Bibliotheca Universalis

In a fleeting 14-year period between two world wars, Germany's Bauhaus school of art and design changed the face of modernity. With utopian ideas for the future, the school developed a pioneering fusion of fine art, craftsmanship,…

The Hermetic Museum takes readers on a magical mystery tour spanning an arc from the medieval cosmogram and images of Christian mysticism, through the fascinating world of alchemy to the art of the Romantic era. The enigmatic hier…

Drawn from TASCHEN's Illustration Now! series, this go-to catalog brings together 100 of the most successful and important illustrators around the globe. With featured artists including Istvan Banyai, Gary Baseman, Seymour Chwast,…

From the eccentric museum La Specola in Florence comes this amazing collection of waxworks depicting human anatomy in all its dazzling complexity. A selection of wax bodies and body part and organ studies from the museum's collect…

Antiquarian, archaeologist, vulcanologist, and envoy to the British Embassy in Naples, Sir William Hamilton (1731-1803) was a leading European figure of his time. Though the romance between his wife Lady Emma Hamilton and Horatio …

Photographs have a strange and powerful way of shaping the way we see the world. The most successful images enter our collective consciousness, defining eras, making history, or simply touching something so fundamentally human and…

English photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is a pioneer in visual studies of human and animal locomotion. In 1872, he famously helped settle a bet for former California governor Leland Stanford by photographing a gallopin…

Photographer, teacher, and sociologist Lewis W. Hine (1874-1940) shaped our consciousness of American working life in the early 20th century like no other. Combining his training as an educator with his humanist concerns, Hine was…

If you take even the slightest interest in the design of your toothbrush, the history behind your washing machine, or the evolution of the telephone, you'll take an even greater interest in this completely updated edition of Indus…

Clothes define people. A person's attire, whether it's a sari, kimono, or business suit, is an essential code to his or her culture, class, personality, even faith. Founded in 1978, the Kyoto Costume Institute recognizes the impor…

Alex Steinweiss (1917-2011) invented the album cover as we know it. In 1940, as Columbia Records' young new art director, he pitched an idea: why not replace the standard plain brown wrapper with an eye-catching illustration? The …

Ever since Henry David Thoreau's described his two years, two months, and two days of cabin existence at Walden Pond, Massachusetts in Walden, or, Life in the Woods (1854), the idea of a refuge dwelling has seduced the modern psyc…

Get ready to quake in fear with this revised and expanded edition of our history of horror cinema. This chilling volume packs 640 pages full with the finest slashers, ghosts, zombies, cannibals, and more, curating the very creepie…

No other artist, apart from J. M. W. Turner, tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840-1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cezanne called "only an eye, but my God what an eye!" who stayed t…

Very few artists can claim such lasting and worldwide fame and importance as Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). The nickname il divino ("the divine one") has been applied to him since the 1530s right through to today: his achiev…

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. Literally meaning "pictures of the floating world," ukiyo-e was a particular genre of art that flourished between the 17th and 19th centurie…

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's (1841-1919) timelessly charming paintings still reflect our ideals of happiness, love, and beauty. Derived from our large-format volume, the most comprehensive retrospective of his work published to date, t…

South of the border, rich colors and woven textiles form a unique design aesthetic, crafted by the union of local Aztec and Mayan cultures and Spanish influences. Bold pigments and vivid patterns come together in simple and rustic…

Under the burning Tuscan sun roll marvelous hills, vineyards, and olive groves-all postcard-perfect landscapes nestling centuries-old towns, rural villas, and contadino farmhouses. We've tracked down the best examples of such have…

In 1968, when Stanley Kubrick was asked to comment on the metaphysical significance of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he replied: "It's not a message I ever intended to convey in words. 2001 is a nonverbal experience... I tried to create …

On December 15, 1868, Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794-1868), Professor of Botany at the University of Munich and director of the Royal Botanic Garden, was carried to his grave in a coffin covered with fresh palm leaves. T…