The Villas and Riads of Morocco

Book Description

The austere facades that line the labyrinthine streets of Morocco's ancient walled neighborhoods reveal almost nothing of the luminous residences within. The Villas and Riads of Morocco lifts the veil on these secret paradises, from fantastic palaces in Fez and Essaouira to middle-class riads in Marrakech to converted casbahs in the southern oases. With more than 200 stunning photographs, this beautiful volume takes us behind the scenes to explore a side of Morocco that is largely hidden to outsiders.

The book showcases exquisite interiors that combine rich materials such as cedar and marble; luxurious carpets and textiles; filigree carving and other handiwork; and vibrant color palettes. Also featured is the remarkable mosaicwork found especially in the central courtyard gardens and patios that form the heart of the Moroccan house. Accompanying these sumptuous views is a vivid history of the country's residential architecture and its fascinating mix of Andalusian, Arab, and Saharan influences. The Villas and Riads of Morocco not only offers a feast for the eyes but also illuminates an entire culture. AUTHOR BIO: Corinne Verner is a cultural anthropologist who lives in Marrakech. She is also a scriptwriter and has written a documentary film series for television. Cécile Tréal and Jean-Michel Ruiz are photojournalists and members of the Gamma and Hoa-Qui agencies. They have spent many years in Casablanca and have collaborated on several publications on Morocco, Madagascar, and the Maghreb.

Customer Reviews:

More than a Coffee Table Book.......2007-09-28

This work is thoroughly researched and beautifully presented. As well as the delights of the photography and text, it contains really interesting aspects of social history.

Morocco Chic: Hotels, Riads, Villas, Maisons d'Hotes, Kasbahs (Chic Destinations)

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Morocco Chic: Hotels, Riads, Villas, Maisons d'Hotes, Kasbahs (Chic Destinations)
Francoise Kuijper , Elaine Meyers , and Annette Tan
Manufacturer: Archipelago Press (SG)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Africa | Travel | Subjects | Books

Morocco | Africa | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Middle East | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 9814155268

Book Description

Morocco Chic brings travellers on a journey to the western edge of the Arab world and the gateway of North Africa. Begin on the sandy beaches of the Atlantic Coast, with their colonial fortified cities and seaside resorts, then scale the snow-capped Atlas mountains with their rustic Berber villages, and end on camelback among the far reaches of the Merzouga dunes, camping in a nomadic tent beneath the desert sky. In between, lose yourself in the cloistered medieval medinas of Fez and Marrakech, among imperials monuments and intimate riads. Complementing the information on the colourful history, sights and facts of each province are chapters introducing travellers to the most stylish accommodations in Morocco, from the largest luxury hotels and resorts, whose guest lists have included royalty, heads of state and glitterati, to the most intimate villas and maisons d'hôtes, where one feels like a guest in a private home. Among the traditional Moroccan options are carefully restored riads, grand kasbahs, and even nomadic Caïdal tents. Get to know the 50 properties featured even before arriving, through vivid descriptions of their architecture and design, and their finer touches. A fact box provides essential information on each property and its nearby attractions.

Book Description

The first comprehensive survey in modern times of the surviving fresco cycles of the early Renaissance, this pathblazing work is an extraordinary achievement in scholarship and publishing.

Certain Italian fresco cycles, notably the Brancacci Chapel in Florence by Masaccio, Masolino, and Filippino Lippi, are well known. Others, such as Piero della Francesca's work in Arezzo and Benozzo Gozzoli's Chapel of the Magi in Florence, have been reproduced countless times. Yet no publisher--until now--has attempted to gather together and document in extensive photographs the essential fresco cycles of the early Italian Renaissance. The list of works covers the regions of Italy, from the Alpine mountain areas to Puglia, with an emphasis on Tuscany and Florence, the artistic center that gave life to the Renaissance.

Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance, 1400-1470 opens with a concise introductory text discussing various aspects of fifteenth-century fresco painting: artists, patronage, cultural and historical conditions, technical methods, and questions of local tradition. The central section of the book examines twenty-one fresco cycles, each representing a crowning achievement in this field. A descriptive and interpretive essay introduces each cycle and is followed by a series of full-page and double-page color plates-many of them new photography of recently restored frescoes-covering the entire work. This parade of colorful masterpieces, paired with Steffi Roettgen's authoritative text, makes a brilliant volume that will be treasured by scholars and art lovers alike. A second volume, Professor Roettgen's Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance, 1470-1510 , continues the story with works by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and many others.

Customer Reviews:

First in the series is the best..........2006-11-20

Stunning photography, well-written, comprehensive historical narrative, and a wide range of styles have made the Italian Frescoes series, now at four volumes, a magificent achievement. From the age Giotto to the advent of mannerism, these incredible books cover the great age of fresco in Italy as well as one could ever hope for. The full-page photos are of amazing quality and give close-up views of sections one could only see from dozens of feet below in many of the chapels, duomos, and palazzos where they are located.

Of the four volumes, this is my personal favorite because it focuses on the true 'renaissance' of the fresco form - the decades when masters like Masolino and Masaccio were taking the advances of Giotto into an era of perspective and realism not seen before. "The Early Renaissance" includes works by these two often collarborators in addition to Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Castagno, Gozzoli, and other early masters who, although perhaps not as well known as the painters of the high Renaissance (spectacularly covered in the next volume in this series), were pushing the boundaries of the fresco toward the epic achievements that would appear in the first decades of the 16th century. As I've written in other reviews of these books - this is the best view you will ever have of these magnificent works short of seeing them in person. And actually, given the distances to ceilings, the available light, and the excellent chance and any of these works could be 'en restoro' for a decade or so, these photos might be better than a visit.

The photography is museum quality and the introductory history and analysis of each of the 21 works covered here by Steffi Roettgen is informative and insightful without becoming laboriously dense in the way some art history books can. The sections on each fresco are accompanied by annotated illustrationa of their location within the structure containing them...a very useful tool to determine exactly which section of the painting each photo represents as well as the challenges the architecture imposed on the artist and his workshop.

If you are interested in the few hundred years during which the fresco was a dominate form in Italy, this book, and the others in the Abbeville series, are ones that you will treasure forever. "The Early Renaissance" just happens to be my favorite of the four. It is worth every penny you will spend to purchase it.

Gives you a lot and makes you want more.......2001-11-26

This book is one of the most focused introductions to the vast (and often overwhelming) subject of Italian Renaissance frescoes. Ms. Roettgen has written a 2-volume, chronological study of the most famous, extant, complete fresco cycles. Her work starts in 1400, which is after Giotto, and it ends in 1521, before Michelangelo's birth. Neverthelees, she states that this time period was the Golden Age of the Italian fresco. She starts with the earliest cycles and works her way through so that you see the developmemt of realism, and most importantly, perspective in Western art. Perspective is important because it helped pave the way for optics, the camera oscura, and other scientific and technological developments which created the modern world we live in.
She discusses each cycle as to its history and historical context, iconography (I had to look the word up), and technique. One of the best things about the text is Dr. Roettgen's great gossip about the artists. Fra Lippo Lippi's sex scandal with the Buti sisters at the nunnery makes the Renaissance more real and amusing.
If you don't want to read the fascinating text, the photography is so clear and colorful you will feel like you have actually seen these stunning works of art. In truth, one can see the details of these works much better than the originals because these are so much closer.
These 2 volumes will whet your appetite to learn more about this subject, but are good enough for you to have a huge knowledge and understanding of it on their own. I read these books before going on a trip to Italy, where I saw many of the cycles described. It made the whole trip so much more enjoyable to know what I was looking at.

Excellent.......2001-07-15

This fine, large hardback is lush, made with thick paper. Inside, it details frescoes from around Italy in more or less chronological order, earliest-created first. Each chapter details one set of frescoes, giving extensive history and corroborating details along with art analysis of style, including reproductions of other art, then shows diagrams of where each piece of fresco it depicts comes from in the building in question. Then it gives the frescoes themselves, some in wide-shot, some in close-up detail.

The frescoes are beautifully reproduced, in vibrant color, some so close up you can see brushstrokes. They depict people from all walks of life in Italy doing just about everything from praying to hunting to giving birth to you name it. Of particular interest to me were the Sienese hospital frescoes depicted therein -- the most complete I've ever seen anywhere.

Personally, me, I got this for the beautiful costumes it depicts, and it hasn't steered me wrong. It really is an inspiration. But I think anybody interested in art history or in Renaissance art would adore having this magnificent work on his or her shelf. It's worth noting that there's another book in this set which looks to be of equally high quality.

Book Description

From the editors of PCPhoto magazine, the number one digital photography magazine, comes the most comprehensive guide to the fastest-selling cameras made today.

Here is a photographer’s dream manual, with the newest and hottest cameras, high-quality images, and unequaled, in-depth information provided by an expert author and PCPhoto, the best photography magazine on the market. The handbook includes a thorough, in-depth examination of what makes digital photography special, and how the LCD monitor changes the way you shoot. There’s a discussion of the importance of resolution, the various formats and file options available, and memory cards and storage choices. Tips on getting the best exposure, making the most of flash, using different lenses and filters, and finding effective ways of applying image-editing software will all help photographers get truly creative.

Rob Sheppard, the editor of both Outdoor Photographer and PCPhoto magazines, is also the author of the Epson Complete Guide to Digital Printing.

PCPhoto magazine is designed to help readers understand how to best use digital photography technologies from a photographic rather than computer perspective. It is the most popular photo magazine of its type.

Customer Reviews:

User Friendly SLR Handbook.......2007-03-20

I found this particular book to be more user friendly than other SLR books. Color photos help as opposed to black and white. The information is easily understood and the book is not overwhelming. For a beginner using a SLR camera, I would recommend this book.

Not That Useful.......2006-09-08

I read Sheppard's book primarily with the hope of better understanding what an SLR would offer vs. a quality point-and-shoot digital camera, and what various lens might offer, given a particular SLR. "PCPhoto Digital SLR Handbook" provided neither.

Probably the simplest way of accomplishing this would have been to provide comparative photos using an SLR vs. simpler camera with standard settings, and differing SLR photos using various lens settings - along with an explanation.

Good Introduction to What you get with Digital SLRs.......2005-07-25

Digital SLR's offer two real advantages over the much more common point and shoot cameras.

First, these cameras are the top of the line from the various companies. Here is where they put in all the new technology first. So any improvements in components such as the CCD's will be here first. While point and shoot cameras now usually have 3 to 4 megapixels of resolution, the digital SLRs start at about 6. The new Nikon D2X has 12. Do you need this much, maybe, maybe not, but Digital SLR's get this kind of thing first.

Second, Digital SLR's have more controls, interchangable lenses, every accessory known to man and so on. More control give you more the ability to do things that you simply couldn't do with the earlier cameras. It also offers you more opportunity to screw up, but with the LCD viewer you can catch this faster.

This book is a general introduction to the features you typically find on Digital SLR's and what you get with those features. It is not so much a description of what cameras are available with what features, there are magazines to do that -- and still they go out of date quickly. Here you will find more generalized information to help you decide what features you really need.

This is the most complete generalized introduction to what these cameras do that I've ever seen. Buy it before you spend a lot of money on a camera, relatively speaking it's cheap.

Book Description

Dark Horse Comics brings the original Astro Boy to America for the first time in an English-language edition! In the wake of widespread critical acclaim for the Metropolis animated feature, interest in the work of master storyteller and cartoonist Osamu Tezuka, creator of Metropolis and the godfather of Japanese comics and animation, has never been greater, and Astro Boy is Tezuka's most beloved body of work, a visionary series that laid the groundwork for the international phenomenon that are the comics and animation industries of Japan. Innovative, exciting, and as fresh today as when it first appeared nearly half a century ago, Astro boy is timeless graphic fiction for readers of all ages. Translation by Frederik L. Schodt, author of America and the Four Japans and translator of Masamune Shirow's Orion.

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Astro Boy: Volume 21

Manufacturer: Tandem Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Amazon.com

As John Cheever's stories from the New Yorker magazine demonstrate, in the upper-crust Northeast in midcentury, when divorce simply wasn't done, adultery was not exactly unheard of. But Lillian Ross's exposé of her own decades of adultery with her sainted boss, New Yorker editor William Shawn, still comes as a shock. It's doubly shocking because he was uniquely revered and had an upright if not asexual reputation and because members of the New Yorker family seldom spill the beans.

Gossip connoisseurs will gorge on Ross's tasty tidbits. As a child in Chicago, Bill Shawn narrowly escaped murder by renowned thrill killers Leopold and Loeb, who left Bill's house and kidnapped Bobby Franks instead. Bobby died and Bill became a famously shy victim of phobias--blood, violence, heights, confinement, or darkness could make him, in his own self-imploding way, go postal. When Bill's mom hired a nurse to save him from scarlet fever, the nurse "decided he needed, in addition to nursing, some sexual education. 'To my astonishment, she provided both, but I don't think it did me any harm,' Bill told me."

He was then a child of 12. It does not occur to Ross that sex might have long-term effects of any consequence. She feels zero guilt that she set up a love nest in Marlene Dietrich's old apartment 10 blocks from Shawn's family, and adopted a child, and had a phone put in by Shawn's bed, and spent Christmases with him, leaving Thanksgivings free for Shawn to spend with his wife and biological children. "Bill assured me that Cecille was going along with our arrangements. From time to time, I would think: Maybe she loves him so much she wants him to have what keeps him alive." Meow!

Mrs. Shawn, as Ved Mehta notes in his 1998 book, Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker, was a reporter who supported her husband when they got to New York, and even got him his fateful job at the magazine, prior to devoting herself to their family. Ross got assignments from Shawn that made her famous, but she notes, "We never experienced even a moment of 'conflict of interest' problems, for the simple reason that we never had any conflict of interest.... If I wanted to see Bill in his office, I called his secretary, like everyone else."

"I have always been less inclined than most people I know to indulge in self-analysis," writes Ross. She may be a renowned reporter, but her own mind is one subject that entirely escapes her notice.

Annoyed that romantic emotions were spoiling her mood when her career took off in 1950 ("I felt I should have been having a lot of fun. Instead, I was being emotionally distracted and drained"), Ross did what any disgruntled journalist would do. She spent a year and a half at company expense in Hollywood, playing tennis with Charlie and Oona Chaplin, bonding with Bogart and Bacall, and writing the classic book Picture about her dear friend John Huston's movie The Red Badge of Courage. Ross became an A-list partygoer, the first major showbiz reporter with highbrow credentials, and Huston and company handed her a story much better than the movie in question. "I thought I was the luckiest reporter in the history of journalism," writes Ross, who may be right. And no wonder she was such a hit: cute, connected, willing to listen to egomaniacs and let subjects read her drafts before publication, Ross was, like the showbiz-titan pals of Carrie Fisher that are celebrated in her Hollywood roman à clef Delusions of Grandma, "ruthless and glad."

But Ross's impersonal journalism method works better with big, showy subjects such as Huston or Ernest Hemingway. Faced with the elusive Mr. Shawn, who practically had the power to cloud men's minds so that they could not see him, she fails to illuminate his heart for the reader, despite all the fascinating facts at her command. And does she know how classically, rascally masculine a lot of Shawn's lines sound? Many of them boil down to "My staff doesn't understand me."

Ross notes that William Shawn's brother Mike wrote the Doublemint ad jingle "Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun." William clearly doubled Lillian's fun. But with Mr. Shawn, doubleness wasn't the half of it. --Tim Appelo

Book Description

"Miss Ross's unexpected reporting from home buries once and for all the mild, prudish, eccentrically mannered 'Mr. Shawn' of legend and ridicule, restoring to life a Bill Shawn who is far more complex, romantic, earthy, masculine, and human. He lives in these pages as he has nowhere before." David Michaelis, New York Observer

In Here But Not Here, Lillian Ross, a renowned journalist, tells the remarkable story of the life she shared for forty years with William Shawn, legendary editor of The New Yorker.

"An enduring love between two people, however startling or unconventional, feels unalterable, predestined, compelling, and intrinsically normal to the couple immersed in it," Ross says, "so I would have to say that I had an intrinsically normal life for over four decades with William Shawn. I have a lasting sense of the normalcy of it all. It was a normalcy that Bill Shawn was able to create for himself and for me against all normal odds."

William Shawn was married, yet he and Ross created a home together a dozen blocks south of the Shawns' apartment, raised a child, and lived discretely. Their lives intertwined from the 1950's until Shawn's death, in 1992. Ross describes how they met and the intense connection between them; how Shawn worked with the best writers of the period; how, to escape their developing liaison, Ross moved to Hollywood-only to return to New York and their relationship. The book is a gem, an exquisitely told real-life story more potent than fiction.

Customer Reviews:

A big hat-lifter in general.......2007-10-08

Okay, let's start by saying that I'm a big fan of the New Yorker and its legendary staff from the last century. Also a big fan of Lillian Ross's PICTURE. But this book will drive you to drink, do drugs, sit in your closed garage with the car running, whatever it takes to alter your consciousness. When she sticks to briefly writing about other people - Bogart, Hemingway, Chaplin, John Huston - she's on solid ground as always - brief, effective, perceptive. When she goes back to the subject of her book - her decades-long affair with William Shawn, editor of the New Yorker - she rambles, she avoids, she loses focus, structure and sense. She keeps going on about what an animal he was in bed - you look at the pictures of him in the book and decide for yourself - while everything else she writes about him makes him sound like a whining forlorn child-man who gnashes many teeth and wrings his hands with alarming frequency. She is absolutely in denial about how carrying on this weird affair affected her emotionally - everything is always so perfect and he's so wonderful - and in denial, I think, about just who this man was and what bizarre mind games he played. I did appreciate the paragraph about how fond he was of lifting his hat (hence the name of this review, taken directly from that paragraph). This book would be stunning if it were as honest and objective as the author's other book. It's not and the fact that her talent is involved in this elaborate unformed and tortured justification makes it unbearable.

negation as the other woman..........2004-09-20

Lillian Ross was a talented even gifted writer. She comes across in this book as a intelligent charming and caring person. Yet the thrust of this book is a self conscious and self serving apologia for her life long 'relationship' with William Shawn.

Bluntly put, she was his mistress -'the other woman' (just as an aside, why do you never hear of 'the other man'?). Mr Shawn, in a controlling and manipulative way, suborned her life in a way that is both appalling and pathetic. And as much as she rationalized it - and she spends many many pages doing just that, she seemed (on some level) to be aware of the basic inequality of their 'special' relationship.

So, about the book? Mr Shawn comes across as a whining self centered egotist who somehow manages to always get his way. Ms. Ross' cavalier dismissal of his shabby treatment of his wife and children borders on the obscene. Who was Mr. Shawn? Brilliant, yes without a doubt. A gifted editor, the New Yorker magazine owes much to his dedication. But does a true genuis require such slavish devotion to his ever whim?

There are some insightful moments in the book, Ernest Hemingway, Charlie Chaplin, John Huston (and others) were personal friends, the writers and editors - the behind the scenes folks that really made the New Yorker great - are covered in a slanted and biased sort of way - somehow one doubts that Mr Shawn singled handedly made them all as good as they were. And his 'enabling' talents surely came at a terrible cost, at least for Lillian Ross.

Bottom line, this is a good book on some levels but one that I had some personal difficulty with. "Being a good little woman for her (married) man" doesn't appeal to me as a life choice regardless of the glowing personalities involved. In the end I felt no empathy for her, she was just a pathetic woman trying to justify her own self negation.

Execrable.......2003-06-30

Poor Shawn! He seems to have had impeccable taste in everything save mistresses. The misbegotten issue of their liaison is this unique instance of a grotesque lapse in editorial judgement. I cannot imagine prose as wretched as this surviving his meticulous blue pencil from anyone sufficiently detached from him to be regarded as a writer worthy of regard on the basis solely of his work.

Sad and disappointing.......2002-01-12

I looked forward to reading this book for some time but only recently had the chance but it was sad and disappointing. The disappointment came from the thin writing -- from a writer who has had such a rich a varied background. Endless repetitions of phrases (He said he was there and not there; he said I was his wife; I felt no guilt). Repetitions of situations, so on. This is a 20 page monologue carried on 20 times -- and with none of the details that one would like to hear from this very accomplished writer.

What was it like working at the New Yorker all those years? What was it like to interview and work with people like John Huston, Francois Truffaut, Charlie Chaplin, Oona O'Neil, Frederico Fellini, so on.

This book, this writer, needed an editor if anyone did.

But a sequel would be welcome by me -- one that tells the other Lillian Ross story/memoir. This 'wife's lament' is, well, not a very poetic one and not one that commends Lillian Ross as a raconteur.

Ruth Reichl on WQXR.......1998-12-03

The man I met for lunch at La Caravelle had been going to the restaurant since I was a child. He remembered the days of the legendary chef Roger Fessaguet. He likes to dine in the corridor as you come in to the restaurant and he remembers the days where Lillian Ross and William Shawn liked to eat there too. He pointed out their table, the one in the corner. It was swell being there with him, a bit like going back in time. But what was even nicer than that was enjoying the old-fashioned solicitude of the restaurant and the new-fashioned food. No restaurant in New York has done a better job at bridging the old and the new. La Caravelle remembers the great old days of New York's French restaurants. Many of the captains working there were working in the old places. But the food is not fusty and it's not nostalgic. La Caravelle can certainly feed you the great old dishes like Quenelles de Brochet, light fish dumplings, but it can also give you modern dishes like cured salmon wrapped around mango. What did we eat? My friend began with Billibi, the creamy saffron-laced mussel soup. I stuck to a perfect platter of clams and oysters, then he had lamb. It wasn't on the menu, but they were happy to make it for him, and I had slowly roasted halibut: it was a silky piece of fish. I followed that with a slab of perfectly cooked rosy liver and a dish of lemon sorbet, and then Petit Fours. It was a wonderful meal. The service was swell, and that pink room is done up with big vases of red autumn leaves, so it's both festive and just lightly old-fashioned. Leaving I imagined that I saw Mr. Shawn sitting in the corner. He winked at me as I passed.

HERE BUT NOT HERE: A LOVE STORY: MY LIFE WITH WILLIAM SHAWN AND THE NEW YORKER.

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HERE BUT NOT HERE: A LOVE STORY: MY LIFE WITH WILLIAM SHAWN AND THE NEW YORKER.
Lillian: Ross
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LY4EWK

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