In a small village in Anatolia, even the poorest villager is expected to pay tribute to a tyrranical Mongol ruler, but the wiseman, Nasreddin Hoca, finds a way to make an aged donkey seem most valuable.

Elegant Effendi, an artist hired to create a book illuminating the Sultan's triumphant life, has been killed. The man who hired him, Enishte, has also been murdered. While on a recent trip to Italy, Enishte was entranced by painting that used perspective and figurative art abundantly. He encouraged his artists to use the same methods in their construction of the Sultan's book. However, this sort of art serves as an affront to Islam and may have led...

The book opens with brief information for getting started and the most popular breeds, the tools and materials needed, and some sample drawing exercises to warm up. Each drawing lesson begins with a basic shape, such as a square, a circle, or a triangle, and progresses to a finished colored piece of artwork, making it easy for children to follow along. Along the way, engaging text describes interesting facts about each breed.

A portrait, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost man of letters. Blending reminiscence with history; family photographs with portraits of poets and pashas; art criticism, metaphysical musing, and, now and again, a fanciful tale, Pamuk invents an ingenious form to evoke his lifelong home, the city that forged his imagination. He begins with his childhood, his first intimations of the melancholy awareness...

"A collection of all 136 humorous sketches and tales that ... Mark Twain wrote as a young reporter for various newspapers and magazines and later saw fit to issue in book form ... More unvarnished than his short stories or novels, and more willing to indulge in fun for its own sake."--Back cover.

Offers maps, helpful recommendations, authoritative background information, and up-to-date coverage of things to see and do, for travelers of every budget.