More than a billion people watched the 9/11 World Trade Center destruction unfold on television, making it the greatest shared event in world history. Reflecting this fact, the 2003 World Trade Center Memorial Design Competition was open to anyone, drawing 5,201 entries from 60 countries, all of which were posted online. Most designs were the greyscale hardscape of typical memorials. A few were radically imaginative. Some engaged memory with sound, color, movement, technology or visitor participation. Others reached across the globe, cyberspace, even outer space. These imaginings stirred questions about their creators. Who were they? What were they thinking and feeling? How did the concept develop? This book, based on a first ever review of the entries, tells the personal stories of more than 180 designers whose creative perspective translated an horrific event, giving deeper thought to the relation of memorial spaces to history, geography, technology and cultural diversity.

Gerrit de Waal’s world is thrown into confusion when his seafaring father’s ship mysteriously disappears in the Indian Ocean in 1694. He’s eight years old and growing up in cosmopolitan Middelburg, Zeeland, during the Dutch Golden Age. How will he survive to adulthood? At twenty-six, determined to find out what happened to his father, Gerrit signs on as senior carpenter aboard the Zuytdorp. He wants to trace his father’s footsteps and see if he can be found. What if his ship was wrecked off the coast of Eendrachtsland? (Known to us as Western Australia.) Gerrit will do anything to see if the crew survived. Brilliant glass technician Stefan Novak uses the notes, charts and sketches of his friend, celebrated Aboriginal Australian sculptor Lennard Currie, to write a novel based on Gerrit’s life. Lennard has researched the de Waal family and believes that his family tree intertwines with theirs. The Life and Times of Gerrit de Waal is Book Two in The Truth and Reconciliation Trilogy.

Throughout human history, people have imagined inanimate objects to have intelligence, language, and even souls. In our secular societies today, we still willingly believe that nonliving objects have lives of their own as we find ourselves interacting with computers and other equipment. In On the Animation of the Inorganic, Spyros Papapetros examines ideas about simulated movement and inorganic life during and after the turn of the twentieth century—a period of great technical innovation whose effects continue to reverberate today. Exploring key works of art historians such as Aby Warburg, Wilhelm Worringer, and Alois Riegl, as well as architects and artists like Fernand Léger, Mies van der Rohe, and Salvador Dalí, Papapetros tracks the evolution of the problem of animation from the fin de siècle through the twentieth century. He argues that empathy—the ability to identify with objects of the external world—was repressed by twentieth-century modernist culture, but it returned, projected onto inorganic objects such as machines, automobiles, and crystalline skyscrapers. These modern artifacts, he demonstrates, vibrated with energy, life, and desire of their own and had profound effects on people. Subtle and insightful, this book will change how we view modernist art, architecture, and their histories.

A GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 100 BEST BOOKS OF 2022 • SHORTLISTED FOR THE AMAZON CANADA FIRST NOVEL AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE A failed musician obsessed with avant-garde art enters a shadowy world where bohemian excess meets the avaricious interests of a real estate cabal. Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on the love of art, he’s ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he moves to Toronto, he is forced into a monkish existence by the unforgiving pressures of the city — until he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective that could be his ticket to a better job and a better life. Desperate to prove himself as a journalist, Alexander chases answers that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, moving ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals, creative megalomania, and finance capitalism, where avant-garde art is simply another mask for big money. In order to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he will have to confront his own most sordid desires and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life. A RARE MACHINES BOOK

This accessible study is the first critical investigation of the cult of saints among Muslims and Jews in medieval Syria and the Near East. Through case studies of saints and their devotees, discussion of the architecture of monuments, examination of devotional objects, and analysis of ideas of 'holiness', Meri depicts the practices of living religion and explores the common heritage of all three monotheistic faiths. Critical readings of a wide range of contemporary sources - travel writing, geographical works, pilgrimage guides, legal writings, historical sources, hagiography, and biography - reveal a vibrant religious culture in which the veneration of saints and pilgrimage to tombs and shrines were fundamental.

First published in 2000, J. R. Edmondson's The Alamo Story: From Early History to Current Conflicts thoroughly examines the famous "Shrine of Texas Liberty" from its origin as a Spanish New World mission to its modern status. It has been lauded as the “best" and "most readable” of all historical accounts devoted to the legendary mission-fortress. The original edition has been celebrated for over twenty years for its comprehensive approach to Alamo scholarship and for presenting the famous battle in the context of both American and Mexican history. This second edition of The Alamo Story includes new information about the battle and those involved, including expanded stories on the roles of minorities and some illustrations by noted artist Mark Lemon. The book also features a new chapter on Benjamin Rush Milam's assault on San Antonio with only three hundred Texians, the battle that set the stage for the siege of the Alamo less than three months later. And there is an extensive epilogue on the present-day conflicts about the physical Alamo compound, as historic preservationists clash with political and popular opinions in San Antonio.

Toronto has over 600 public outdoor sculptures, works of art that provide a sense of the rich variety of life and work in the city, its peoples, cultures and aspirations. Interest in commissioning public sculpture began slowly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but increased rapidly after the 1950s.This is a book about the sculptures and how they disclose the city to itself. Creating Memory’s two introductory sections examine the factors behind this expansion over time and the changes in style as one generation of sculptors succeeded another. It looks at the reasons behind the changes as sculptures were conceived, sculpted and erected. More than 10 categories of sculptures are defined and discussed, including Founding the City, Natural Environment, Immigration, Ethnic Groups, Economic Activities, Disaster and Calamity, War And Conflict, Leaders, Ordinary Citizens, Community Life, and Works of the Imagination.

This book brings together essays which, in diverse ways, not only revise exisitng views on thirties writing, but also provide ways of accounting for its critical neglect. The essays examine, f0orm a variety of theoretical and critical perspectives, a body of work that reflects the true diversity of the literary and cultural contexts of the thirties, and includes studies on the work of Louis MacNeice, Frank Sheed, Christopher Dawson, Alick West, Christopher Caudwell, Stevie Smith, Storm Jameson, Phyllis Bottome, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, George Orwell, Christina Stead, Randall Swingler, and Ralph Fox.

From the colonial history in the streets of the Rocks neighborhood, to Aboriginal art in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a visit to the iconic Sydney Opera House, to climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge-this easy-to-use guide provides all the information you need. Just beyond Sydney, discover landscapes of outstanding beauty, such as the Royal National Park, the Blue Mountains, and the vineyards of the Hunter Valley. Plus there are suggestions for scenic walking and driving tours and for the best shops, markets, bars, and restaurants in Sydney. Discover DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sydney. + Hotel and restaurant listings and recommendations. + Detailed itineraries and "don't-miss" destination highlights at a glance. + Illustrated cutaway 3-D drawings of important sights. + Floor plans and guided visitor information for major museums. + Guided walking tours, local drink and dining specialties to try, things to do, and places to eat, drink, and shop by area. + Area maps marked with sights and restaurants. + Detailed city maps include street finder index for easy navigation. + Insights into history and culture to help you understand the stories behind the sights. + Suggested day-trips and itineraries to explore beyond the city. With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that illuminate every page, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sydney truly shows you this city as no one else can.