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Lula is among the greatest political figures in Brazilian history. The only president in the country with a working-class background, combined with a party that was profoundly original in its roots, he exercised charismatic power and influence in a more lasting way than any other public figure in the republican period. Since 2011, Fernando Morais, one of Brazil's leading writers, has gained direct, frank and frequent access to Lula. To these dozens of hours of testimonies, he has added a reporter's flair and captivating prose to compose a biography that paints a picture in all its grandeur and complexity. In a narrative that makes use of flashforwards and flashbacks to maintain an electrifying pace, Morais goes from Lula's childhood to the annulment of his convictions, in 2021 - passing through the new unionism, the ABC strikes, the foundation of the PT and the first election campaign.
"In this fascinating volume, [the author] describes and illustrates 250 of the most remarkable villas, some well-known houses, others generally overlooked, covering a span of more than half a millennium, from the Renaissance to the present. Presented here are panoramas as well as details of grand country villas, magnificent suburban estates, appealing vacation houses, and captivating artist's homes, each with its own charm and history, and each of which is part of a style that is important in our century. The illustrations and text by Ovidio Guaita, representing decades of work, are organized by region, north to south from Piedmont and Venice to Sicily. Enriching the coverage each chapter includes a profile of a personality - architect, builder, artist or patron - whose work has had a lasting influence on the style of the villa. Supplementing the color photographs of exteriors and interiors are architectural drawings of houses and maps. The appendices offer a glossary, a bibliography, and a listing of villas that may be visited"--Bookjacket.
Everything started from that day. The memory of 31 August 1969 has been at the back of Commissario Michele Balistreri's mind for over four decades. It was not only the day that preceded Colonel Muammar Gadaffi's seizure of power in Balistreri's birthplace of Libya, drastically altering his and his country's destiny, but that on which his beloved mother Natalia fell to her death, and the resulting suicide verdict that Balistreri - now Head of Homicide in Rome - has always suspected to be a flagrant cover-up for her murder. The memory of 23 July 2006 has been at the front of investigative journalist Linda Nardi's mind for the past five years. Ever since her and Balistreri together thwarted a p...
Scholarly and innovative with visually stunning line drawings and photographs, this volume provides readers with a compelling record of the unbroken pattern of reciprocal use and exchange between the countryside and the walled city of Florence, from the thirteenth century up to the present day. Defying the traditional and idealized interpretation of the Florentine Villa, the author: analyzes the economic factors that powered the investment in and building of country houses and estates from the early Renaissance times onwards, as well as the ideology and the architectural and literary models that promoted the Florentine villa explores the area between Florence and Sesto in its history, morphology and representation looks at the villas existing in the area. A contribution to the protection of the important cultural heritage of the landscape in the Florentine area and of its historic buildings, villas and gardens, this study makes engaging reading, not only for scholars and students in architecture, landscape design and social history, but also for the well informed reader interested in art, architecture and gardens.
"This book adds an entirely new dimension to the consideration of Humanism and Italian culture. It will make a welcome addition to the field of cultural studies by broadening the subject to consider an important source of information that has been previously overlooked." -- Timothy McGee The Eloquent Body offers a history and analysis of court dancing during the Renaissance, within the context of Italian Humanism. Each chapter addresses different philosophical, social, or intellectual aspects of dance during the 15th century. Some topics include issues of economic class, education, and power; relating dance treatises to the ideals of Humanism and the meaning of the arts; ideas of the body as they relate to elegance, nobility, and ethics; the intellectual history of dance based on contemporaneous readings of Pythagoras and Plato; and a comparison of geometric dance structures to geometric order in Humanist architecture.
Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey traces the influence of Pliny the Younger as a continuous theme throughout the history of architecture. First he looks at what Pliny considered to be the essential qualities of a villa. He then discusses the many buildings Pliny inspired: from the Renaissance estates of the Medici, to papal summer residences near Rome, to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and the home of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Equally important to du Prey's study are the many designs by architects past and present that remain on paper. These imaginary restitutions of Pliny's villas, each representative of its own epoch, trace in microcosm the evolution of the classical tradition in domestic architecture. In analyzing each project, du Prey illuminates the work of such great masters as Michelozzo, Raphael, Palladio, and Schinkel, as well as such well-known modern architects as Léon Krier, Jean-Pierre Adam, and Thomas Gordon Smith.
A little boy and his grandfather embark on a quest to find the old man's missing birthday in Diana Rosie's debut novel, Alberto's Lost Birthday. Alberto is an old man. But he doesn't know how old - he remembers nothing before his arrival at an orphanage during the Spanish civil war. He rarely thinks about his missing childhood, but when seven-year-old Tino discovers his grandfather has never had a birthday party, never blown out candles on a birthday cake, never received a single birthday present, he's determined things should change. And so the two set out to find Alberto's birthday. Their search for the old man's memories takes them deep into the heart of Spain - a country that has pledged to forget its painful past. As stories of courage, cruelty and love unfold, Alberto realises that he has lost more than a birthday. He has lost a part of himself. But with his grandson's help, he might just find it again.