Most Popular Books by Ross King

New York Times bestselling author Ross King''s biography Machiavelli is "a convincing portrait of one of the most misunderstood thinkers of all time."* The author of The Prince—his controversial handbook on power, which is one of the most influential books ever written—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was no prince himself. Born to an established middle-class family, Machiavelli worked as a courtier and diplomat for the Republic of Florence and enjoyed some small fame in his time as the author of bawdy plays and poems. In this discerning biography, Ross King rescues Machiavelli''s legacy from caricature, detailing the vibrant political and social context that influenced his thought and underscoring the humanity of one of history''s finest political thinkers. "Provides a strong sense of the history of both the man and his times and a nice introduction to Machiavelli''s writings. Moreover, like one of Machiavelli''s bawdy plays, it is a riveting and exhilarating read, full of salacious details and brisk prose." — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "An engaging, revealing biography and a vivid portrait of a city-state in turmoil." — Financial Times

From the acclaimed author of Brunelleschi''s Dome and Leonardo and the Last Supper, the riveting story of how Michelangelo, against all odds, created the masterpiece that has ever since adorned the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Despite having completed his masterful statue David four years earlier, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and none with challenging curved surfaces such as the Sistine ceiling''s vaults. The temperamental Michelangelo was himself reluctant: He stormed away from Rome, incurring Julius''s wrath, before he was eventually persuaded to begin. Michelangelo and the Pope''s Ceiling recounts the fascinating story of the four extraordinary years he spent laboring over the twelve thousand square feet of the vast ceiling, while war and the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. A panorama of illustrious figures intersected during this time-the brilliant young painter Raphael, with whom Michelangelo formed a rivalry; the fiery preacher Girolamo Savonarola and the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus; a youthful Martin Luther, who made his only trip to Rome at this time and was disgusted by the corruption all around him. Ross King blends these figures into a magnificent tapestry of day-to-day life on the ingenious Sistine scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early-sixteenth-century Italy, while also offering uncommon insight into the connection between art and history.

Another fascinating book by the author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling: a saga of artistic rivalry and cultural upheaval in the decade leading to the birth of Impressionism. If there were two men who were absolutely central to artistic life in France in the second half of the nineteenth century, they were Edouard Manet and Ernest Meissonier. While the former has been labelled the “Father of Impressionism” and is today a household name, the latter has sunk into obscurity. It is difficult now to believe that in 1864, when this story begins, it was Meissonier who was considered the greatest French artist alive and who received astronomical sums for his work, while Manet was derided for his messy paintings of ordinary people and had great difficulty getting any of his work accepted at the all-important annual Paris Salon. Manet and Meissonier were the Mozart and Salieri of their day, one a dangerous challenge to the establishment, the other beloved by rulers and the public alike for his painstakingly meticulous oil paintings of historical subjects. Out of the fascinating story of their parallel careers, Ross King creates a lens through which to view the political tensions that dogged Louis-Napoleon during the Second Empire, his ignominious downfall, and the bloody Paris Commune of 1871. At the same time, King paints a wonderfully detailed and vivid portrait of life in an era of radical social change. When Manet painted Dejeuner sur l’herbe or Olympia, he shocked not only with his casual brushstrokes but with his subject matter: top-hatted white-collar workers (and their mistresses) were not considered suitable subjects for ‘Art.’ Ross King shows how, benign as they might seem today, these paintings changed the course of history. The struggle between Meissonier and Manet to see their paintings achieve pride of place at the Salon was not just about artistic competitiveness, it was about how to see the world. Full of fantastic tidbits of information and a colourful cast of characters that includes Baudelaire, Courbet and Zola, with walk-on parts for Monet, Renoir, Degas and Cezanne, The Judgment of Paris casts new light on the birth of Impressionism and takes us to the heart of a time in which the modern French identity was being forged.

For more than five centuries The Last Supper has been an artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark called it ''the keystone of European art'', and for a century after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. And yet there is a very human story behind this artistic ''miracle''. Ross King''s Leonardo and the Last Supper is both a ''biography'' of one of the most famous works of art ever painted and a record of Leonardo da Vinci''s last five years in Milan.

The New York Times bestselling, award winning story of the construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and the Renaissance genius who reinvented architecture to build it. On August 19, 1418, a competition concerning Florence''s magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore was announced: "Whoever desires to make any model or design for the vaulting of the main Dome....shall do so before the end of the month of September." The proposed dome was regarded far and wide as all but impossible to build: not only would it be enormous, but its original and sacrosanct design shunned the flying buttresses that supported cathedrals all over Europe. The dome would literally need to be erected over thin air. Of the many plans submitted, one stood out--a daring and unorthodox solution to vaulting what is still the largest dome in the world. It was offered not by a master mason or carpenter, but by a goldsmith and clockmaker named Filippo Brunelleschi, then forty-one, who would dedicate the next twenty-eight years to solving the puzzles of the dome''s construction. In the process, he reinvented the field of architecture. Brunelleschi''s Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Award-winning, bestselling author Ross King weaves this drama amid a background of the plagues, wars, political feuds, and the intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence to bring the dome''s creation to life in a fifteenth-century chronicle with twenty-first-century resonance.

From bestselling author Ross King, a brilliant portrait of the legendary artist and the story of his most memorable achievement. Claude Monet is perhaps the world''s most beloved artist, and among all his creations, the paintings of the water lilies in his garden at Giverny are most famous. Monet intended the water lilies to provide "an asylum of peaceful meditation." Yet, as Ross King reveals in his magisterial chronicle of both artist and masterpiece, these beautiful canvases belie the intense frustration Monet experienced in trying to capture the fugitive effects of light, water, and color. They also reflect the terrible personal torments Monet suffered in the last dozen years of his life. Mad Enchantment tells the full story behind the creation of the Water Lilies, as the horrors of World War I came ever closer to Paris and Giverny and a new generation of younger artists, led by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, were challenging the achievements of Impressionism. By early 1914, French newspapers were reporting that Monet, by then seventy-three, had retired his brushes. He had lost his beloved wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean. His famously acute vision--what Paul Cezanne called “the most prodigious eye in the history of painting”--was threatened by cataracts. And yet, despite ill health, self-doubt, and advancing age, Monet began painting again on a more ambitious scale than ever before. Linking great artistic achievement to the personal and historical dramas unfolding around it, Ross King presents the most intimate and revealing portrait of an iconic figure in world culture.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Brunelleschi''s Dome captures the Renaissance spirit in this biography of "the king of the world''s booksellers." During the Renaissance, Florence''s manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world. At the heart of this activity, which bestselling author Ross King relates in his exhilarating new book, was a remarkable man: Vespasiano da Bisticci. Born in 1422, he became what a friend called "the king of the world''s booksellers." At a time when all books were made by hand, Vespasiano produced and sold many hundreds of volumes from his bookshop, which also became a gathering spot for debate and discussion. His clients included a roll-call of popes, kings, and princes across Europe who wished to burnish their reputations by founding magnificent libraries. Vespasiano reached the summit of his powers as Europe''s most prolific merchant of knowledge when a new invention appeared: the printed book. By 1480, he was swept away by this epic technological disruption, whereby cheaply produced books reached readers who never could have afforded one of Vespasiano''s elegant manuscripts. A thrilling chronicle of intellectual ferment set against the dramatic political and religious turmoil of the era, Ross King''s brilliant The Bookseller of Florence is also an ode to books and bookmaking that charts the world-changing shift from script to print through the life of an extraordinary man long lost to history—one of the true titans of the Renaissance. "A dazzling, instructive and highly entertaining book." — The Wall Street Journal

Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries. As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold''s hunt for one of these stolen volumes - a lost Hermetic text - soon casts him into an elaborate intrigue; his fortunes hang on the discovery of the missing manuscript but his search reveals that the elusive volume is not what it seems and that he has been made an unwitting player in a treacherous game.

From New York Times–bestselling author Ross King, the storied rise and reign of the greatest empire and most influential civilization of the ancient Western world “For who is so indifferent or indolent as not to wish to know by what means the Romans succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history?”—Polybius, second century BCE Ancient Rome gave rise to the Roman Empire, one of history’s greatest civilizations. It flourished for roughly five hundred years and, at its height, made up at least 20 percent of the world’s population. It left an indelible mark on the world, shaping politics, laws, philosophy, and architecture, and gave us Roman numerals, the calendar, aqueducts, and concrete. Alongside the Greeks, the Romans laid the groundwork for Western civilization. In this fast-paced history, Ross King introduces the emperors and warriors, the madmen and upstarts, and the artists and gladiators responsible for the empire’s rise, reign, and ruin. King’s vivid narrative offers fresh context for key political and religious events and paints lively portraits of Rome’s most formidable and notorious leaders. Spanning over one thousand years of Roman history, The Shortest History of Ancient Rome brings an ancient civilization to vibrant life, elucidating why the Romans still matter to us today. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.

Dave is sad as he is the only dragon in his class who cannot fly, but he and his classmates learn that Dave has a different talent. Something that makes him just as special. Read on to find out what happens in this beautifully illustrated children’s book!

By the author of the acclaimed Brunelleschi''s Dome. After meeting the mysterious and beautiful Lady Beauclair at a society ball, George Cautley, a hapless young artist adrift in the gilded world of 1770s London, paints her portrait. She, in turn, tells him the scandalous story of Tristano, a castrato singer in Handel''s opera company fifty years before. But Cautley also meets the eminent painter Sir Endymion Starker that same evening and his mistress, Eleanora, who has another tragic tale to tell, one that will have George unwittingly re-enacting the fate of Tristano...

This is a comprehensive and detailed introductory Korean textbook and language learning package. Korean is now the 15th most popular language taught at American universities. This new edition of Elementary Korean, the most comprehensive and detailed introductory Korean textbook available, offers beginning learners of Korean everything they need to learn the language effectively. Perfect for a first-year university-level course use or for the independent language learner. No prior knowledge of the language is necessary. The new format, now with dozens of illustrations, presents Korean vocabulary and Korean grammar in an accessible and understandable manner while extensive conversations and exercises help to reinforce the Korean language and build reading and listening comprehension. This edition includes: Downloadable audio and a dedicated website. Rich and highly nuanced examples with brand new illustrations. Detailed but on–technical grammar notes, ample writing exercises with an accompanying answer key. Detailed examples of authentic dialogue. Highly technical grammar notes. Plenty of writing practice. Dialogues, reading texts, and written exercises are in Hangul, the Korean alphabet, so students are quickly able to read and write authentic Korean. Layered lessons are designed to build on each other, making Korean easy to learn from the most popular introductory Korean language textbook available. Included is downloadable audio that helps learners to speak like a native and a web-based practice component through the University of British Columbia that can help students to learn Korean even beyond the pages of this book. According to the Modern Language Association, enrollment in Korean in American universities is growing rapidly. Available separately is the companion Elementary Korean Workbook. This helpful workbook will assist you in practicing and polishing your Korean language skills. Each lesson supplements the corresponding lesson in the textbook. There are ten activities per lesson, offering a range of exercises and practice opportunities to enable you to achieve proficiency in everyday, conversational Korean.

Discover the prodigious global influence of il bel paese in this star-studded retelling of Italy’s past—from a foremost author of historic Italy. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. “Each page brims with Bill Bryson-like trivia that is sure to delight.”—Booklist, starred review The calendar. The Senate. The university. The piano, the heliocentric model, and the pizzeria. It’s hard to imagine a world without Italian influence—and easy to assume that inventions like these could only come from a strong, stable peninsula, sure of its place in the world. In this breakneck history, bestselling author Ross King dismantles this assumption, uncovering the story of a land rife with inner uncertainty even as its influence spread. As the Italian tale unfolds, prosperity and power fluctuate like the elevation in the Dolomites. If Rome’s seven hills could talk, they might speak of the glorious time of Trajan—or bemoan the era of conquest and the Bubonic Plague that decimated Rome’s population. Episodes of wealth like the First Triumvirate and the time of the Medicis are given fresh life alongside descriptions of the Middle Ages, the early days of Venice, the invasion of Napoleon, and the long struggle for unification. Highlighting key events and personalities, King paints a vibrant portrait of a country whose political and cultural legacies enrich our lives today. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.

A sweeping historical analysis of the complex relationship between social criticism and built form, EMANCIPATING SPACE argues that those concerned with urban design and social change should make their contribution to bringing about a better world by designing spaces based in utopian or emancipatory theories. Author Ross King examines significant political, economic and social changes from the Enlightenment to the present day, tracing accompanying shifts in the ways that space, time, nature and difference have been experienced and represented in architectural discourse. Integrating architecture, urban design, geography, and social criticism to elucidate new questions facing concerned planners and architects, this richly illustrated volume provides an innovative framework from which to explore the meanings and the possibilities of urban space in the postmodern era.

The thrilling second instalment in the gripping Hollywood series from million copy bestselling author Shari Low and TV''s Ross King. They’ve made it to the top but someone is determined to make them pay... At a glittering after-party on the night of the Academy Awards, author Mirren McLean celebrates her win with her childhood friends Davie Johnston and Zander Leith by her side. Three kids from a tough street in Glasgow, the dazzling trio rose from the ashes to become Hollywood stars with global fame and vast fortunes. This is their moment in the spotlight. But by morning, there’s only darkness. A secret from their past has come back to haunt them and the shield of stardom can’t protect them from the horrors of their old lives. Someone is out to destroy them... and unlike the movies, there’s no guarantee that the good guys will win. Three stars, three tales of struggle and success. Now they’re discovering that in Hollywood, happy endings don’t last for ever. Sometimes they’re just the calm before the storm... Praise for The Hollywood Thriller Trilogy ‘Brilliant, a white-knuckle ride of a novel. Gripping and wildly glamorous - Tilly Bagshawe ‘It''s a real slice of Hollywood and a brilliant read’ - Gerard Butler ‘A glam, edgy thriller, just the way I like them’ - Martina Cole ‘Sex, scandal and secrets galore’ - the late Jackie Collins ''A high-stakes thriller with a dark, moving story at its core. Page-turning entertainment at its very best'' - TJ Emerson ‘It''s a thriller that’s gritty, sexy and a sensational page turner. You won''t be able to put it down. I loved it!’ - Lorraine Kelly ''I loved this Hollywood tale with deep Scottish roots. It’s dark, sinful, glittering and thrilling. An absolute adventure from the very first page''- Carmen Reid ''The mean streets of Glasgow meet the glitz of Hollywood. A riveting read!'' - Evie Hunter ''A gritty raunch thriller. A page turner that lifts the lid on Hollywood!'' - *Catherine Zeta-Jones *

Advanced Korean offers a complete, systematic, and streamlined third-year course in Korean. It is ideal for university students and adult learners with plentiful reading texts and written exercises, all in Korean Hangul. Concise Korean grammar notes in English, extensive glossaries, and an answer key make this book suitable for those studying alone, as well as for classroom use. There are 20 comprehensive lessons, each with a reading text in which new language is introduced in context, followed by vocabulary, grammar points, and exercises. Lessons 5, 10, 15 and 20 are short reviews of the key structural patterns introduced. The focus is on written Korean, but the reading texts are not academic, they are breezy, chatty, and amusing, with illustrations. The textbook comes with a downloadable supplement entitled Sino-Korean Companion. It is for those learners wishing to commence the study of Chinese characters as they are used in the Korean language. The 20 lessons build on the content of the lessons in the main textbook to introduce 500 Chinese characters in their Sino-Korean readings. The emphasis is on giving students the tools they need to decipher unfamiliar Chinese characters on their own, and also on Sino-Korean vocabulary acquisition. Each lesson introduces approximately 25-30 new Chinese characters along with related vocabulary items and builds on previous characters and vocabulary introduced, demonstrating the cumulative effect on one''s vocabulary of paying systematic attention to Sino-Korean.

Discover the addictive sun-drenched Hollywood Trilogy from #1 bestseller Shari Low and ITV''s Ross King ''A gritty raunchy thriller. A page turner that lifts the lid on Hollywood!'' Catherine Zeta-Jones ‘A glam, edgy thriller, just the way I like them’ Martina Cole ‘Sex, scandal and secrets galore’ Jackie Collins This boxset contains the complete Hollywood Trilogy from Shari Low and Ross King The Rise The Catch The Fall The Rise Mirren, Zander and Davie had once been three friends from Glasgow, just trying to survive tough lives of danger and dysfunction. But on one Hollywood evening in 1993, they were on the world’s biggest stage, accepting their Oscar in front of the watching world. That night was the beginning of their careers, but it left them with a horrific shared secret. And now their past is back to bite them. The Catch At a glittering after-party on the night of the Academy Awards, author Mirren McLean celebrates her win with her childhood friends Davie Johnston and Zander Leith by her side. This is their moment in the spotlight. But by morning, there’s only darkness. A secret from their past has come back to haunt them and the shield of stardom can’t protect them from the horrors of their old lives. Someone is out to destroy them... The Fall Twenty-five years ago, three friends from Glasgow shocked the world when they became Oscar-winning legends. But now, they are all fighting for survival. A-list actor Zander Leith has finally found happiness, but Mirren McLean is one of the most powerful women in the industry until one mistake threatens to tear down everything, Davie Johnston was once the king of late-night television. Three stars, three tales of struggle and success. Now they’re discovering that in Hollywood, happy endings don’t last for ever. Sometimes they’re just the calm before the storm...