The line between punishment and torture can be thin, but the entire world agreed it was crossed at Abu Ghraib. Or was it?

Robert Bird’s analysis is centred around a detailed account of Tarkovsky’s technique, which provides the best interpretive guide to both the director’s films and his theoretical speculations.

Though more than sixty years have passed since the signing of the proclamation of the State of Israel, the impact of that epochal event continues to shape the political policies and public opinion of not only the Middle East but much of the world.

Miles Glendinning’s impassioned polemic, Architecture’s Evil Empire? looks at how such cult works have fatally subverted the built environment as a whole.

"Art Under Control" in North Korea accompanies an exhibition of North Korean art at the British Museum.

At a moment when the role of Latin America in global business and culture is growing in importance and attention, "Brazil" is an essential read for all scholars of architecture and Latin American history.

Advertisers and the media are very aware of the complex and highly subjective associations that most of us have towards nakedness, and use images incessantly to compete for our attention.

Drawing on design and art, popular culture and personal experience, "Chair" is an engaging and informative biography of this everyday object, and will appeal to anyone interested in why we choose, or are made, to sit on the chairs we do.

Thought-provoking and engaging, "Childhood and Cinema" is an original and challenging contribution to studies in childhood and visual culture that will be of interest to readers in the fields of literature, film and cultural studies.

"China into Film" is the first book to look at contemporary Chinese cinema as a visual art and to illustrate the ways in which it has been shaped by centuries of Chinese tradition.

Marker’s oeuvre moves in circles, with each project recycling and referring back to earlier works and to a host of other adopted texts, and proceeds by way of oblique association and lateral digression

The cinema has been the pre-eminent popular art form of the twentieth century. In "Cinemas of the World", James Chapman examines the relationship between film and society in the modern world.

Linda Simon here teases apart the myth that Chanel and her adoring public collaborated to create, and explores its contradictions – Chanel was a self-proclaimed recluse who emerged as one of the most spectacular personalities of her time.

With over 150 intriguing illustrations, "Consuming Bodies" provides a wide-ranging perspective on an under-researched area of contemporary Japanese art practice and the critical issues it uncovers.

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 manipulation of the cinematic image by the viewer also makes visible cinema’s material and aesthetic attributes. By exploring how new technologies can give new life to ‘old’ cinema.

A compelling and thought-provoking study, "The Destruction of Art" forces us to rethink the ways that we interact with art and react to its power to shock or subdue.

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.