In this beautifully illustrated book, Peter C. Marzio, director of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, offers his personal commentary on more than 100 of his favorite masterpieces chosen from the nearly 60,000 works in the museum's permanent collection. The works are sequenced chronologically, representing more than five-thousand years of civilization on six continents, and spanning the ancient to the digital worlds.

The volume begins with a majestic sculpture of an ibex, c. 3000 B.C., and concludes with the astonishing animated video City Glow, by Chiho Aoshima, created in 2005. Informative and accessible descriptions of the artworks by the museum's curatorial staff complement Dr. Marzio's commentary and together offer fascinating comparisons, innovative juxtapositions, and unexpected affinities between the diverse works of art. As Dr. Marzio writes in the introduction, "Each masterpiece represents a magical moment when the humanistic impulse to rise above the mundane and the everyday is triumphantly achieved.

Distributed for The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston