​SPAIN: From the Shadows of History, to the Sunlight of Living Culture
Monroe Pettigrew © 2025 ***(AVAILABLE IN APRIL 2026)***
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This book is a cultural field guide to Spain, shaped by years of travel, observation, and lived experiences across the country. It’s not a checklist of attractions or a race through highlights. It’s an attempt to explain how Spain actually functions, socially, regionally, and day to day.
The book focuses on Spain’s regional identities, its relationship with time, food, public life, history and tradition, and the small but consequential habits that shape how the country moves. It’s written for readers who want context, not just recommendations, and who understand that travel is richer when you know how to read the place you’re in.
This is not just a guide to seeing Spain, it’s also a guide to understanding it.
Mysteries of the Two Mona Lisas: Inside the Workshop of Leonardo da Vinci
Monroe Pettigrew © 2026 ***(AVAILABLE SPRING 2027)***
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This book examines two paintings that history has treated very differently, and the shop in which they were created. One became a global icon. The other was quietly pushed to the margins.
The focus is threefold. First, on both versions of the Mona Lisa as serious works in their own right. Second, on what they reveal about authorship, influence, and artistic practice in the Renaissance. And third, on the inner life of Leonardo’s workshop, a place defined by collaboration rather than solitary genius.
This is not a book about hype or mythology. It is an effort to see these paintings the way Leonardo’s workshop may have seen them: as evolving works, shaped through process, partnership, and time.
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NOTE: This book was originally intended for release this February (2026). But due to recent theories and discoveries regarding this books subject matter, the release date has been moved back.
