Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art

Excerpt Only a Promise of Happiness: the Place of Beauty in a World of Art is a beautiful book. I use the word \u27beautiful\u27 here with purpose, indeed with multiple purposes. First, to the casual eye the book presents itself as a contribution to art history or appreciation. Its cover (and who doesn\u27t choose a book by its cover?) offers a color detail from Manet\u27s Olympia, a work of some significant obsession on the part of the author; its more or less eight by ten inch dimensions; its thirteen color plates collected at the book\u27s end and its seventy-nine black and white figures interspersed with the text; all contribute to this impression. The book is beautifully put together