City of Lingering Splendour

City of Lingering Splendour PDF Author: John Blofeld
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Beijing (China)
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The author spent many years in China, particularly Peking, where he came to know the language and people well. He became intimate with all sorts of colourful people - silk-clad scholars, Buddhist monks, Taoist sages, actors, countless other strange and delectable dishes.

City of Lingering Splendour

City of Lingering Splendour PDF Author: John Blofeld
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Beijing (China)
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The author spent many years in China, particularly Peking, where he came to know the language and people well. He became intimate with all sorts of colourful people - silk-clad scholars, Buddhist monks, Taoist sages, actors, countless other strange and delectable dishes.

City of Lingering Splendor

City of Lingering Splendor PDF Author: John Blofeld
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1570626375
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In his early twenties, John Blofeld spent what he describes as "three exquisitely happy years" in Peking during the era of the last emperor, when the breathtaking greatness of China's ancient traditions was still everywhere evident. Arriving in 1934, he found a city imbued with the atmosphere of the recent imperial past and haunted by the powerful spirit of the late Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. He entered a world of magnificent palaces and temples of the Forbidden City, of lotus-covered lakes and lush pleasure-gardens, of bustling bazaars and peaceful bathhouses, and of "flower houses" with their beautiful young courtesans versed in the arts of pleasing men. With a novelists' command of detail and dialogue, Blofeld vividly re-creates the magic of these years and conveys to the reader his appreciation and nostalgia for a way of life long vanished.

Bodhisattva of Compassion

Bodhisattva of Compassion PDF Author: John Blofeld
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1590307356
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
She is the embodiment of selfless love, the supreme symbol of radical compassion, and, for more than a millennium throughout Asia, she has been revered as “The One Who Hearkens to the Cries of the World.” Kuan Yin is both a Buddhist symbol and a beloved deity of Chinese folk religion. John Blofeld’s classic study traces the history of this most famous of all the bodhisattvas from her origins in India (as the male figure Avalokiteshvara) to Tibet, China, and beyond, along the way highlighting her close connection to other figures such as Tara and Amitabha. The account is full of charming stories of Blofeld’s encounters with Kuan Yin’s devotees during his journeys in China. The book also contains meditation and visualization techniques associated with the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and translations of poems and yogic texts devoted to her.

Magnetic City

Magnetic City PDF Author: Justin Davidson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0553394703
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
From New York magazine’s architecture critic, a walking and reading guide to New York City—a historical, cultural, architectural, and personal approach to seven neighborhoods throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, including six essays that help us understand the evolution of the city For nearly a decade, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Justin Davidson has explained the ever-changing city of New York to his readers at New York magazine, introducing new buildings, interviewing architects, tracking the way the transforming urban landscape shapes who New Yorkers are. Now, his extensive, inspiring knowledge will be available to a wide audience. An insider’s guide to the architecture and planning of New York that includes maps, photographs, and original insights from the men and women who built the city and lived in it—its designers, visionaries, artists, writers—Magnetic City offers first-time visitors and lifelong residents a new way to see New York. Includes walking tours throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx • the Financial District • the World Trade Center • the Seaport and the Brooklyn waterfront • Chelsea and the High Line • 42nd Street • the Upper West Side • the South Bronx and Sugar Hill Praise for Magnetic City “An intimate, seductive guidebook.”—The New York Times “An enthralling new book makes clear that I’m not alone in my home-town infatuation . . . lends nuance, texture and historical perspective to my impression that New York City has never been so appealing or life-affirming as it is today.”—New York Post “[Davidson] combines a keen intelligence, experience, observational skills, expertise (especially but not solely architectural), and an elegant writing style to make this beautifully produced book indispensable.”—Booklist (starred review) “A street-level celebration of New York City in all ‘its perpetual complexity and contradiction’ . . . a worthy companion to Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City and the American Institute of Architects guides to the architecture of New York as well as a treat for fans of the metropolis.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Justin Davidson does more than direct our feet to New York’s hidden monuments. He explains the structure of the city with a clarity that would be bracing even for a Gotham habitué, but more than that, he finds the meaning in every building and byway.”—Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree “Mr. Davidson’s exceptional knowledge of our beloved city is inspiring. Magnetic City is now my official chaperone.”—Patti LuPone “Justin Davidson has a mind alive to every signal, and his brilliant prose style transmits that electricity in black-and-white type. He is thus born to the task of capturing the chaotic splendor of New York City on the page.”—Alex Ross, author of Listen to This “Justin Davidson’s beautiful tours of New York City invoke and redouble our love of the metropolis.”—Jerry Saltz, senior art critic, New York

That Paris Year

That Paris Year PDF Author: Joanna Biggar
Publisher: Santa Fe Writers Project
ISBN: 0982625154
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
In That Paris Year, five smart, adventurous young women arrive on the banks of the Seine in 1962 for their junior year abroad. What they get is an education of a different sort. As they move from the grueling demands of the Sorbonne by day to late nights of discovery in smoky cafes, the young Americans discover a mythical country shaped not only by the upheavals of history, but by the great French writers of the 20th Century, a place where seduction is intellectual as well as sexual. Ten years later, our narrator, J. J., is asked to speak at her old college on the virtues of going abroad. Drawing on the emotionally charged tools of memory and imagination, as well as old journals, letters, and telegrams, she chronicles and re-creates the story of that momentous year. Following in the footsteps of Marcel Proust, Joanna Biggar has written a novel in which intellect, eroticism, and art reverberate from the page to the heartbeat of the City of Light, an American book with the sweep and elegance of French literary tradition.

The Search for a Vanishing Beijing

The Search for a Vanishing Beijing PDF Author: M.A. Aldrich
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9789622097773
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
"The Search for a Vanishing Beijing weaves the genres of travel essays and travel guides into a comprehensive narrative about the cultural mosaic of the capital of China.

Paris in Color

Paris in Color PDF Author: Nichole Robertson
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452113564
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
The City of Light comes alive with color in this “fresh, ‘oh!’-inducing look at the palette of a city we only thought we knew” (Real Simple). Take a journey through the world’s most romantic city, traveling from color to magnificent color with this beguiling book. An orange café chair, bright blue bicycles against a fence, a weathered white door—Nichole Robertson’s sumptuous photographs of the distinctive details of Paris, all arranged by color, evoke a sense of serendipitous discovery and celebrate the city as never before. At once a work of art and a window into the heart of the city, Paris in Color will surprise and delight those who love art, design, color, and, of course, Paris!

Power Concedes Nothing

Power Concedes Nothing PDF Author: Connie Rice
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416544739
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
An influential civil rights attorney and second cousin to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice describes the family beliefs and achievements that inspired her career, recounting her dedication to civil rights causes in areas ranging from transportation and education to the death penalty and the LAPD.

Peony in Love

Peony in Love PDF Author: Lisa See
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408811790
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Peony has neither seen nor spoken to any man other than her father, a wealthy Chinese nobleman. Nor has she ever ventured outside the cloistered women's quarters of the family villa. As her sixteenth birthday approaches she finds herself betrothed to a man she does not know, but Peony has dreams of her own. Her father engages a theatrical troupe to perform scenes from The Peony Pavilion, a Chinese epic opera, in their garden amidst the scent of ginger, green tea and jasmine. 'Unmarried girls should not be seen in public,' says Peony's mother, but her father allows the women to watch from behind a screen. Here, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man and is immediately bewitched. So begins her unforgettable journey of love, desire, sorrow and redemption.

American Splendor

American Splendor PDF Author: Michael C. Kathrens
Publisher: Acanthus PressLlc
ISBN: 9780926494619
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Originally published in 2002, American Splendor: The Residential Architecture of Horace Trumbauer is the first and only extensive study of this master creator of the American Great House. This revised edition features three new chapters and over 50 new colour photographs.