Penguin Books Ltd: 3539 books

Drawing on interviews with baijiu aficionados, distillers and key players in the alcoholic beverage industry, Sandhausintroduces the history and development of alcohol in China - the birthplace of grain-based alcohol. Distillation and production processes, the landscape of the industry today, and...

Growing up in poor circumstances in the midlands town of Mullingar might seem an unlikely start for a musical superstar, but that's exactly the journey Joe Dolan travelled in his amazing life. Not only that, Joe never forgot his roots and loved Mullingar to the day he died. From losing his...

Palladio (1508-80) combined classical restraint with constant inventiveness. In this study, Professor Ackerman sets Palladio in the context of his age - the Humanist era of Michelangelo and Raphael, Titian and Veronese - and examines each of the villas, churches and palaces in turn and tries to penetrate...

For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world - a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and politics. In this landmark work he depicts...

David Gentleman has been drawing London all his adult life, and for the past year has spent his days focused on looking afresh at the city. The resulting book of sketches, drawings and watercolours, arranged month by month, shows a year in the life of London and reveals the city that is hidden in...

'Unflinchingly honest... this diary is exceptional' Elizabeth Buchan 'Tuesday 23 October, 1934 Another glorious sunny day. Lunch in Kens Gdns. E had not slept well "as I longed and longed for you". It made me happy that he wanted me. I suppose that is mean. He said, "I could...

This collection includes many of the famous cases - and great strokes of brilliance - that made the legendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction's most popular creations. With his devoted amanuensis, Dr Watson, Holmes emerges from his smoke filled rooms in Baker Street to grapple with the forces of treachery,...

Heart of Darkness has been considered for most of this century as a literary classic, and also as a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. It reflects the savage repressions carried out in the Congo by the Belgians in one of the largest acts of genocide committed up to that time. Conrad's...

Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more. But his life alters...

'Then, on a fine moonlight night, all the rats left the ship.' Five men sit around a mahogany table, drinking claret. As the wine loosens their tongues, one tells a story from his youth, recounting the strange voyage of the doomed ship Judea. Inspired by Conrad's own experiences at sea, Youth is a haunting tale about ill omens, the passing of time and the making of a man.

This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to...

Setting Realism in its social and historical context, the author discusses the crucial paradox posed by Realist works of art - notably in the revolutionary paintings of Courbet, the works of Manet, Degas and Monet, of the Pre-Raphaelites and other English, American, German and Italian Realists.

A unique treatise by a poet, written for poets, on the art of poetry, LA VITA NUOVA is elaborately and symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems, interspersed with his own prose commentary. The poems themselves tell the story of his love for Beatrice, from their...

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is universally celebrated as one of the greatest artists of all time, yet iconic Renaissance creator was also a prolific and gifted poet. The verses collected here are primarily devoted to love and religion. Intense and passionate, the love poems focus on two figures:...