Marilyn Monroe: A Life in Pictures


Anne Verlhac - 2007
    Marilyn Monroe: A Life in Pictures is the only book to bring together all of the most iconic images of the legendary bombshell. Glamorous shots by celebrity photographers mix with casual snapshots and childhood portraits to span Marilyn's luminous but too-short life. Hundreds of evocative images, both lush and poignant, are interwoven with quotations by and about Marilyn to create an elegant collective portrait like no other. Aesthetically arresting throughout, this volume illuminates the life of a legend, both onscreen and off.

Kiki Smith: Prints, Books and Things


Wendy Weltman - 2003
    Smith emerged in the early 1980s as one of a generation of artists who returned to figurative imagery after a period in which American art had leaned to the abstract and conceptual. In Smith's case the interest in the figure was literal: She is fascinated by the anatomy of the human body, which is an immediate and emotionally powerful presence in much of her work. She is equally concerned with the natural world, and animals have become increasingly important in her recent imagery. The heart of printmaking is the ability to create more than one example of an artwork, and this appeals to Smith's interest in the public dissemination of imagery and information. Her work is politically sensitized but she is also fascinated by craft and is constantly exploring and experimenting with her materials. Her prolific body of printed art incorporates techniques extending from elaborate etchings to crude rubber stamps and images ranging from wall-sized lithographs and deluxe artist's books to screen-printed giveaway posters and removable tattoos. Kiki Smith: Prints, Books and Other Things accompanies an exhibition devoted to this underacknowledged but crucial dimension of her art.

Professor Maxwell’s Duplicitous Demon: The Life and Science of James Clerk Maxwell


Brian Clegg - 2019
    But ask a physicist and there’s no doubt that James Clerk Maxwell will be near the top of the list.  Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, explained how we perceive colour. He uncovered the way gases behave. And, most significantly, he transformed the way physics was undertaken in his explanation of the interaction of electricity and magnetism, revealing the nature of light and laying the groundwork for everything from Einstein’s special relativity to modern electronics.   Along the way, he set up one of the most enduring challenges in physics, one that has taxed the best minds ever since. ‘Maxwell’s demon’ is a tiny but thoroughly disruptive thought experiment that suggests the second law of thermodynamics, the law that governs the flow of time itself, can be broken. This is the story of a groundbreaking scientist, a great contributor to our understanding of the way the world works, and his duplicitous demon.

The Heart of an Orphan


Amy Eldridge - 2016
    Written by Amy Eldridge, founder and CEO of Love Without Boundaries, this poignant chronicle of LWB's life-changing work, told through the stories of individual children, offers personal insight into the complex issues surrounding orphan care, abandonment, international aid, and adoption. Both thought-provoking and inspirational, "The Heart of an Orphan" reminds us all that while the needs of vulnerable children around the world may seem overwhelming, the human heart triumphs in believing that every life has value and every child deserves love.

Imprisoned with ISIS: Faith in the Face of Evil


Petr Jasek - 2020
    Petr grew up in the underground church and benefitted from financial help and Bibles smuggled in to his family. As an adult living in the free Czech Republic, Petr chose to begin serving persecuted Christians—especially in Islamist hotspots in Africa and the Middle East. In 2015, he was arrested in Sudan, convicted as a war criminal, and sentenced to life in prison, where he was forced to share a group cell with ISIS terrorists. The true story of what God did in and through Petr has already inspired tens of thousands around the world. Now, for the first time, Petr tells the whole story.

One Knee Equals Two Feet


John Madden - 1986
    Madden is a former lineman and head coach for the Oakland Raiders. Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist and author.

Party Out of Bounds: The B-52's, R.E.M., and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia


Rodger Lyle Brown - 1991
    (Music)

Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing


Emma Dexter - 2005
    In the following and largest section of the book (over 300 pages and approximately 500 illustrations), the 100 or more artists are presented in an A to Z order. Some artists are presented on 2 pages, some on 4 pages. About 5 selections of work are reproduced for each artist, along a text written by an author who is a specialist on the artist's work. The 500-word texts are brief surveys of the artist's career to date, and aim at introducing the methods and subject matter at issue in their recent works. A selected list of exhibitions and bibliography also complements the reproductions and text on each artist.

Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art


Julian Barnes - 2011
    Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting. But we are very far from reaching that state. We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain things, to form opinions, to argue... It is a rare picture which stuns, or argues, us into silence. And if one does, it is only a short time before we want to explain and understand the very silence into which we have been plunged.'Julian Barnes began writing about art with a chapter on Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa in his 1989 novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. Since then he has written a series of remarkable essays , chiefly about French artists, for a variety of journals and magazines. Gathering them for this book, he realised that he had unwittingly been retracing the story of how art made its way from Romanticism to Realism and into Modernism.

The Looniness of the Long Distance Runner


Russell Taylor - 2001
    His journey from the treadmill in North London to the mountains of Wales to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway illuminates the meaning of the egalitarian race, the only sport where any weekend jogger can run with world-class champions. For everyone who has contemplated running the marathon or watched from the sidelines feeling an uneasy mix of envy and gratitude, this comical and inspiring account will change their understanding of the legendary race.

God In My Corner: A Spiritual Memoir


George Foreman - 2000
    What happened to me in that room is so incredibly bizarre, it's unlikely you've ever before read anything like it. Simply stated, I died and went to the other side. The experience impacted me so profoundly that three decades later I can't go a single day without thinking about it."A childhood in grinding poverty. Two heavyweight boxing championships – twenty years apart. A life-changing encounter with God. A new life devoted to ministy. An inspiring comeback and then astounding success as an entrepreneur and trusted product pitchman.For the first time, George Foreman tells the whole story of his remarkable life. With the frankness, warmth, and humor you expect from Foreman, he shares the faith journey that has shaped his life, offering many life lessons along the way.What are the secrets to George Foreman's inspiring success?Why is he always smiling?Why did he name all five of his sons George?There is no one quiet like George Foreman. God in My Corner explains why. More importantly, it will open your eyes to the reality that God is there in your corner, just as He's been there for George all these years.

A Forger's Tale: Confessions of the Bolton Forger


Shaun Greenhalgh - 2017
    Working out of a shed in his parents' garden, Greenhalgh had successfully fooled some of the world's greatest museums. During the court case, the breadth of his forgeries shocked the art world and tantalised the media. What no one realised was how much more of the story there was to tell.Written in prison, A Forger's Tale details Shaun's notorious career and the extraordinary circumstances that led to it. From Leonardo drawings to L.S. Lowry paintings, from busts of American presidents to Anglo-Saxon brooches, from cutting-edge Modernism to the ancient art of the Stone Age, Greenhalgh could - and did - copy it all. Told with great wit and charm, this is the definitive account of Britain's most successful and infamous forger, a man whose love for art saturates every page of this extraordinary memoir.

The Art of Goosebumps


Sarah Rodriguez - 2021
    At that time, four books in the line were being market-tested by the publisher to see how young readers would react to R.L. Stine's particular brand of humor-tinged horror. One element that was sure to catch the attention of little eyes everywhere was striking cover art, and, boy, did they find it!The imagery provided by the covers of the Goosebumps series is part and parcel to the 90s Kid zeitgeist, helping to create a visual brand for R.L. Stine's smash-hit horror series. The covers helped set the tone for the numerous adaptations of the series, including a television series, a theatre experience, and, more recently, blockbuster films!

Preachin' the Blues: The Life & Times of Son House


Daniel Beaumont - 2011
    So begins Preachin' the Blues, the biography of American blues signer and guitarist Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (1902 - 1988). House pioneered an innovative style, incorporating strong repetitive rhythms with elements of southern gospel and spiritual vocals. A seminal figure in the history of the Delta blues, he was an important, direct influence on such figures as Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. The landscape of Son House's life and the vicissitudes he endured make for an absorbing narrative, threaded through with a tension between House's religious beliefs and his spells of commitment to a lifestyle that implicitly rejected it. Drinking, womanizing, and singing the blues caused this tension that is palpable in his music, and becomes explicit in one of his finest performances, "Preachin' the Blues." Large parts of House's life are obscure, not least because his own accounts of them were inconsistent. Author Daniel Beaumont offers a chronology/topography of House's youth, taking into account evidence that conflicts sharply with the well-worn fable, and he illuminates the obscurity of House's two decades in Rochester, NY between his departure from Mississippi in the 1940s and his "rediscovery" by members of the Folk Revival Movement in 1964. Beaumont gives a detailed and perceptive account of House's primary musical legacy: his recordings for Paramount in 1930 and for the Library of Congress in 1941-42. In the course of his research Beaumont has unearthed not only connections among the many scattered facts and fictions but new information about a rumoured murder in Mississippi, and a charge of manslaughter on Long Island - incidents which bring tragic light upon House's lifelong struggles and self-imposed disappearance, and give trenchant meaning to the moving music of this early blues legend.

Diane Arbus: Revelations


Diane Arbus - 2003
    Her bold subject matter and photographic approach have established her preeminence in the world of the visual arts. Her gift for rendering strange those things we consider most familiar, and uncovering the familiar within the exotic, enlarges our understanding of ourselves. Diane Arbus Revelations affords the first opportunity to explore the origins, scope, and aspirations of what is a wholly original force in photography. Arbus’s frank treatment of her subjects and her faith in the intrinsic power of the medium have produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Presenting many of her lesser-known or previously unpublished photographs in the context of the iconic images reveals a subtle yet persistent view of the world. The book reproduces two hundred full-page duotones of Diane Arbus photographs spanning her entire career, many of them never before seen. It also includes an essay, “The Question of Belief,” by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and “In the Darkroom,” a discussion of Arbus’s printing techniques by Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized to print her photographs since her death. A 104-page Chronology by Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show, and Doon Arbus, the artist’s eldest daughter, illustrated by more than three- hundred additional images and composed mainly of previously unpublished excerpts from the artist’s letters, notebooks, and other writings, amounts to a kind of autobiography. An Afterword by Doon Arbus precedes biographical entries on the photographer’s friends and colleagues by Jeff L. Rosenheim, associate curator of photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These texts help illuminate the meaning of Diane Arbus’s controversial and astonishing vision.