Christopher Benfey, The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan, 2003
Christopher Benfey, Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable, 1999
Christopher Benfey, If: The Untold Story of KIpling's American Years, 2019
John Berendt, The City of Falling Angels, 2005 [Venice the city, society, La Fenice fire and aftermath]
John Berger, The Success and Failure of Picasso, 1965
Isabel Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 1880
Ulrich Boser, The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft, 2009
T. C. Boyle, The Women, 2008 [in the life of Frank Lloyd Wright]
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847
(Discovered in time to read before seeing the Lewis Chessmen in Edinburgh, 2016)
Nancy Marie Brown, Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them, 2015
Nancy Marie Brown, The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman, 2008
Nancy Marie Brown, The Saga of Gudrid the Far-Traveler, 2015
Nancy Marie Brown, Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths, 2014
Bill Bryson, At Home, 2010
Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, 1995 (The Hinges of History, volume 1),
Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Hinges series, volume 4)
Thomas Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages and the Beginning of the Modern World, 2006 (The Hinges of History, volume 5)
Thomas Cahill, Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World, 2013 (TH/H vol 6)
Charles Calhoun, Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life, 2004
Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark, 1915
Lynne Cheney, James Madison: A Life Reconsidered, 2014
William Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, 1868
Joan Breton Connelly, The Parthenon Enigma, 2014 (reinterpretation of famed Parthenon Frieze)
Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, Friends . . . .
Cathy Davidson, 36 Views of Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan, 2006
Deborah Davis, Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X (2004)
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, 2014
Edward Dolnick, The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone, 2021
Charles Dunn, Everyday Life in Traditional Japan, 2008
Natalie Dykstra, Clover Adams A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, 2012
Robert Edsel, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, 2010
Cliff Edwards, Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest, 2002
Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, 1998
Bruce Feiler, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths, 2005
Bruce Feiler, Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan, 2004
Bruce Feiler, Looking for Class, 1993 [investigates the enduring mystique of Oxford and Cambridge]
Gustave Flaubert, A Sentimental Education, 1869
Carol Flinders, Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics, 1993
[Clare of Assisi, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux]
Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art, 2019
Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 1998
Gillian Gill, Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale, 2005
Katherine Govier, The Printmaker's Daughter, 2010 [reconstructs the life of Hokusai]
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, 2011
Gloria Groom, et al. Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, 2012
S. G. Gwynn, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, 2010
Stephen Harrigan, Remember Ben Clayton, 2012
Lucinda Hawksley, Lizzie Siddal: the Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, 2009
Erica Hirshler, Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting, 2009 [Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, MFA Boston]
Erica Hirshler, William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master, 2016
Christopher Hitchens, Mortality, 2012
Christopher Hitchens, The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification (Updated), 2008
Christopher Hitchens, Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles, 1988
Nancy Horan, Under the Wide and Starry Sky: A Novel, 2014 [the life of Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife]
Hugh Howard, The Painter's Chair, 2009 [George Washington and his portraitists]
Robert Hughes, The Epic History of Art in America, 1997 [+ 6-part documentary]
Henry James, Daisy Miller, 1878
Kathleen Jones, Christina Rossetti: Learning Not to Be First, 2011
Jill Jonnes, Eiffel's Tower, and the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count, 2010
Thomas Kasulis, Shinto: The Way Home, 2004
Ross King, Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism, 2006
Ross King, Leonardo and the Last Supper, 2013 -- good preparation for 2018 Milan study tour
Ross King, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, 2003
Ross King, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies, 2016
Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, 2000
Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape, 2009
Min Jim Lee, Pachinko, 2017
Eunice Lipton, Looking into Degas: Unesasy Images of Women and Modern Life, 1986
Laurie Lisle, Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, 1980
Laurie Lisle, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life, 1990
Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysanthème, 1887 [A French officer experiencing Japanese life]
Albert Lubin, Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent Van Gogh, 1996
Neil MacGregor, Germany: Memories of a Nation, 2014
Fiona MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones, 2011
Rory MacLean, Berlin: Portrait of a City through the Centuries, 2014
Fiona Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age, 2001
Debra Mancoff, Fashion in Impressionist Paris, 2012
Debra Mancoff, Jane Morris, The Pre-Raphaelite Model of Beauty, 2000
Megan Marshall, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, 2013
David McCullough, The Great Bridge, 1972 [Exhaustive, fascinating story of the Brooklyn Bridge]
David McCullough, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, 2011
David McCullough, 1776, 2005
David McCullough, John Adams, 2008
John McKinstry and Harold Kerbo, Japanese Society and History, 2010
Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, 1956
Yukio Mishima, The Sound of Waves, 1994
Frederic Morton, A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889, 1979
Franny Moyle, Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites, 2011
Susan Nagel, Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin, 2005
Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander, 1969
Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea, 1904
Robin Oliveira, I've Always Loved You: A Novel, 2014 [Cassatt and Degas]
Lucy Paquette, The Hammock: A Novel Based on the True Story of French Painter James Tissot, 2012
Ellis Peters, The Cadfael Chronicles, Chronicle #1: A Morbid Taste for Bones, 2014
Chronicle #2: One Corpse Too Many, 2014
Chronicle #3: Monk's Hood, 1980
(Fun background reading for the 2019 Art inSight study tour to Wales)
Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture, 1964 [what architeture owes the viewer]
P.J.A.N. Rietbergen, A Short History of the Netherlands From PreHistory to the Present Day, 6th edition 2004
Virginia Rounding, Grandes Horizontales: the Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans, 2003
Witold Rybczynski, Now I Sit Me Down, 2016 [history of chairs]
Aline Saarinen, The Proud Possessors, 1958
Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, 2010
Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, 1997
Stacey Schiff, The Revolutionary Samuel Adams, 2022
Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818
Sir Walter Scott, The Talisman, 1825
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, 1820
Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City, 2013 (prep for Amsterdam study tour, Fall 2018)
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony
That Shaped America, 2005 (prep for Hudson River study tour, Spring 2018)
Sebastian Smee, The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art, 2016
Dominic Smith, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos: A Novel, 2016
Dominic Smith, The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre: A Novel, 2007
Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love, 2000
Peter Stark, Astoria: Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier, 2015
Robert Sullivan, My American Revolution: A Modern Expedition through History's Forgotten Battlegrounds, 2013 [organized by all the sites visible from the Empire State Building]
Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters, 1948 [fortunes of a declining family of sisters in Japan c.1941]
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, 2014
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow, 2016
Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life, 1997
Dawn Tripp, Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe, 2016
Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, 1875
Harlow Unger, Lafayette, 2003
Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr Tiffany, 2011
Susan Vreeland, The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 2007 [Renoir’s painting]
Susan Vreeland, The Passion of Artemisia, 2001 [Artemisia Gentileschi]
Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, 2010
[alternate title: The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss]
Edmund de Waal, The White Road: Journey into an Obsession, 2015
Edmund de Waal, Letters to Camondo, 2021
Dennis Washburn, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon [1002], addressing the historic translation by Arthur Waley [1928], 2011
Heather Webb, Rodin's Lover, 2015 [Camille Claudel]
A. N. Wilson, Victoria: A Life (2014)
Andrea Wulf, Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation, 2012
Emile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise, 1873 (translations may vary) see PBS Masterpiece series, "The Paradise"
Emile Zola, The Masterpiece, 1886 (Zola's assessment of Impressionism and plein-air painting)
