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The Architecture Book
- Big Ideas Simply Explained (Big Ideas)
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
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The Architecture Book
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Publisher's summary
Discover the key architectural concepts behind the world's most incredible buildings and structures.
The Architecture Book goes beyond other architecture books to analyze not just buildings themselves, but the ideas and principles that make each of the featured structures key to the history and evolution of our built environment.
From ancient and classical architecture through Medieval, Gothic, and Renaissance buildings, the explosion of Baroque and Rococo, and the 19th-century "battle of the styles", to the emergence of modernism, postmodernism, and the glittering skyscrapers of the 20th and 21st centuries, the book traces the evolution of construction. This book explains how architects throughout history have pushed boundaries and created innovative buildings. Examples of architectural movements and styles are drawn from all over the world and celebrated buildings from Europe and North and South America feature alongside key examples from China, Japan, and India, and stunning religious structures from mosques to churches, and from stupas to pagodas and temples.
Offering a fresh perspective on our man-made environment, The Architecture Book is the essential guide for everyone who is passionate about buildings and the ideas behind them.
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- A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design
- By: Kurt Kohlstedt, Roman Mars
- Narrated by: Roman Mars
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 601
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 497
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 497
99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The 99% Invisible City
- By Louise Schraa on 01-09-21
By: Kurt Kohlstedt, and others
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The History of Western Art
- By: Peter Whitfield
- Narrated by: Sebastian Comberti
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 258
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 225
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 220
What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities from eras of history utterly remote from ourselves? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age: religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, to the revolutionary years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the artist has acted as a mirror to the ideals and conflicts of the human mind.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A whirlwind tour of Western art
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-18-12
By: Peter Whitfield
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Why Architecture Matters
- By: Paul Goldberger
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 76
The purpose of Why Architecture Matters is to "come to grips with how things feel to us when we stand before them, with how architecture affects us emotionally as well as intellectually" - with its impact on our lives. "Architecture begins to matter," writes Paul Goldberger, "when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Reading too mechanical
- By Petrie on 09-01-15
By: Paul Goldberger
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How Do We Look
- The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Mary Beard
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
From prehistoric Mexico to modern Istanbul, Mary Beard looks beyond the familiar canon of Western imagery to explore the history of art, religion, and humanity. Conceived as an accompaniment to How Do We Look and The Eye of Faith, the famed Civilizations shows on PBS, renowned classicist Mary Beard has created this elegant volume on how we have looked at art.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Really needs a PDF
- By Britt Elin Gihleengen on 12-06-18
By: Mary Beard
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Minoans
- A Captivating Guide to an Essential Bronze Age Society in Ancient Greece Called the Minoan Civilization
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Richard L. Walton
- Length: 1 hr and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
The Minoans were an ancient civilization that built their settlements on islands in the Aegean Sea. They lived almost 5,000 years ago and left behind traces of their lives, but not enough for people to create a complete picture. Ever since the early 20th century, the Minoans have been a subject of interest, thanks to the discoveries and excavations by Sir Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist who found the first Minoan ruins and named them after the mythological King Minos and his Minotaur.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Scholarly
- By Kateee on 03-25-20
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The Birth of Classical Europe
- A History from Troy to Augustine
- By: Simon Price, Peter Thonemann
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Story4 out of 5 stars 118
To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level, from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a “classical Europe,” using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures. As this consistently fresh and surprising new audio book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engagement with an already old and revered past - one filled with great leaders and writers....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent overview of the Classical World
- By David I. Williams on 01-12-14
By: Simon Price, and others
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Venice
- Pure City
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4 out of 5 stars 75
The Venetians' language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This latest work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its listeners to that sensual and surprising city. His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers.
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2 out of 5 stars
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An endless droning list.....
- By jack on 03-15-11
By: Peter Ackroyd
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The Etruscans
- A Captivating Guide to the Etruscan Civilization of Ancient Italy that Preceded the Roman Republic
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Richard L. Walton
- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7
The Roman Republic, and later the Roman Empire, was an unusual conqueror because it would absorb and assimilate elements of the cultures it dominated. A standing practice was to allow the defeated to continue practicing their culture and religion so long as they paid their taxes on time. Such a procedure was part of why Christianity would seep into the Roman Empire around the 1st century CE, for example. For the Etruscans, this meant they influenced aspects of Roman civilization, one of the most powerful cultures in the history of the Western world.
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Over My Dead Body
- Unearthing the Hidden History of American Cemeteries
- By: Greg Melville
- Narrated by: Will Tulin
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead. Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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excellent read!
- By KJ on 03-05-23
By: Greg Melville
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The Map of Knowledge
- A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found
- By: Violet Moller
- Narrated by: Susan Duerden
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
The foundations of modern knowledge - philosophy, math, astronomy, geography - were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed. Yet some texts did survive and The Map of Knowledge explores the role played by seven cities around the Mediterranean....
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3 out of 5 stars
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Terrible narration.
- By nathan535 on 11-05-19
By: Violet Moller
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Metropolis
- A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention
- By: Ben Wilson
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
In a captivating tour of cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious, millennia-spanning story how urban living sparked humankind's greatest innovations.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Sorry that I can’t rate it higher
- By BCM on 12-28-20
By: Ben Wilson
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Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds
- By: Frank Joseph
- Narrated by: Blake Kubena
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds is the most up-to-date and comprehensive investigation of history's infamous sunken city. Nowhere else will you find a more dramatic and convincing presentation of the evidence for its archaeological reality.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Good for a substitute for melatonin!
- By joshua on 02-12-19
By: Frank Joseph
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Lost Cities, Ancient Tombs
- 100 Discoveries That Changed the World
- By: Ann R. Williams - editor, Douglas Preston - introduction
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 64
Blending high adventure with history, this chronicle of 100 astonishing discoveries from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the fabulous “Lost City of the Monkey God” tells incredible stories of how explorers and archaeologists have uncovered the clues that illuminate our past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just what I wanted
- By Amazon Customer on 01-16-22
By: Ann R. Williams - editor, and others