde el nacimiento del feminismo hasta el destino del feminismo hasta el destino de las libertades, Schama explora las fuerzas que han dado forma a la cultura y el caracter britanicos desde 1776 hasta 2000.La historia comienza con una sangrienta revolucion, pero no una revolucion britanica. El espiritu de acalorado desafio de la Revolucion Francesa y el idealismo romantico provocaron un ciclo de revoluciones radicales y reformas que cobraban fuerza a medida que finalizaba el siglo: desde la revolucion irlandesa hasta la peticion cartista ¿Como podia la sociedad de la primera industrializacion mundial superar las heridas provocadas por su propio crecimiento sin desmoronarse en forma de enfrentamientos sociales y politicos? ¿Podria la maquina del tiempo destruir o limitar las instituciones que mantenian a Gran Bretaña unida? Y, si el Imperio Britanico permitia que Gran Bretaña se mantuviera estable y rica, ¿cumpliria su promesa de ayudar a quienes debian cumplir las reglas asi como lo hacia con quienes las dictaban? Entre los conflictos militares y economicos del siglo XX y a traves de las voces de Churchill, Orwell y H.G. Wells, The Fate of Empire, plantea la pregunta que todavia nos acompaña: el inmenso peso de nuestra historia, ¿es una bendicion o una maldicion, un regalo o un lastre para nuestro futuro?

The journeys that people, rivers, landscapes and even stone take through space and time are central to this book. An account of a cairn built on the crest of a small hill at the entrance to the village in Scotland where Andy Goldsworthy lives reveals the importance of his work close to home, which is the inspiration for so much that he then creates elsewhere. Three cairns similar to the one in Scotland now span the United States, marking the artist''s own journey across the States as well as the culmination of a form that has played a significant element in his work for the last twenty years. The vigorous beauty of Goldsworthy''s work and its connection to death and decay are articulated in a series of works with elm trees. Made next to a small river in the south west of Scotland, the works range from glowing yellow leaves to dead branches that celebrate the life cycle of the elm. The flow and passage of time are explored and strongly expressed by Goldsworthy''s works relating to water. Over the past few years the artist has developed an almost obsessive need to work alongside rivers and the sea.Ephemeral works made on the beach and in rivers change and disappear in response to the ebb and flow of water. Passage includes Goldsworthy''s most recent commission, the Garden of Stones at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. Eighteen granite boulders, varying in weight from three to fifteen tons, were hollowed out from below with a thermal lance and filled with earth. Oak trees were planted through a small hole in the top of each stone at a ceremony participated in by several Holocaust survivors. These trees, not just surviving but growing in an almost impossible situation, have powerful associations in a garden intended as a Holocaust Memorial.

"History clings tight but it also kicks loose" writes Simon Schama at the outset of this, his first volume of his epic two volume journey into Britain's past "Disruption as much as persistence is its proper subject. So although the great theme of British history seen from the twentieth century is endurance, it's counterpoint seen from the twenty-first must be alteration." Change - sometimes gentle and subtle sometimes shocking and violent - is the dynamic of Schama's unapologetically personal, grippingly written history, especially the changes that wash over custom and habit, transforming our loyalties. At the heart of his history lies a question of compelling importance for our future as well as our past: what makes or breaks a nation: to whom we give our allegiance and why? And where do the boundaries of our community lie - in our hearth and home, our village or city, tribe or faith? What is Britain, one country or many, one culture or several? Has British history unfolded "at the edge of the world" or right at the heart of it? (...)

Depicts exactly what life was like for those who lived so long ago and how their experiences have consequently shaped modern British culture and identity.

"While Britain was losing an empire it was finding itself". Award-winning historian Simon Schama completes his monumental three-volume history of Britain, which accompanies the acclaimed television epic. In The Fate of Empire, Schama illuminates the period of British history from 1770 to 2000 through a variety of historical themes and key British characters. Britain never had the kind of revolution experienced by France in 1789, but it did come close. In the mid-1770s the country was intoxicated by a great surge of political energy. Re-discovering England''s wildernesses, the intellectuals of the ''Romantic generation'' also discovered the plight of the common man, turning Nature into a revolutionary force. This power of the cult of nature enabled two things - to make man see and explore Britain in a way unimaginable a generation before, and to pit democrat cosmopolitans against patriots. From the politics of wildness, A History of Britain moves to the Victorian era and it''s question of how to create a better world in the face of upheaval. As the Victorian era began, the massive advance of technology and industrialisation was rapidly reshaping both the landscape and the social structure of the whole country. To a much greater extent than ever before women would take a centre stage role in shaping society. From political campaigners like Harriet Stuart Mill to writers like Elizabeth Gaskell whose novels highlighted the plight of the industrial working class and Mary Seacole, the heroine and nurse of the Crimea War, ''Victoria''s sisters'' would from now on ensure that it was no longer purely a man''s world. (...)

This splendid and often moving work of history Schama has a gift for combining novelistically colourful detail serious analysis and wryly amusing asides Daily Telegraph Superb Observer Extraordinary A meticulous retelling of a terrible yet scientifically innovative period Makes an urgent case for building a better future on our toxic past Guardian This is history of the best sort humanly engaged but never sentimental Mail on Sunday Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring This is what the world has just gone through with Covid 19 But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science it has happened before Characteristically with Schama the message is delivered through gripping page turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries smallpox strikes London cholera hits Paris plague comes to India Threading through the scenes of terror suffering and hope in hospitals and prisons palaces and slums are an unforgettable cast of characters a philosopher playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax a woman doctor in

This splendid and often moving work of history Schama has a gift for combining novelistically colourful detail serious analysis and wryly amusing asides Daily Telegraph Superb Observer Extraordinary A meticulous retelling of a terrible yet scientifically innovative period Makes an urgent case for building a better future on our toxic past Guardian This is history of the best sort humanly engaged but never sentimental Mail on Sunday Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring This is what the world has just gone through with Covid 19 But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science it has happened before Characteristically with Schama the message is delivered through gripping page turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries smallpox strikes London cholera hits Paris plague comes to India Threading through the scenes of terror suffering and hope in hospitals and prisons palaces and slums are an unforgettable cast of characters a philosopher playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax a woman doctor in

El prestigioso historiador del siglo de Oro holandés, el genial intérprete del paisaje y la memoria europea, el agudo cronista de la Revolución Francesa, el sutil biógrafo de Rembrandt, aparece en este libro como guia y mentor del gran publico en todo lo