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Sea Shells: Art and Artifice of Nature

Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville (1680–1765) was a French courtier, intellectual and amateur natural historian. Fascinated by seashells, he authored one of his era's most lavish books, dedicate to the rarest and most beautiful examples. La Conchyliologie ou Histoire Naturelle des Coquilles de Mer, d'Eau Douce, Terrestres et Fossiles, published in 1780, was a summation of 18th century conchology, with drawings so vivid they sparked a Parisian fad for natural history.

The natural beauty of seashells has enchanted cultures around the world since time immemorial. The “recreation of the eye and mind” inspired by them has been celebrated in literature and throughout humanist circles across Europe since antiquity: in his De oratore, the classical scholar Cicero extolled the value of the leisure and friendship cultivated by two friends who spent their leisurely hours collecting shells. These wonderful marine forms–"the artifice of nature"– were considered capable of elevating the spirit and stimulating the senses, as well as refining the taste and creativity of artists. Throughout history, their innumerable shapes, crenulations, and vast variety of colors and patterns have inspired painters and jewelers, architects and textile designers, sculptors and furniture makers, gunsmiths and glass-blowers.

TASCHEN's complete reprint of these 80 splendid hand-colored copper engraved plates, rendered in exquisite detail and the subtlest colors, is taken from one of the finest original copies.

You get to have a robot butler OR you can become any animal you like? This game only has one rule: you HAVE to choose!

You get to have a robot butler or you can become any animal you like? You have a magic tap that contains all the drinks you want OR you snap your fingers and your entire house is tidy and clean? This game only has one rule: you HAVE to choose! And this time around, both options will make you feel happy.

For this happy edition of Dilemmarama we’ve only selected positive dilemmas. The kind that will put a smile on your face, but that will also cause heated debates and feisty duels. And, because everything in life is a dilemma, there are two game options to choose from.

About the Author:

One of the game options allows you to become the Dilemmaestro by creating difficult dilemmas for the other players. The other option lets you play in teams and you have to try to guess what your teammates will choose. That’s one way to really get to know your friends and family!

In this fun kids edition play bingo with a huge Giganotosaurus, an armour-plated Stegosaurus and many other fearsome dinosaurs in this fun and engaging take on the classic game.

Easy to play and full of weird and wonderful creatures, Dinosaur Bingo will engage and delight children for hours. It can be played with three to eight people, making it the perfect game for dino-mad children and their families.

Dinosaur Bingo contains 48 illustrated dino chips and a cardboard dino head to store them in, a game board, eight double-sided bingo cards and Jurassic counters for you to mark up your card.

About the Author

Caroline Selmes is an illustrator and former advertising art director. She has worked in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and London, and produced work for clients including Vodafone, Reebok, London Zoo and Gestalten.

Dive into an unprecedented survey of millions of years of life on planet Earth. Featuring an incredible mix of 3-D reconstructions, extraordinary skeletons, and amazingly intricate fossils, it uses the latest scientific research to recreate a wealth of ancient species, from the earliest primitive life forms to great dinosaurs, early mammals, and even the first humans.

Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life is a beautifully crafted encyclopedia of prehistoric species that the whole family can enjoy. In the pages of this unique book of natural history, you'll find:

- A detailed catalogue of over 500 animals, plants, fungi and microbes with illustrations and fact files unmatched by any other book on the market
- Double-page features that take you on a close-up tour of some of the most fascinating fossils and skeletons
- Clear and crisp CGI reconstructions give a new life to some of the oldest identified species, allowing you to visualise them as they would have existed on Earth
- Richly annotated artworks displaying geological processes including how Earth formed and how fossils are preserved in rock

This richly illustrated catalogue starts with the first Precambrian microbes and traces the evolution of life through mass extinctions and ice ages. As well as dinosaurs, it features extinct plants, invertebrates, amphibians, fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals, conjuring up a series of past worlds. The book also explores geological time and examines how fossils preserve the story of evolution.

This newly updated edition of DK's Prehistoric (2009) features updated information on hundreds of life forms, with a scattering of new entries - including the jellyfish Haootia, and the early Cretaceous mammal Ambolestes. Artists' impressions of the living, breathing animals have also been updated according to the latest findings about colouring, feathers, and scales.

Combining stunning visuals and clear text, Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life is not only packed with fascinating prehistoric facts and species, it's beautifully foiled cover will take pride of place on your coffee table. The ideal gift for dinosaur enthusiasts and naturalists of all ages that will be treasured for years to come.

Sun-worshipper, city goer or outdoor enthusiast? No matter your tribe, this is the perfect region for you.

Whether you want to enjoy Costa Brava's laidback lifestyle, marvel the truly iconic Sagrada Familia or hike the undulating landscape of long-extinct volcanoes, your DK Eyewitness travel guide makes sure you experience all that Barecelona and Catalonia have to offer.

From gothic churches and centuries-old taverns to dizzying skyscrapers and ritzy cocktail bars, Catalonia is a constant contradiction. The natural landscape is just as varied: soaring mountain ranges preside over pristine wilderness and vineyard-cloaked hills taper into a seemingly endless stretch of coastline.

Our recently updated guide brings Barcelona and Catalonia to life, transporting you there like no other travel guide does with expert-led insights and advice, detailed breakdowns of all the must-see sights, photographs on practically every page, and our hand-drawn illustrations which place you inside the region's iconic buildings and neighbourhoods.

You'll discover:

- our pick of the must-sees, top experiences and hidden gems
- the best spots to eat, drink, shop and stay
- detailed maps and walks which make navigating the region easy
- easy-to-follow itineraries
- expert advice: get ready, get around and stay safe
- colour-coded chapters to every part of Barcelona and Catalonia, from Old town to beyond the centre, Eixample to Montjuïc
- our new lightweight format, so you can take it with you wherever you go

About the Author:

Experience the world with DK Eyewitness.
DK Eyewitness' highly visual guides show you what others only tell you, with easy-to-read maps, tips and tours to inform and enrich your trip.
Our travel writers report on what to see, eat, drink and do around the world, while the very best photographs and illustrations bring cities, regions and countries to life. We publish guides to more than 200 destinations around the world, from handy pocket-sized city guides to comprehensive country guides.
DK is the world's leading illustrated reference publisher, producing beautifully designed books for adults and children in over 120 countries

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Пролистать книгу DK Eyewitness Barcelona and Catalonia: Inspire, Plan, Discover, Experience на Google Books.

This beautifully illustrated bingo game features 64 breeds of dog from around the world. Spot all kinds of dogs – from the tiny chihuahua to the noble Great Dane, from the sleek saluki to the dreadlocked Hungarian puli, mark them off on your card and bingo!

Dog Bingo brings a fun and educational twist to the traditional game as players learn the names and colourings of both their favourite breeds and weird and wonderful exotic dogs.

Contains 64 superbly illustrated dog tokens, one board, 12 bingo cards and brightly coloured counters for you to mark up your card, as well as a leaflet containing basic information and a few quirky traits for all of the dogs featured.

About the Author

Polly Horner lives in Rye in East Sussex. When she is not drawing, she enjoys going for long walks where she comes across a number of dogs, which she will inevitably stop, pat and photograph. She is the author and illustrator of Polly and the North Star (Orion) and illustrator of Dogs: Best in Show (Laurence King, 2011).

Dragon dwellings: These magnificent beasts have been found in an astounding number of places. Dragons and their near relatives have found niches in every ecosystem on the planet -- from the mountains of Greece to the forests of northern Europe to the volcanic plain of Mesoamerica to the river valleys of China -- and have, as a consequence, become deeply embedded in human culture.

Dragon variety: Here are five main types of dragons, emerging from the floods or flames of history -- the frightening Serpents, Wyverns, and Classical Dragons of the West; the Sky Dragons, including beneficent Chinese Dragons, Amphipteres, and winged New World species; the Neo-Dragons such as the Basilisk, Salamander, and the like; as well as dozens of varieties and subspecies, including orms, guivres, lindorms, and more.

The notion of plant sexuality was initiated by Swedish botanist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). Working with his collection of over 20,000 specimens, Linnaeus grouped flowers and plants in a Calendarium Florae, and systematically classified plant species by the number and arrangement of their reproductive parts, drawing direct parallels with human sexual organs. Highly controversial at the time, the assertion that a plant’s stamens and pistils mirror human genitalia resulted in a 'sexual revolution' in plant taxonomy.

Swedish photographer Edvard Koinberg creates a modern visual counterpart to Linnaeus’s work, approaching the subject with equal passion and dedication. Having cultivated several hundred plants in his country house, Koinberg photographs each delicate bloom in his studio under perfect lighting conditions, depicting the life cycle of various flora as they bud, flourish and wane, resulting in a modern Calendarium Florae, a visual calendar that charts the year through flowers.

In Herbarium Amoris, Koinberg captures the lyricism and refulgent eroticism of the floral world in vivid close-ups, shot against dark backgrounds, the dew glittering on outspread petals, the most delicate of vegetal forms infused with unbridled life force.

Edward Lear may be best known for his nonsense verse, but in his early years he excelled as an illustrator of birds and reptiles. This set of 42 hand-colored lithographs, originally entitled Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots, was the finest achievement of his relatively brief career as a natural history draftsman, before failing eyesight led him to concentrate on his writing.

During Lear's time, live parrots were rare and much sought-after, bought and sold for large sums by wealthy amateurs of natural history, and prized by 19th century European aristocracy for their astonishing plumage and mimickry of the human voice. Naturally, fine drawings of them were also highly prized. One of the first collections entirely dedicated to the species, Parrots includes African, Australian, and American parrots bred by eminent ornithologists such as Sir William Jardine and Prideaux John Selby, who sponsored Lear, inspiring and directing his work. Unlike other avian illustrators who often worked with stuffed birds, the young and prodigiously talented Lear (1812–1888) made his drawings from live parrots, capturing their expressions and movements in remarkably lifelike illustrations. The new medium of hand-colored lithography facilitated the vivid elegance of Lear's work.

This exquisite collection was originally reproduced in only 175 precious sets and sold by subscription to Britain’s most eminent scholars and wealthy collectors of living parrots. The Psittacidae established Lear as a celebrated illustrator, and professor of drawing to the young Queen Victoria. With a brief zoological introduction and written descriptions of each bird, TASCHEN’s perfect reprint brings Lear’s parrots back to life for all to admire.

This thought-provoking, the profusely-illustrated book explains Einstein's work in plain language and examines the life of one of the most remarkable figures of all time.

Physicist, mathematician, astronomer, humanist – Albert Einstein was so radical a thinker that his brilliance is difficult to grasp. He was not an outstanding student, yet in 1905, at the age of 26, he published groundbreaking studies of the relationships between mass, energy and the speed of light and the ways in which they are observed and measured. Relativity theory, as these ideas are known, forever altered our understanding of the universe

Illustrated in colour and black and white throughout

This is the game to go beyond small talk and truly connect with people.

Empathy fuels connections between people.

But, what’s a real connection in the digital age? When do we still sit down, actively listen and engage with each other’s stories? The Empathy Game is a playful way to dive deeper with friends, family, or colleagues.

The game is simple. You pick a card and tell your story, from the everyday to the fantastic. Afterwards the listeners engage with your story by throwing the dice and exploring elements of their human experience.

The Empathy Game encourages sharing, listening and engaging with our fellow humans. It’s the active act of recognition and vulnerability that brings us closer together, and what could be better than that?

About the Authors:

Saskia H. Herrmann is a service designer, researcher, and coach. She explores the intersections between technology, science and society to facilitate innovation for good.

Saskia designs products and services to connect people and create equal opportunities. Her research focuses on empathy and collaboration, as well as on diversity and inclusion. She coaches students, professionals and executives, sharing her own explorations and learnings.

Jorik Elferink is a process designer, facilitator and co-founder at unfold. He focusses on collaboration, team dynamics and the creative process. 

He works to make organisations more human and sustainable by putting planet before profit. He is driven by connection—a connection with yourself, with each other and with the planet. He designs and facilitates processes and learning methods that bring people closer together and inspire new ways of thinking and working. This leads to new and innovative ideas for the challenges of today, and the future.

TASCHEN's 25th anniversary - Special edition! Let’s get physical: ultra-realistic wax anatomies From the eccentric Museo La Specola in Florence comes this amazing collection of waxworks depicting the human anatomy in all its dazzling complexity. A selection of wax bodies and body part and organ studies from the museum’s collection is presented here; from skeletons to vein structures, organs to nerves, and arteries to the delicate pores of the skin, the human body is mapped out in meticulous and exacting detail. Texts explaining the human anatomy in laypersons’ terms and exploring the historical and cultural significance of the wax figures complete this “total body experience.”

"(…) Le Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Architecture comprend 10 volumes de 450 pages chacun en moyenne, soit environ 4000 pages de texte illustré de 4500 gravures sur bois. Outre le texte fort intéressant et vivant, c’est cette iconographie qui donne à l’ouvrage l’essentiel de son intérêt. (…) Nous avons ainsi sélectionné les principaux passages du Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Architecture écartant ceux qui étaient trop techniques et les courtes rubriques ne comportant que du texte. (…) Sur les 4500 gravures originales nous en avons présenté 1335 dans le présent volume et quelques centaines dans le tome 2. Nous pensons que l’essentiel du Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Architecture est ici présenté… Avec ces deux volumes de l’Encyclopédie médiévale qui reprennent l’essentiel des deux Dictionnaires de Viollet-Le-Duc avec 1440 pages, nous avons publié plus de 3000 dessins !" / Georges Bernage

Refonte en un volume du Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture (1854-1868) et du Dictionnaire raisonné du Mobilier (1858-1870) par Georges BERNAGE :

 TOME I : Architecture
- Avant-propos de Georges BERNAGE (5 photographies dont un portrait par NADAR)
- TABLE DES RUBRIQUES : 62 entrées de Abside à Porte 720 pages

 TOME II : Architecture et Mobilier
- Avant-propos de Georges BERNAGE (9 illustrations)
- TABLE DES RUBRIQUES : 11 entrées de Prison à Vitrail pour la fin de l’Architecture et 7 entrées de Armes à Instruments de musique pour le Mobilier.
720 pages

Full of incredible tales of achievement and ingenuity, Engineers celebrates the greatest engineers that ever lived and the stamp they have left on our world.

Learn all about how engineering projects have changed the course of history and added to human progress, from those who built the Great Pyramid in Egypt to the Industrial Revolution and beyond. Discover the impressive structures of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the first forays into space travel, and the pioneering computer scientists of today.

From initial concepts to prototypes and finished designs, Engineers is full to bursting with technical drawings, specially commissioned artworks, blueprints and virtual tours that help bring engineering's greatest structures, inventions and technological breakthroughs to life.

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Пролистать книгу Engineers: From the Great Pyramids to Spacecraft на Google Books.

Winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2021

The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them. They can change our minds, heal our bodies and even help us avoid environmental disaster; they are metabolic masters, earth-makers and key players in most of nature's processes. In Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake takes us on a mind-altering journey into their spectacular world, and reveals how these extraordinary organisms transform our understanding of our planet and life itself.

About the Author:

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and a writer. He received a Ph.D. in Tropical Ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He is a research associate of the Vrije University, Amsterdam, and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation and the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks.

Entangled Life is an international bestseller, winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2021 and the Wainwright Prize 2021, and has been nominated for a host of other prizes, including the British Book Awards Book of the Year 2021 for Narrative Non-Fiction and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2021. Entangled Life was also featured as Radio 4's Book of the Week and selected as a Book of the Year in The Times, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, New Statesman and Time, among others. It has been translated into twenty languages.

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Пролистать книгу Entangled Life: The phenomenal Sunday Times bestseller exploring how fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures на Google Books.