Books published by Reaktion Books

A distinct symbol of the desert and the Middle East, the camel was once unkindly described as half snake, half folding bedstead. But in the eyes of many the camel is a creature of great beauty. This book explores why the camel has fascinated so many cultures, including those in places where camels are not indigenous.

Beautifully illustrated with many captivating images of Paris design, dress, interiors, objects, art and media of the time, Ballets Russes Style is a much-needed account of how Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes influenced Parisian fashion, interior design, advertising and the decorative arts in the early twentieth century.

A comprehensive study of Iceland's social and historical development, from tiny fishing settlements to a global economic power. It is of interest to those studying this most enigmatic of islands, and also to those interested in cultural and social history as a whole.

A flavourful history of British food over the last 150 years, which shows how modern British cuisine is a product of the diversity of its society, in which people of differing ethnic groups readily sample and borrow from each other's food

Portugal is a country that has sometimes been dismissed as small and relatively unimportant. This title demonstrates that the contrary is true, showing that Portugal has been crucial to the development of Europe and the modern world. It offers a fresh appraisal of Portuguese history and its role in the world.

Theme parks are a uniquely interactive and enduring form of entertainment that have influenced architecture, technology and culture in surprising ways for more than a century. Taking primitive amusements of pleasure gardens as its starting point, this book offers an investigation of the evolution of the theme park over the twentieth century.

The owls are not what they seem. From ancient Babylon to Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat and the grandiloquent, absent-minded Wol from Winnie the Pooh to David Lynch's Twin Peaks, owls have woven themselves into the fabric of human culture from earliest times. This book explores the natural and cultural history of owls.

Crumbled shells of mosques in Iraq, the fall of the World Trade Center towers on September 11: when architectural totems such as these are destroyed by conflicts and the ravages of war, more than mere buildings are at stake. The author highlights a range of wars and conflicts in which the destruction of architecture was pivotal.

Charting Hawksmoor's career and the decline of his reputation, Owen Hopkins offers fresh interpretations of many of his famous works - notably his three East End churches - and shows how over their history Hawksmoor's buildings have been ignored, abused, altered, recovered and celebrated.

Seal by Victoria Dickenson explores the natural and cultural history of an animal that has piqued and delighted human interest since ancient times, from their role in Roman spectacles to their frequent inhabitation of animal rescue centers today.

The recent retirement of Fidel Castro turned the world's attention towards the island nation of Cuba and the question of what its future holds. Amid the talk and hypothesizing, it is worth taking a moment to consider how Cuba reached this point. The author provides this with his incisive history of Cuba since 1959.

Horror films revel in taking viewers into shadowy places where evil resides, whether it is a house, a graveyard or a dark forest. This title leads us inside these haunted spaces to explore them and the monstrous antagonists who dwell there.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774 1840), the greatest painter of the Romantic movement in Germany, was perhaps Europe's first truly modern artist. This title offers a comprehensive account of this most fascinating of nineteenth-century masters.

New in the Critical Lives series, this is the first new biography of Walter Benjamin in more than a decade.

As well as much-needed electricity, dams generate extremes of emotion. Traditionally, dams have facilitated hydraulic civilizations such as those in the Nile Valley, China and Mesopotamia, and, in the twentieth century, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Yet with the proliferation of dams there are now more than 40,000 large dams worldwide opposition and support can be measured in equal proportion. Their outstanding design and construction, often in inhospitable conditions, is representative of the skills of their engineers, yet others do not see such beauty in the taming' of rivers. In 1998 the continuing controversy led to the forming of the World Commission on Dams to seek a meeting of minds. "e;Dam"e;, a new addition to Reaktion's "e;Objekt"e; series, traces the development of dams from the Industrial Revolution to the present day through a number of themes both successes and failures including the extension of the design teams forming an alliance between engineering, architecture, landscape architecture and ecology. A profusely illustrated exploration of a previously neglected subject, this book is neither a polemic against dams nor a defence of their proliferation.It offers a fresh and much-needed account of their design, construction and function, which will appeal to general readers and those interested in environmental policy, history and civil engineering.

An exploration of Gothic's contemporary face, from the excesses of the Chapman brothers to fashions for piercing, tattooing and body modification, and from the postmodern freak shows of Joel-Peter Witkin's photography to David Lynch's films

Film and music belong together; classics like Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927) and Mike Nichols' "The Graduate" (1967) are renowned for their brilliant soundtracks. But what exactly is film music? This title traces the history of music in film and discusses central theoretical questions concerning its narrative and psychological functions.