Search results for ""author karen mcneill""

Julia Morgan was truly a pioneer of her time among other accomplishments, she was the first woman architect to be licensed in California, in 1904. Through her remarkable life and legacy, this book celebrates the Beaux-Arts architecture of California. Focusing on Morgan s most famous project in the state, Hearst Castle, to which she devoted more than 30 years of her life, this volume also examines, for the first time, Morgan s fabulous early buildings in the style. Morgan designed more than 700 buildings across California, many of which are designated landmarks today. Deepening the reader s understanding of California architecture, this book also places into context Morgan s ambitions, her influences and inspirations, as well as her daily practice and challenges as a woman shaping an extraordinarily prolific and highly successful career in a man s world. To better understand the Beaux-Arts training Morgan underwent in Paris, the reader is taken through the challenging, highly arduous Ecole des Beaux-Arts curriculum, which Morgan completed, a lone woman among men. Also explored, in detail, is the story of how the studio and kilns of California Faience, a Berkeley ceramic artisan s shop, became the supplier of tens of thousands of tiles designed by Morgan and overseen by Hearst himself to decorate their architectural master-piece overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

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An emblematic story of the shipwreck of the Arab Spring At his father’s funeral, to the great consternation of all present, Abdel Nasser beats the imam who is celebrating the funeral rite. The narrator, a childhood friend of the protagonist, retraces the story of “the Italian” from his days as a free and rebellious adolescent spirit to the leader of a student movement and then affirmed journalist. Those were crucial years in Tunisia, years of great tension, change, and repression. Against this background full of revolutionary ferments stands the tormented love story between Abdel Nasser and Zeina, a brilliant and beautiful philosophy student. Their dreams will unfortunately end up being wrecked under the ruthless gears of a corrupt and chauvinist society. Abdel Nasser’s transformation from a young idealist with high hopes to a successful, but disillusioned and tired journalist is masterfully narrated in a stream of stories, digressions and flashbacks in which the narrative tension is always high. Winner of the 2015 International Prize for Arabic Fiction

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