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Greetings from Amazon.co.uk Delivers Arts & Music
Editor, Catherine Taylor

FEATURED IN THIS E-MAIL:
* Bestsellers of 1999
* Editor's Choice: Best of the Year
* Preview of 2000

***BESTSELLERS OF 1999***
"Century:One Hundred Years of Human Progress, Regression,
Suffering and Hope 1899-1999"
by Bruce Bernard
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0714838489/entertainments08
The 20th century, more than any other, has forced society to
record and bear witness to the mundane and momentous events of
history. The huge impact that photography has had on the
recording of the last 100 years is stunningly realised in Bruce
Bernard's "Century", a massive chronicle consisting of 1,100
images which take us from the trenches of World War One to the
first explorations of space in the 1960s and the conflict in the
Balkans in the closing years of the millennium.

"Monet in the 20th Century"
by Paul Hayes Tucker, et al
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300077491/entertainments08
The companion volume to the 24-hour exhibition held at London's
Royal Academy in Spring 1999, "Monet in the 20th Century" is a
spellbinding history, containing 12 fold-out plates of the famous
"Waterlilies" series, that ably places Claude Monet and his late
works in the context of the shattering political upheavals of his
time.

"Women"
by Annie Leibovitz
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0224060465/entertainments08
Annie Leibovitz, who in her time has photographed hundreds of
celebrities, turns her lens on a wide range of ordinary and
extraordinary female subjects: Coal miners, socialites, First
Ladies, artists, domestic-violence victims, an astronaut, a
surgeon and a maid. What she creates mirrors both women's
accomplishments and the challenges they still face individually
and as a group.

"This is Modern Art"
by Matthew Collings
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0297842927/entertainments08
Written to accompany the television series of the same name,
Matthew Collings has produced an in-your-face guide to modern
art from Goya's "Disasters of War" to Gillian Wearing's
prize-winning video of the police. Along the way Collings
addresses the questions that have both defined and plagued
responses to modern art, including its desire to shock, its
questionable aesthetic value, its humour and its blankness.

"Victorian Painting"
by Lionel Lambourne
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0714837768/entertainments08
"Scratch a cynic and you will always find a sentimentalist" says
Lionel Lambourne with regard to Victorian genre painting. With
500 pages of sparkling, appreciative text and gorgeously
reproduced paintings, an excellent introductory overview, and a
division into 21 chapters "Victorian Painting" is a
tour-de-force of scholarship served up with style.

***EDITOR'S CHOICE: BEST OF THE YEAR***
"Rembrandt's Eyes"
by Simon Schama
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0713993847/entertainments08
In "Rembrandt's Eyes" Simon Schama--the leading historical
craftsman of our era, with a career-long commitment to Dutch
history--succeeds with consummate skill in bringing the heroic
painter of such masterpieces as "The Night Watch" and "Portrait
of Jan Six" vividly to life again. Schama recreates Rembrandt's
life and times with all the verve and panache of a historical
novelist, whilst never for an instant losing his scrupulous grip
on recorded fact and detail.

"India"
by Don McCullin
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0224050893/entertainments08
"If I had eternal life I would do eternal books about India"
claims Don McCullin. His astonishing collection of images of the
country are consistently compelling, haunting and arresting.
Beggars, lepers, traders, the sick and the dying all stare back
at us, imbued by McCullin with an extraordinary aura of humanity
and dignity in the midst of despair and degradation.

"Full Moon"
by Michael Light
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0224051288/entertainments08
To mark the 30th anniversary of the first landing on the moon,
the Hayward Gallery in London held an exhibition in Summer 1999
of a selection of those photographs under the title "Full Moon".
Artist and photographer Michael Light has drawn on Nasa's huge
archive to put together an archetypal lunar journey in images,
from take-off to landing.

***PREVIEW OF 2000***
"Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence"
by Laura Claridge
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747548803/entertainments08
Art Deco artist Tamara de Lempicka seemed too glamorous to be a
serious painter. Even in the years of her greatest success, 1925
to 1935, the luscious colours and highly wrought finishes of her
portraits linked Lempicka more closely to the Italian Renaissance
painters she revered than to her Cubist contemporaries. Laura
Claridge's biography skilfully blends art history with
psychoanalysis and shows that nothing really cramped Lempicka's
style or dedication to her art.

"The Oxford History of Western Art"
by Martin Kemp
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198600127/entertainments08
A series of stories, told from varying viewpoints, "The Oxford
History of Western Art" redefines traditional period boundaries
and is a vibrant, vigorous and revolutionary account of Western
art serving both as an inspirational introduction for the
general reader and an authoritative source of reference and
guidance for students.

"John Ruskin"
by Tim Hilton
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300083114/entertainments08
2000 sees the centenary of the death of John Ruskin, the major
social and art critic of the 19th century, who championed the
paintings of Turner among others. Tim Hilton's new biography
assesses the life of the man whom philosopher John Stuart Mill
called "the only original English thinker of his day."

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