Cultural studies

Japanese Sumi-e brush painting combines the techniques of calligraphy and ink painting to produce compositions of rare beauty. This art has its roots in the Zen Buddhist practices of mindfulness and meditation-serving as a means not just for describing...

Whether your character is jumping for joy, kicking and grappling with an opponent, or fighting to the death with sword in hand, this book provides all the essential techniques to draw more lifelike action figures in the classic Japanese manga style...

Whether you're planning a trip to Japan, or are just interested in manga, anime and Japanese pop culture, let Otaku Japan Travel Guide transport you to the global capital of cool! If you're crazy about manga, anime, gaming, cosplay,...

Tokyo is an amazing world unto itself-a city for lovers of manga and anime, great food and fashion that mixes the best of old and new. In Cool Tokyo Guide renowned graphic artist Abby Denson takes you on a personal tour of Tokyo's coolest sites...

Tokyo is ground zero for Japan's popular "Geek" or otaku culture-a phenomenon that has now swept across the globe.This is the most comprehensive guide ever produced to Tokyo's geeky underworld. It provides a comprehensive run-down on each major Tokyo...

Jaded and adrift, a young painter in New York joins his fate to a mercurial titan of industry in the hopes of finding a newartisticform-and quite possibly a new life.Cutting-edge intoxicants, thevagariesof desire, andan obscureart magazine with unlimited...

What is slime? We are well acquainted with its qualities in conjunction with certain things from which we tend to recoil but to which we are also at times fervently attracted. Despite being everywhere, slime is a surprisingly unexamined cultural...

Discover the magic and mysticism of bells around the world, including their political and religious power, their musicality, and their familiarity in daily life.We live in a world of bells but seldom notice them. However, bells have existed in all...

Pairing history's 100 greatest rock stars with recipes for their iconic drink of choice, How to Drink Like a Rock Star is the perfect guide to summoning the muse for music fans, rock and roll bartenders, and cocktail enthusiasts.Have you longed for a...

A pioneer of cloud computing and big data offers his vision of the future world taking shape around us.Jian Wang was the founder and architect of Alibaba's cloud and has been the driving force behind its technology innovations. He was also the founder of...

This 1000 piece puzzle features art from upcoming video-game expansion, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands from Blizzard Entertainment!

Something stirs in the dark...The second volume of The Art of Hearthstone dives deep into the depths of the Year of the Kraken, the first year of Hearthstone's standard format. Consisting of hundreds of illustrations from the corruptive cults of Whispers...

Co-founder of Rhino Records, Harold Bronson, tells his story. As a passionate music fan who explored the British music scene and met many of the performers whose music he loved, and in some cases got to know them as a music journalist, music executive,...

The diminutive co-founder of Code Pink has become famous for fearlessly tackling head-on subjects the left and right studiously avoid. Sometimes, she does so in person--as at President Obama's speech at the National Defense College, or in Egypt, where...

The manifesto that launched the Situationist International (SI) into the public eye and sparked an uprising is back-with the story of its creation and the histories of its publication told like never before.When the Situationist International was a...

A collection of powerful BIPOC voices who offer a range of anticolonial, Indigenous, and Black Radical traditions to think with.We must, as For Antifascist Futures urges, take antifascism as a major imperative of movements for social change. But we must...

Noir meets diverse voices and transforms the genre into an over-the-top, transcendental psychedelic thriller ride of pulpy goodness in THE OBAMA INHERITANCE, a collection of fifteen stories of conspiracy noir curated by editor and award-winning...

Character Design Quarterly 14 is a creative, bright, and engaging magazine for artists, animators, illustrators, and character designers of all levels.Character Design Quarterly is a lively, creative magazine bringing inspiration, expert...

Following the enormous success of her first art book, Loish returns with an inspiring book dedicated to her beautiful sketches.  The Sketchbook of Loish offers readers a unique look into Loish's creative processes and idea generation, providing...

Bangladesh is a lush, green country situated on the fertile Ganges delta, adjacent to the Indian state of West Bengal. Although there are hilly areas in the northeast, this densely populated country is mostly flat, and criss-crossed by many rivers. Much...

Kazakhstan, one of the largest countries on earth, was long hidden from the rest of the world behind the Iron Curtain, and continued to remain unnoticed among the stans of Central Asia that gained independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s...

Afghanistan is situated at the crossroads of Asia, a strategically important location that connects the Middle East with Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Down the ages it has been subjected to continuous foreign invasion and intervention from...

The country is besieged by bad news, but despite the political turmoil the everyday life of its people is more stable, rich, and rewarding than the media headlines would lead you to believe. A myriad local festivals and celebrations and a vibrant...

The Serbs are proud, passionate, and generous people with an independent streak. Since they first entered the region as warrior tribes allied with the Byzantine Empire, they have always had to fight for survival against powerful enemies, including the...

The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is comprised of two Caribbean islands and several islets off the coast of Venezuela. The vast majority of the population live on Trinidad, previously a colony of shifting ownership from Spain to France, Netherlands and...

This island nation is a very new society, forged over the past three centuries. Although similar in many ways to neighboring Reunion and the Seychelles where there is also a mixed population of African and Indian ancestry, Mauritius actually has a much...

Culture Smart! Armenia explains how to avoid cultural gaffes when out and about in the country. Giving the historical, political and cultural background, the guide reveals how to read body language and be aware of potential pitfalls in communication, and

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country of contradictions, where East meets West, and where several ideologies have come together to evolve into a vibrant, diverse culture. While there may be much that the Western visitor will find familiar in the day-to-day...

In this small and beautiful country, sea and mountains are within easy reach, and there is a great diversity of landscape, mentality, and lifestyles. Its rich and turbulent history can be traced back to ancient times, to long before the Greeks and Romans...

For a nation of around 1.3 million inhabitants, Estonia has made a real impression on the world stage since regaining its independence less than two decades ago. In the mid-1980s, it was known, if at all, as a Soviet backwater, but the collapse of...

Arriving in Panama, the broad cultural and ethnic diversity of this small country is one of its most outstanding and attractive attributes, and is reflected in its many customs. There is not just the beauty of the countryside to be discovered, but the...

The Bodleian Library is home to treasures from every corner of the globe that mark major milestones in cultural history. This book contains twenty-six pull-out postcards-one for each letter of the alphabet-each featuring a rare or beautiful manuscript...

How should men and women embark on a new relationship? Is it acceptable to flirt? Should one ever kiss in a canoe? What is the ideal age gap for marriage? What gifts are appropriate for a fiancee? How should one announce an engagement? Aimed at the...

Shepherd Mead, bestselling author of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, came to live in England with his family in 1958. Six years later he published a satirical handbook for fellow Americans to guide them through the nuances of British...

Detroit 67 is the story of Motor City in the year that changed everything. Twelve chapters take you on a turbulent year-long journey through the drama and chaos that ripped through the city in 1967 and tore it apart in personal, political and interracial...

More than 80 years before the invention of Coca-Cola, sweet carbonated drinks became popular around the world, provoking remarkably similar arguments that they do today. Are they medicinally, morally, culturally or nutritionally good or bad? They have...

When we eat, we eat the world: taking something from outside and making it part of us. But what does it taste of? And can we develop our taste? In Taste, Sarah Worth argues that taste is a sense that needs educating, for the real pleasures of eating only...

This is a global history of hummus bi-tahina, the delicious combination of chickpeas, tahini, lemon and garlic that we know and love as hummus. The story begins in the medieval kitchens of the near and middle east and ends with its rise in popularity in...

From hand-knitted mittens to exquisitely embroidered confections and Bluetooth-enabled gloves that function like a mobile phone, the extraordinary variety of gloves is a tribute to human ingenuity. So, too, is the diversity of their often contradictory...

Spanning 65,000 years, this book provides a history of food in Australia from its beginnings, with the arrival of the first peoples and their stewardship of the land, to a present where the production and consumption of food is fraught with anxieties and...

Whether they make it themselves or just enjoy it with breakfast, people can be passionate about their favourite jam, jelly or marmalade. Award-winning jam-maker Sarah B. Hood looks at the history of these sweet treats from simple fruit preserves to...

Sushi and sashimi are by now a global sensation and have become perhaps the best known of Japanese foods but they are also the most widely misunderstood. Oishii: The History of Sushi reveals that sushi began as a fermented food with a sour taste, used as...

Fermented Foods serves up the history and science behind some of the world's most enduring food and drink. It begins with wine, beer and other heady brews before going on to explore the often whimsical histories of fermented breads, dairy,...

All aboard for a delicious ride on nine legendary railway journeys! Meals associated with train travel have been an important aspect of railway history for more than a century - from dinners in dining cars to lunches at station buffets to foods purchased...

Mondo: The Art of Soundtracks highlights all the original art created exclusively for Mondo's vinyl releases by world-renowned artists for film, television, and video game soundtracks.Featuring stunning new takes on classic and modern material,...

For fans of sci-fi, cinematic art books and the Alien film franchise.40 artists, filmmakers, illustrators and fans produce original art for a tribute to the sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the film.Pieces range from...

Don't just see the sights? get to know the people.Peru's distinctive Spanish and indigenous cultures that first encountered each other five hundred years ago have progressively integrated. However, the ongoing process of mixing raises questions...

Japan has produced thousands of intriguing video games. For any number of reasons, not all of them were ever released outside of the country, especially in the '80s and '90s. While many of these titles have since been documented by the English-speaking...