100 Best Art History Books of All Time

We've ranked the best art history books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

Ways of Seeing book cover1

Ways of Seeing

John Berger

5.0
Preview Summary
John Berger’s Classic Text on Art
John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change
Dave Elitch portraitDavid McCammon portraitJohn Harrison (Eton College) portrait Recommended by Dave Elitch, David McCammon, John Harrison (Eton College), and 1 others.
Dave Elitch portrait
Dave Elitch

Dave Elitch recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show". [source]

David McCammon portrait
David McCammon

Ways of Seeing goes beyond photography and will continue to develop your language around images. [source]

John Harrison (Eton College) portrait
John Harrison (Eton College)

You have to understand the Marxist interpretation of art; it is absolutely fundamental to the way that art history departments now study the material. Then you have to critique it, because we’ve moved on from the 1970s and the collapse of Marxism in most of the world shows—amongst other things—that the model was flawed. But it’s still a very good book to read, for a teenager especially. [source]

2

The Story of Art

E.H. Gombrich

4.8
This text is the 16th revised and updated edition of this introduction to art, from the earliest cave paintings to experimental art. Eight new artists from the modern period have been introduced. They are: Corot, Kollwitz, Nolde, de Chirico, Brancussi, Magritte, Nicolson and Morandi. A sequence of new endings have been added, and the captions are now fuller, including the medium and dimension of t
Leonardo da Vinci book cover3

Leonardo da Vinci

Walter Isaacson

4.8
Preview Summary
Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most
Bill Gates portraitSatya Nadella portraitRyan Holiday portrait Recommended by Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Ryan Holiday, and 6 others.
Bill Gates portrait
Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

I think Leonardo was one of the most fascinating people ever. Although today he’s best known as a painter, Leonardo had an absurdly wide range of interests, from human anatomy to the theater. Isaacson does the best job I’ve seen of pulling together the different strands of Leonardo’s life and explaining what made him so exceptional. A worthy follow-up to Isaacson’s great biographies of Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. [source]

Satya Nadella portrait
Satya Nadella

CEO/Microsoft

Microsoft CEO has plunged into what must be an advance copy of Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, who has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin. Isaacson’s biography is based on the Renaissance master’s personal notebooks, so you know we’re going to be taken into the creative mind of the genius. [source]

The Lives of the Artists book cover4

The Lives of the Artists

Giorgio Vasari, Julia Conway Bondanella, et al.

4.6

Packed with facts, attributions, and entertaining anecdotes about his contemporaries, Giorgio Vasari's collection of biographical accounts also presents a highly influential theory of the development of Renaissance art.

Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto, who represent the infancy of art, Vasari considers the period of youthful vigour, shaped by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, and Masaccio, befor

Blake Gopnik portraitKenneth Bartlett portrait Recommended by Blake Gopnik and Kenneth Bartlett.
Blake Gopnik portrait
Blake Gopnik

With Vasari, we begin thinking that artistic biography might matter. As much as we may want to resist the notion that biography is central to understanding art, it seems as though it is just inevitable – the life of the artist is an inevitable element in considering the art itself, as Vasari realised early on. [source]

Kenneth Bartlett portrait
Kenneth Bartlett

He invented art history as we know it…..Much of what we know, especially about the personal lives of the artists, comes from Vasari because there are no other sources. He got it from gossip and hearsay. That is how he did much of his research: by asking people who knew them or by asking somebody whose father had worked with them. [source]

5

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Tracy Chevalier

4.5
With precisely 35 canvases to his credit, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer represents one of the great enigmas of 17th-century art. The meager facts of his biography have been gleaned from a handful of legal documents. Yet Vermeer's extraordinary paintings of domestic life, with their subtle play of light and texture, have come to define the Dutch golden age. His portrait of the anonymous Girl w
6

Art Through the Ages

Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya

4.4
This classic art history survey text has sold over 2 million copies since 1st published in 1926. An ideal text for the full-year art history course, it surveys the entire span of Western art from prehistory to the present & offers overviews of significant areas of non-Western art. Heightened visual appeal & superior accuracy of color results from printing at 175-line resolution. Adds new maps, tim
Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture book cover7

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

Ross King

4.4
Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance man bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder. Not a master mason or carpenter, Filippo Brunelleschi was a goldsmith and clock maker. Over twenty-eight years, he would dedicate himself to solving puzzles of the dome's construction. In the process, he did nothing less than reinvent the field of architect
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History book cover8

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History

Robert M. Edsel, Bret Witter

4.4
At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised.

In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum

9

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

Ross King

4.4
In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel. With little experience as a painter (though famed for his sculpture David), Michelangelo was reluctant to begin the massive project.

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the four extraordinary years Michelangelo spent laboring over
10

History of Beauty

Umberto Eco, Alastair McEwen

4.4
Umberto Eco’s groundbreaking and much-acclaimed first illustrated book has been a critical success since its first publication in 2004. What is beauty? Umberto Eco, among Italy’s finest and most important contemporary thinkers, explores the nature, the meaning, and the very history of the idea of beauty in Western culture. The profound and subtle text is lavishly illustrated with abundant examples
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience book cover11

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

4.3
Preview Summary
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this posit
Austin Kleon portraitBrian Tracy portraitDan Pink portrait Recommended by Austin Kleon, Brian Tracy, Dan Pink, and 1 others.
Austin Kleon portrait
Austin Kleon

While re-reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s wonderful book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, I came across this passage on working crossword puzzles. I think he could just as well be talking about making blackout poems: "There is much to be said in favor of this popular pastime, which in its best form resembles the ancient riddle contests. It is inexpensive and portable, its challenges can be finely graduated so that both novices and experts can enjoy it, and its solution produces a sense of pleasing order that gives one a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. It provides opportunities to experience a mild state of flow to many people who are stranded in airport lounges, who travel on commuter trains, or who are simply whiling away Sunday mornings." [source]

Tom Chatfield portrait
Tom Chatfield

The notion of flow is the idea that there is a state that is characterised by complete immersion in an activity, by a constant response to stimuli, and a perfect match between your ability and the challenge in front of you. [source]

12

History of Art

H.W. Janson, Anthony F. Janson

4.3
For 1000s of art lovers both amateur & professional, esthetic life began with Janson, as his History of Art is often called. In the 1st edition, published in 1962, he spoke to that perennial reader he gently called "the troubled layman." His opening paragraph revealed his sympathy: "Why is this supposed to be art?" he quoted rhetorically. "How often have we heard this question asked--or asked it o
13

The Lost Painting

Jonathan Harr

4.3
An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value, a painting lost for almost two centuries.

The artist was Caravaggi

14

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism

Ross King

4.3
With a novelist's skill and the insight of an historian, bestselling author Ross King recalls a seminal period when Paris was the artistic center of the world, and the rivalry between Meissonier and Manet.

While the Civil War raged in America, another revolution took shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris: The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history wer
Color: A Natural History of the Palette book cover15

Color: A Natural History of the Palette

Victoria Finlay

4.3
Discover the tantalizing true stories behind your favorite colors.
For example: Cleopatra used saffron—a source of the color yellow—for seduction. Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue “ultramarine” paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn’t afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine red—still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke today—has come from the blood of insects.
Jane Jelley portrait Recommended by Jane Jelley.
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh book cover16

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

4.3
A new selection of post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gough's letters, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh put a human face on one of the most haunting figures in modern Western culture. In this Penguin Classics edition, the letters are selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw, and translated by Arnold Pomerans in Penguin Classics.

Few artists' letters are as self-revelatory as Vincent van Gogh's, an
17

The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War

Lynn H. Nicholas

4.3
The story told in this superbly researched and suspenseful book is that of the Third Reich's war on European culture and the Allies' desperate effort to preserve it. From the Nazi purges of 'degenerate art' and Goering's shopping sprees in occupied Paris to the perilous journey of the 'Mona Lisa' from Paris and the painstaking reclamation of the priceless treasures of liberated Italy, The Rape of
18

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style

Michael Baxandall

4.3
Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy An introduction to 15th century Italian painting and the social history behind it, arguing that the two are interlinked and that the conditions of the time helped fashion distinctive elements in the painter's style.

Serving as both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting and as a text on how to interpret social history from the style
Jerry Brotton portrait Recommended by Jerry Brotton.
19

History of Modern Art

H. H. Arnason and Elizabeth C. Mansfield

4.3
For undergraduate course in Modern Art, Origins of Modernism, Art Since 1945, Contemporary Art and other courses focusing on art in the 20th century. Long considered the survey of modern art, this engrossing and liberally illustrated text traces the development of trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Retainin
Concerning the Spiritual in Art book cover20

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Wassily Kandinsky, M. T. H. Sadler

4.3
A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his o
21

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

Anne-Marie O'Conno

4.3
The Lady in Gold, considered an unforgettable masterpiece, one of the twentieth century's most recognizable paintings, made headlines all over the world when Ronald Lauder bought it for $135 million a century after Klimt, the most famous Austrian painter of his time, completed the society portrait. Anne-Marie O'Connor, writer for the Washington Post, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, tells the ga
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning American History, #3) book cover22

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning American History, #3)

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

4.3
Preview Summary
The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples.

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omit
Margari Aziza portrait Recommended by Margari Aziza.
Van Gogh book cover23

Van Gogh

Rainer Metzger and Ingo F. Walther

4.3
Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith galvanized readers with their astonishing Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography, a book acclaimed for its miraculous research and overwhelming narrative power. Now Naifeh and Smith have written another tour de force—an exquisitely detailed, compellingly readable, and ultimately heartbreaking portrait of creative genius V
The Agony and the Ecstasy book cover24

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Irving Stone

4.3
Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo’s David, New American Library releases a special edition of Irving Stone’s classic biographical novel—in which both the artist and the man are brought to life in full. A masterpiece in its own right, this novel offers a compelling portrait of Michelangelo’s dangerous, impassioned loves, and the God-driven fury from which he wrested the greatest art
Vincent Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings book cover25

Vincent Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings

Ingo F Walther

4.3
Van Gogh, who took up a variety of professions before becoming an artist, was a solitary, despairing and self-destructive man. This richly illustrated and expert study follows the artist from the early gloom-laden paintings in which he captured the misery of peasants and workers in his homeland, through his bright and colorful Parisian period, to the work of his final years, spent under a southern
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic book cover26

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Alison Bechdel

4.3
Preview Summary
In this graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father.

Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation,
Hillary Chute portrait Recommended by Hillary Chute.
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art book cover27

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Scott McCloud

4.2
The bestselling international classic on storytelling and visual communication

"You must read this book." — Neil Gaiman

Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the
Ev Williams portraitAustin Kleon portraitBret Victor portrait Recommended by Ev Williams, Austin Kleon, Bret Victor, and 1 others.
Austin Kleon portrait
Austin Kleon

Unsolicited, but here’s my advice for visual thinkers (and others) who want to be better writers: … Cartoonists, because their work demands work from two disciplines (writing/art, poetry/design, words/pictures), are highly instructive when it comes to visual people learning to write, writers learning to make art, etc. (Check out Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics for more.) [source]

Will Brooker portrait
Will Brooker

Understanding Comics is a book about how comics work, told in comic form. It’s very accessible, it’s for the general reader and is about comics in general, not just superhero comics. It explores areas like pacing and editing – how motion can be created through static panels on a page, and how arranging those panels in different ways, or drawing in different styles, or combining text and image, has different effects. It’s almost like a book on film study which explores the role of sound, lighting or editing. Scott McCloud is an artist himself, and he draws pastiches to show how different styles produce different effects. [source]

28

The Shock of the New

Robert Hughes

4.2
A beautifully illustrated hundred-year history of modern art, from cubism to pop and avant-garde. More than 250 color photos.
Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane book cover29

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane

Andrew Graham-Dixon

4.2
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571–18 July 1610) lived probably the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great painters. The worlds of Milan and Rome through which Caravaggio moved and which Andrew Graham-Dixon describes brilliantly in this book, are those of cardinals and prostitutes, prayer and violence. Graham-Dixon puts the murder of a pimp, Ranuccio Tomassoni, at th
30

The Power of Art

Simon Schama

4.2
"Great art has dreadful manners," Simon Schama observes wryly at the start of his epic and explosive exploration of the power, and whole point, of art. "The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things; visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your c
The Will to Power book cover31

The Will to Power

Edmund de Waa

4.2
Nietzsche's notebooks, kept by him during his most productive years, offer a fascinating glimpse into the workshop and mind of a great thinker, and compare favorably with the notebooks of Gide and Kafka, Camus and Wittgenstein. The Will to Power, compiled from the notebooks, is one of the most famous books of the past hundred years, but few have studied it. Here, at last, is the first critical edi
32

On Ugliness

Umberto Eco, Alastair McEwen (translator)

4.2
In the mold of his acclaimed "History of Beauty," renowned cultural critic Umberto Eco's "On Ugliness" is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and the arts. What is the voyeuristic impulse behind our attraction to the gruesome and the horrible? Where does the magnetic appeal of the sordid and the scandalous come from? Is ugliness also in the eye of the beholder?
Eco's
33

The Passion of Artemisia

Susan Vreeland

4.2
From extraordinary highs - patronage by the Medicis, friendship with Galileo and, most importantly of all, beautiful and outstandingly original paintings - to rape by her father's colleague, torture by the Inquisition, life-long struggles for acceptance by the artistic Establishment, and betrayal by the men she loved, Artemisia was a bold and brilliant woman who lived as she wanted, and paid a hig
34

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art

Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo

4.2
A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries-many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today.

Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a
Orientalism book cover35

Orientalism

Edward Said

4.2
Preview Summary
More than three decades after its first publication, Edward Said's groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East has become a modern classic.

In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of pow
Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo book cover36

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

Hayden Herrera

4.2
"Through her art, Herrera writes, Kahlo made of herself both performer and icon. Through this long overdue biography, Kahlo has also, finally, been made fully human." — San Francisco Chronicle

Hailed by readers and critics across the country, this engrossing biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo reveals a woman of extreme magnetism and originality, an artist whose sensual vibrancy came straight
37

Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas

Charles Harrison, Paul J. Wood

4.2
This popular anthology of twentieth-century art theoretical texts has now been expanded to take account of new research, and to include significant contributions to art theory from the 1990s.
New edition of this popular anthology of twentieth-century art-theoretical texts. Now updated to include the results of new research, together with significant contributions from the 1990s. Includes writings b
38

Seven Days in the Art World

Sarah Thornton

4.2
Named one of the best art books of 2008 by The New York Times and The Sunday Times [London]: “An indelible portrait of a peculiar society.”—Vogue

The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion.

In a series o
The Secret Lives of Color book cover39

The Secret Lives of Color

Kassia St Clair

4.2
The Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of seventy-five fascinating shades, dyes and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a
The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait book cover40

The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

Frida Kahlo

4.2
Published here in its entirety, Frida Kahlo's amazing illustrated journal documents the last ten years of her turbulent life. This passionate, often surprising, intimate record, kept under lock and key for some forty years in Mexico, reveals many new dimensions in the complex persona of this remarkable Mexican artist.

Covering the years 1944-45, the 170-page journal contains Frida's thoughts, poems
41

The Art Book

Editors of Phaidon Press

4.2
An A to Z guide to 500 great painters and sculptors from medieval to modern times, it debunks art historical classifications by throwing together brilliant examples of all periods, schools, visions and techniques. Each artist is represented by a full-page colour plate of a definitive work, accompanied by explanatory and illuminating information on the image and its creator. Glossaries of artistic
42

Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X

Deborah Davis

4.2
The subject of John Singer Sargent's most famous painting was twenty-three-year-old New Orleans Creole Virginie Gautreau, who moved to Paris and quickly became the "it girl" of her day. A relative unknown at the time, Sargent won the commission to paint her; the two must have recognized in each other a like-minded hunger for fame.

Unveiled at the 1884 Paris Salon, Gautreau's portrait generated the
43

The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century

Edward Dolnick

4.2
As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. The con man's mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art.

It was an almost perfect crime. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pa
44

Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation

E.H. Gombrich

4.1
Described by Kenneth Clark as 'one of the most brilliant books of art criticism that I have ever read', Art and Illusion is a classic study of image-making. It seeks to answer a simple question: why is there such a thing as style? The question may be simple but there is no easy answer, and Professor Gombrich's brilliant and wide-ranging exploration of the history and psychology of pictorial repres
45

Art History

Marilyn Stokstad

4.1
Exceptional in its scholarship and stunning in its beauty, this is the art history book of choice for a new generation. Balancing both the traditions of art history and the new trends of the present. Art History is the most comprehensive, accessible, and magnificently illustrated work of its kind.
46

The Art Forger

B. A. Shapiro

4.1
On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art worth today over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.

Claire makes her living reproducing famous works of art for a popular online retailer. Desperat
Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art book cover47

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art

Mary Gabriel

4.1
Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times).

Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to
Tim Kastelle portrait Recommended by Tim Kastelle.
Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization book cover48

Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

Graham Hancock

4.1
Graham Hancock's multi-million bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilization. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with the sequel to his seminal work filled with completely new, scientific and archaeological evidence, which has only recently come to light...

Near t
Aubrey Marcus portrait Recommended by Aubrey Marcus.
49

Girl in Hyacinth Blue

Susan Vreeland

4.1
A professor invites a colleague from the art department to his home to view a painting he has kept secret for decades in Susan Vreeland's powerful historical novel, Girl in Hyacinth Blue. The professor swears it's a Vermeer -- but why exactly has he kept it hidden so long? The reasons unfold in a gripping sequence of stories that trace ownership of the work back to Amsterdam during World War II an
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek book cover50

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Annie Dillard

4.1
An exhilarating meditation on nature and its seasons—a personal narrative highlighting one year's exploration on foot in the author's own neighborhood in Tinker Creek, Virginia. In the summer, Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and
Laura Dassow Walls portraitSara Maitland portrait Recommended by Laura Dassow Walls and Sara Maitland.
Laura Dassow Walls portrait
Laura Dassow Walls

She’s enacting Thoreau, but in a 20th-century context: she takes on quantum physics, the latest research on DNA and the nature of life. [source]

Sara Maitland portrait
Sara Maitland

This book, which won the Pulitzer literature prize when it was released, is the most beautiful book about the wild. [source]

51

The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)

Dan Brown

4.1
An ingenious code hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

A desperate race through the cathedrals and castles of Europe.

An astonishing truth concealed for centuries . . . unveiled at last.

While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbol
Ev Williams portraitNeal O'Gorman portrait Recommended by Ev Williams and Neal O'Gorman.
Leonardo's Notebooks book cover52

Leonardo's Notebooks

Leonardo da Vinci

4.1
An all-new, jewel-like, reader-friendly format gives new life to this relaunch of an international best-seller.



Leonardo da Vinci—artist, inventor, and prototypical Renaissance man—is a perennial source of fascination because of his astonishing intellect and boundless curiosity about the natural and man-made world. During his life he created numerous works of art and kept voluminous notebooks that
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography book cover53

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

Roland Barthes, Richard Howard

4.1
A graceful, contemplative volume, Camera Lucida was first published in 1979. Commenting on artists such as Avedon, Clifford, Mapplethorpe, and Nadar, Roland Barthes presents photography as being outside the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind, and rendering death and loss more acutely than any other medium. This groundbreaking approach established Camera Lucida
54

The Lady and the Unicorn

Tracy Chevalier

4.1
A tour de force of history and imagination, The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevalier’s answer to the mystery behind one of the art world’s great masterpieces—a set of bewitching medieval tapestries that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown—until now.

Paris, 1490. A shrewd French nobleman commissi
55

Art History Vol 1

Marilyn Stokstad and Michael W. Cothren

4.1
For survey courses in Art History

Welcoming, inclusive, engaging, and global
Art History brings the history of art to life for a new generation of students. It is global in scope, inclusive in its coverage, and warm and welcoming in tone. The guiding vision of Art History is that the teaching of art history survey courses should be filled with equal delight, enjoyment, and serious learning, while
The Goldfinch book cover56

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt

4.1
A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this "extraordinary" and beloved Pulitzer Prize winner that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review).

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the fam
Kaci Lambe Kai portrait Recommended by Kaci Lambe Kai.
Leonardo and the Last Supper book cover57

Leonardo and the Last Supper

Ross King

4.1
Early in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci began work in Milan on what would become one of history's most influential and beloved works of art-The Last Supper. After a dozen years at the court of Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, Leonardo was at a low point personally and professionally: at forty-three, in an era when he had almost reached the average life expectancy, he had failed, despite a number of pr
58

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures

Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman

4.1
The Wall Street Journal called him “a living legend.” The London Times dubbed him “the most famous art detective in the world.”

In Priceless, Robert K. Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, pulls back the curtain on his remarkable career for the first time, offering a real-life international thriller to rival The Thomas Crown Affair.

Rising from humble roots as the son of an antique dea
59

The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers - Revised Edition

T. J. Clark

4.1
The Paris of the 1860s and 1870s was supposedly a brand-new city, equipped with boulevards, cafés, parks, and suburban pleasure grounds—the birthplace of those habits of commerce and leisure that constitute "modern life." Questioning those who view Impressionism solely in terms of artistic technique, T. J. Clark describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others as an attempt to give form
Andrew Graham-Dixon portraitFred Inglis portrait Recommended by Andrew Graham-Dixon and Fred Inglis.
Andrew Graham-Dixon portrait
Andrew Graham-Dixon

It was very very hard to find a book that connected art with society in the way that Clark connected the art of the nineteenth century to the society in which it was produced. [source]

Fred Inglis portrait
Fred Inglis

The second stage of my history of celebrity focuses on Paris at this time. A new kind of phenomenon is beginning to declare itself, which is the process whereby the fashion industry becomes industrialised and the whole novel notion of glamour attaches itself to people who are known and recognised. T J Clark wrote his wonderful book to study how the great painters of the day, people like Manet, Renoir and Redon, depicted the new, very appearance-conscious life of the city. The Impressionists took off at that time because people of the day aspired to public self-display and therefore, as we understand it, celebrity. [source]

60

Women, Art, and Society (World of Art)

Whitney Chadwick

4.1
This acclaimed study challenges the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule who transcended their sex to produce major works of art. While acknowledging the many women whose contributions to visual culture since the Middle Ages have often been neglected, Whitney Chadwick's survey reexamines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, ofte
61

What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell

Will Gompertz

4.1
In the tradition of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, art history with a sense of humor

Every year, millions of museum and gallery visitors ponder the modern art on display and secretly ask themselves, "Is this art?" A former director at London's Tate Gallery and now the BBC arts editor, Will Gompertz made it his mission to bring modern art's exciting history alive for everyone, explaining why an unmade bed o
62

A Perfect Red

Amy Butler Greenfield

4.1
A Perfect Red recounts the colorful history of cochineal, a legendary red dye that was once one of the world's most precious commodities. Treasured by the ancient Mexicans, cochineal was sold in the great Aztec marketplaces, where it attracted the attention of the Spanish conquistadors in 1519. Shipped to Europe, the dye created a sensation, producing the brightest, strongest red the world had eve
Gwen Pearson portrait Recommended by Gwen Pearson.
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1) book cover63

Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1)

Art Spiegelman

4.1
A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.
James Altucher portrait Recommended by James Altucher.
64

M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio

Peter Robb

4.1
65

On Painting

Leon Battista Alberti, Martin Kemp

4.1
Artist, architect, poet and philosopher, Leon Battista Alberti revolutionized the history of art with his theories of perspective in On Painting (1435). Inspired by the order and beauty inherent in nature, his groundbreaking work sets out the principles of distance, dimension and proportion; instructs the painter on how to use the rules of composition, representation, light and colour to create wo
Juliette Aristides portrait Recommended by Juliette Aristides.
66

A Short Guide to Writing About Art (The Short Guide Series)

Sylvan Barnet

4.1
For art courses where there is a writing component. This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.
67

A World History Of Art

John Fleming

4.1
Presents various developments in archeology and art historical research. This book offers a fresh perspective on various developments shaping our cultural history.
John Harrison (Eton College) portrait Recommended by John Harrison (Eton College).
68

The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern

Carol Strickland, John Boswell

4.1
A layman's guide to art history provides the reader with a basic working knowledge of art and its influence on society.
The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles book cover69

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

Martin Gayford

4.1
From October to December 1888, Paul Gauguin shared a home in Arles with Vincent van Gogh. This was, without doubt, the most celebrated cohabitation in art history: never, before or since have two such towering artistic talents been penned up in so small a space. They were the Odd Couple of art history. Predictably, the results were explosive. The dâenouement of their life together has entered into
70

Clara and Mr. Tiffany

Susan Vreeland

4.1
Against the unforgettable backdrop of New York near the turn of the twentieth century, from the Gilded Age world of formal balls and opera to the immigrant poverty of the Lower East Side, bestselling author Susan Vreeland again breathes life into a work of art in this extraordinary novel, which brings a woman once lost in the shadows into vivid color.

It’s 1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Lou
71

Dear Theo

Vincent van Gogh

4.1
Each night, Vincent van Gogh put pen to paper and poured out his heart through letters to his brother Theo. Van Gogh's letters lay bare his deepest feelings, as well as his everyday concerns and his views of the world of art.
72

The Birth of Venus

Sarah Dunant

4.1
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.

But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s pare
Monet book cover73

Monet

Christopher Heinrich

4.1
74

Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance

Erwin Panofsky, Gerda S. Panofsky

4.0
In Studies in Iconology, the themes and concepts of Renaissance art are analysed and related to both classical and medieval tendencies.
75

Art History Vol 2

Marilyn Stokstad and Michael W. Cothren

4.0
For survey courses in Art History

Welcoming, inclusive, engaging, and global
Art History brings the history of art to life for a new generation of students. It is global in scope, inclusive in its coverage, and warm and welcoming in tone. The guiding vision of Art History is that the teaching of art history survey courses should be filled with equal delight, enjoyment, and serious learning, while
Lust for Life book cover76

Lust for Life

Irving Stone

4.0
Lust for Life is the classic fictional re-telling of the incredible life of Vincent Van Gogh.

"Vincent is not dead. He will never die. His love, his genius, the great beauty he has created will go on forever, enriching the world... He was a colossus... a great painter... a great philosopher... a martyr to his love of art. "

Walking down the streets of Paris the young Vincent Van Gogh didn't feel li
Magda Marcu portrait Recommended by Magda Marcu.
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art book cover77

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

Don Thompson

4.0
Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock’s drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million?

Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by
Georgina Adam portrait Recommended by Georgina Adam.
78

Rembrandt's Eyes

Simon Schama

4.0
The great 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn left us so many arresting self-portraits, painted at every stage in his eventful life, that his distinctive face and bearing are a familiar part of the 20th-century cultural landscape, a recognizable presence in galleries across Europe and North America. Nonetheless, the artist himself remains an enigma. Rembrandt was a notoriously difficult m
Onno Blom portrait Recommended by Onno Blom.
Paint by Sticker Masterpieces: Re-create 12 Iconic Artworks One Sticker at a Time! book cover79

Paint by Sticker Masterpieces: Re-create 12 Iconic Artworks One Sticker at a Time!

Workman Publishing

4.0
Paint by Sticker is a compelling new activity for crafters and artists, doodlers and coloring book enthusiasts of all ages. Masterpieces encourages everyone to channel their inner da Vinci and create twelve iconic works of art.

Paint by Sticker Masterpieces includes everything you need to create twelve vibrant, full-color “paintings”—the stickers, the templates, the intuitive directions. The works
The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century book cover80

The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century

Svetlana Alpers

4.0
"The art historian after Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich is not only participating in an activity of great intellectual excitement; he is raising and exploring issues which lie very much at the centre of psychology, of the sciences and of history itself. Svetlana Alpers's study of 17th-century Dutch painting is a splendid example of this excitement and of the centrality of art history among curr
John Harrison (Eton College) portrait Recommended by John Harrison (Eton College).
81

Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum

Jason Felch, Ralph Frammolino

4.0
In recent years, several of America’s leading art museums have voluntarily given up their finest pieces of classical art to the governments of Italy and Greece. The monetary value is estimated at over half a billion dollars. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity?

The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world’s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it h
82

Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers

Deborah Heiligman

4.0
From the author of National Book Award finalist Charles and Emma comes an incredible story of brotherly love.

The deep and enduring friendship between Vincent and Theo Van Gogh shaped both brothers' lives. Confidant, champion, sympathizer, friend--Theo supported Vincent as he struggled to find his path in life. They shared everything, swapping stories of lovers and friends, successes and disappoint
Marc Favreau portrait Recommended by Marc Favreau.
83

On Photography

Susan Sontag

4.0
First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images which are continually inserted between experience and reality. Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This coll
Susan Bordo portrait Recommended by Susan Bordo.
The Private Lives of the Impressionists book cover84

The Private Lives of the Impressionists

Sue Roe

4.0
Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, today astonishing sums are paid for the works of these artists, whose paintings are celebrated for their ability to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape but in scenes of daily life. Their dazzling pictures are fa
85

Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and Histories of Art

Griselda Pollock

4.0
The publication of 'Vision and Difference' marked a milestone in the development of modern art history. Its introduction of a feminist perspective into this largely male-oriented discipline made shockwaves that are still felt forcefully today.
Drawing upon feminist cultural theory previously little applied to the visual arts, Griselda Pollock offers concrete historical analyses of key moments in t
86

The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art

Guerrilla Girls

4.0
Take a romp through the last two thousand years of Western Art with the Guerrilla Girls as your guides, and find out the real who, what, when, and why of art history. Who put all those naked men in the classical section of museums? What were the "do's" and "don'ts" for female artists as "civilization" marched across Europe? Why did nuns have more fun in medieval times? This wisecracking but clever
87

Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts

Christopher De Hamel, Yes Illustrated

4.0
This is a book about why medieval manuscripts matter. Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature.

The idea for the book, which is entirely new, is to
88

Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art

Hall, James

4.0
The understanding and enjoyment of a work of art depends as much on the story it depicts as on the artist's execution of it. But what were once biblical or classical commonplaces are not so readily recognizable today. This book relates in a succinct and readable way the themes, sacred and secular, on which the repertoire of Western art is based. Combined here in a single volume are religious, clas
Martina Markota portrait Recommended by Martina Markota.
89

Methods and Theories of Art History

Anne D'Alleva

4.0
Art historical theory is a forum of intense, often passionate debate. This book provides an accessible introduction to the range of critical theories used in analyzing art. It covers a broad range of approaches, presenting individual arguments, controversies, and divergent perspectives. This second edition has been updated to reflect recent scholarship in contemporary art. Clearly written, this bo
90

Art History: A Critical Introduction to Its Methods

Michael Hatt, Charlotte Klonk

4.0
This book provides a lively and stimulating introduction to methodological debates within art history. Offering a lucid account of approaches from Hegel to post-colonialism, the book provides a sense of art history's own history as a discipline from its emergence in the late-eighteenth century to contemporary debates.
91

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

Dominic Smith

4.0
This is what we long for: the profound pleasure of being swept into vivid new worlds, worlds peopled by characters so intriguing and real that we can't shake them, even long after the reading's done. In his earlier, award-winning novels, Dominic Smith demonstrated a gift for coaxing the past to life. Now, in The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, he deftly bridges the historical and the contemporary, t
92

The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology

Donald Preziosi

4.0
Here is a new edition of Donald Preziosi's masterful selection of the most influential and innovative writing on art history of the past two centuries. The book includes over thirty pieces by seminal thinkers and writers from Winckelmann, Kant, and Hegel to Foucault, Carol Duncan, and Mary Kelly on such subjects as aesthetics and anthropology, postmodern automatons, semiotics and iconography, perf
93

Art: A World History

Elke Linda Buchholz, Susanne Kaeppele, et al.

4.0
This handy, pocket-sized volume includes 900 illustrations and takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the most spectacular works of art around the world and throughout time.
94

Luncheon of the Boating Party

Susan Vreeland

4.0
Bestselling author Susan Vreeland returns with a vivid exploration of one of the most beloved Renoir paintings in the world

Instantly recognizable, Auguste Renoir's masterpiece depicts a gathering of his real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café terrace along the Seine near Paris. A wealthy painter, an art collector, an Italian journalist, a war hero, a celebrated actress, and Renoir's futur
95

Blue: The History of a Color

Michel Pastoureau

4.0
A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the color blue throughout the ages

Blue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now cite it as their favorite color. In this fascinating history, the renowned medievalist Michel Pastoureau traces the changing meanings of blue from its rar
Art: 2nd Edition book cover96

Art: 2nd Edition

Andrew Graham Dixon

4.0
97

Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World

Sharon Waxman

4.0
A journey across four continents to the heart of the conflict over who should own the great works of ancient art

Why are the Elgin Marbles in London and not on the Acropolis? Why do there seem to be as many mummies in France as there are in Egypt? Why are so many Etruscan masterworks in America? For the past two centuries, the West has been plundering the treasures of the ancient world to fill its
98

A History of Illuminated Manuscripts

Christopher De Hamel

4.0
Illuminated manuscripts are perhaps the most beautiful treasures to survive from the middle ages. This authoritative volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the medieval world of books, their production and their consumption. The text divides this world into different groups of readers and writers: missionaries, emperors, monks, students, aristocrats, priests, collectors and the general pu
99

Everything You Need to Ace American History in One Big Fat Notebook: The Complete Middle School Study Guide

Workman Publishing, Philip Bigler, et al.

4.0
It’s the revolutionary American history study guide just for middle school students from the brains behind Brain Quest.

Everything You Need to Ace American History . . . covers Native Americans to the war in Iraq. There are units on Colonial America; the Revolutionary War and the founding of a new nation; Jefferson and the expansion west; the Civil War and Reconstruction; and all of the notable eve
Chanel: Collections and Creations book cover100

Chanel: Collections and Creations

Daniele Bott

4.0
Chanel's combination of tradition, originality, and style has always made it the most seductive of fashion labels. Here the House of Chanel opens its private archives, revealing a galaxy of brilliant designs created by Coco Chanel from 1920 onwards. Dazzling clothes, intricate accessories, beautiful models, and timeless design leave no doubt as to the lasting fame of her name and embody everything