Compendium of Acrylic Painting Techniques: 300 Tips, Techniques and Trade Secrets


Gill Barron - 2014
    Learn how to choose and mix colors, and create a multitude of effects using only one set of tubes. Discover how to make your own equipment, set up a "studio" space, and use household materials to save money. Beginners can follow processes stage-by-stage, while more experienced artists can dip in and out for help with specific problems. A unique section on how to develop your art and take it to a wider public is full of professional secrets which can bring you success much more quickly. “Try it” and “Fix it” panels placed throughout the book suggest ways of practicing and developing new skills, and avoiding or correcting common painting errors.

This is Pollock


Catherine Ingram - 2014
    His iconic paintings stretch out with the generosity and scale of America's Western landscape where the artist grew up. Pollock said that he painted "out of his conscious": the cathartic dribbled paint reflected his troubled mind.This book traces Pollock's career and discusses how his loose, individual style was used as a political weapon in the Cold War, representing America as the free, democratic nation. Illustrations simplify the theory and reveal the hidden meaning behind the mesh of painted lines.This title is appropriate for ages 14 and up

Gustav Klimt: Art Nouveau Visionary


Eva di Stefano - 2008
    One of the masters of modern European painting, he helped found the popular Viennese Secession, or Art Nouveau, movement. This lushly illustrated volume explores his fascinating artistic career, covering Vienna at the time of Klimt’s creative peak. With more than 300 beautifully reproduced pictures, paintings, and photographs, it presents Klimt’s entire artistic production: posters for exhibitions, erotic drawings, and pictorial masterpieces such as The Kiss, Death and Life, and Tree of Life, along with countless portraits such as the famous Adele Bloch-Bauer I.

The Planets


Dava Sobel - 2005
    Now Sobel brings her full talents to bear on what is perhaps her most ambitious topic to date-the planets of our solar system. Sobel explores the origins and oddities of the planets through the lens of popular culture, from astrology, mythology, and science fiction to art, music, poetry, biography, and history. Written in her characteristically graceful prose, The Planets is a stunningly original celebration of our solar system and offers a distinctive view of our place in the universe. * A New York Times extended bestseller * A Featured Alternate of the Book-of-the-Month Club, History Book Club, Scientific American Book Club, and Natural Science Book Club * Includes 11 full-color illustrations by artist Lynette R. Cook BACKCOVER: "[The Planets] lets us fall in love with the heavens all over again." -The New York Times Book Review "Playful . . . lyrical . . . a guided tour so imaginative that we forget we're being educated as we're being entertained." -Newsweek " [Sobel] has outdone her extraordinary talent for keeping readers enthralled. . . . Longitude and Galileo's Daughter were exciting enough, but The Planets has a charm of its own . . . . A splendid and enticing book." -San Francisco Chronicle "A sublime journey. [Sobel's] writing . . . is as bright as the sun and its thinking as star-studded as the cosmos." -The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "An incantatory serenade to the Solar System. Grade A-" -Entertainment Weekly "Like Sobel's [Longitude and Galileo's Daughter] . . . [The Planets] combines masterful storytelling with clear, engaging explanations of the essential scientific facts." -Physics World

Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space


Mark Cotta Vaz - 2014
    Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space documents the making of Nolan's latest masterpiece in fascinating detail and features interviews with the acclaimed director, along with screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, producer Emma Thomas, and other key members of the production team. Delving into the science and philosophy behind the film, Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space dynamically showcases its incredible concept art, including costume designs, storyboards, and other fascinating preproduction elements. Also featuring interviews with the exceptional cast, including Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space tells the full story of the making of the film, with candid pictures illustrating its elaborate set pieces and reliance on classic special effects techniques. Visually enthralling and engrossing in its in-depth exploration of the themes and ideas at the heart of Interstellar, this book is the perfect accompaniment to one of the most anticipated films of 2014. Based on the film from Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures. From acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan ("The Dark Knight" films, "Inception"), "Interstellar" stars Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey ("Dallas Buyers Club"), Oscar winner Anne Hathaway ("Les Misébles"), Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain ("Zero Dark Thirty"), Bill Irwin ("Rachel Getting Married"), Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn ("Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"), and Oscar winner Michael Caine ("The Cider House Rules"). The main cast also includes Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, David Gyasi, Mackenzie Foy and Topher Grace. Christopher Nolan directed the film from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jonathan Nolan. Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan and Lynda Obst produced "Interstellar," with Jordan Goldberg, Jake Myers, Kip Thorne and Thomas Tull serving as executive producers. Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures present, in association with Legendary Pictures, a Syncopy/Lynda Obst Productions production, a film by Christopher Nolan, "Interstellar."

Dryker's Folly: Book 1 in Void Wraith Origins


Chris Fox - 2020
    Before the Eradication.One man had a chance to stop it all, and failed...Captain Dryker is a washed up vet mining on the fringes of the Kuiper belt. He loads rocks into the Folly’s railgun, and fires them back to his corporate overlords on Earth. Boring, just the way he likes it. Until one day it isn’t.An alien signal bursts from Pluto, which as it turns out is neither a planet, nor a planetoid body. It is an ancient defense satellite activated because it detected the return of the Vuka Spectra. The Void Wraith.Dryker is the closest ship on the scene, but not the only one vying for the prize. Hostile aliens have emerged from our sun using something called a Helios Gate. The savage Tigris have come not just for the satellite, but to conquer Earth.Dryker’s only hope is finding something, anything, within the installation to counter the alien’s superior technology and save mankind.The prequel to the Void Wraith Saga. Learn how it all began...

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World


Edward Dolnick - 2011
    A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with nature’s most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.At the end of the seventeenth century—an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London—when most people saw the world as falling apart, these earliest scientists saw a world of perfect order. They declared that, chaotic as it looked, the universe was in fact as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock. This was the tail end of Shakespeare’s century, when the natural land the supernatural still twined around each other. Disease was a punishment ordained by God, astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens. It was a time when little was known and everything was new. These brilliant, ambitious, curious men believed in angels, alchemy, and the devil, and they also believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws—-a contradiction that tormented them and changed the course of history.The Clockwork Universe is the fascinating and compelling story of the bewildered geniuses of the Royal Society, the men who made the modern world.

The Last Resort


Martin Parr - 1998
    Martin Parr is Europe's premier contemporary photographer, and The Last Resort is the book that is considered to have launched his career. Taken at the height of the Thatcher years, it depicts the "great British seaside" in all its garish glory. Described by some as cruel and voyeuristic and by others as a stunning satire on the state of Britain, early editions are now much sought after by collectors worldwide. Includes a new essay by Gerry Badger, photographer, architect, curator, and critic.

The Infinity Brigade #1 Stone Cold


Andrew Beery - 2016
    By any reasonable definition, this was a bad day. My parents and sister were on Mars when the planet died. I watched it happen and could do nothing. That type of thing changes a man.

The Hunt for Vulcan: ...And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe


Thomas Levenson - 2015
    November 2015 is the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s discovery of the General Theory of Relativity.Levenson, head of MIT’s Science Writing Program, tells the captivating, unusual, and nearly-forgotten backstory behind Einstein’s invention of the Theory of Relativity, which completely changed the course of science forever. For over 50 years before Einstein developed his theory, the world’s top astronomers spent countless hours and energy searching for a planet, which came to be named Vulcan, that had to exist, it was thought, given Isaac Newton’s theories of gravity. Indeed, in the two centuries since Newton’s death, his theory had essentially become accepted as fact. It took Einstein’s genius to realize the mystery of the missing planet wasn’t a problem of measurements or math but of Newton’s theory of gravity itself. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity proved that Vulcan did not and could not exist, and that the decades-long search for it had merely been a quirk of operating under the wrong set of assumptions about the universe. Thomas Levenson tells this unique story, one of the strangest episodes in the history of science, with elegant simplicity, fast-paced drama, and lively characters sure to capture the attention of a wide group of readers.

Star Wars: Heir to the Empire: Behind the Scenes: An Expanded Universe is Born


Timothy Zahn - 2011
    Each annotation includes audio from the new unabridged recording of Heir to the Empire to enhance their comments. The biggest event in the history of Star Wars books, Heir to the Empire follows the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia after they led the Rebel Alliance to victory in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi.Five years after the Death Star was destroyed and Darth Vader and the Emperor were defeated, the galaxy is struggling to heal the wounds of war, Princess Leia and Han Solo are married and expecting twins, and Luke Skywalker has become the first in a long-awaited line of new Jedi Knights.But thousands of light-years away, the last of the Emperor’s warlords—the brilliant and deadly Grand Admiral Thrawn—has taken command of the shattered Imperial fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the New Republic. For this dark warrior has made two vital discoveries that could destroy everything the courageous men and women of the Rebel Alliance fought so hard to create.The explosive confrontation that results is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale—in short, a story worthy of the name Star Wars.

Real-Time Starcommander


Tracy Gregory - 2021
    While Evan works hard to get the pros to notice him, it's very different eyes that are captivated by Evan's progress.The Kirran Hegemony is at war. Outclassed at every step, the aliens turn to the most warlike race they know—humanity! Abducted from Earth, Evan finds himself fighting for his life, using his skills to command Hegemony forces in desperate battle.Now, helped by fellow humans, Evan must prove victory can be grasped from the jaws of impossible odds.

John F. Kennedy’s Women: The Story of a Sexual Obsession


Michael O'Brien - 2011
    Kennedy has been more carefully scrutinized. Michael O’Brien, who knows as much about Kennedy as any historian now writing, here takes a comprehensive look at the feature of Camelot that remained largely under the radar during the White House years: Kennedy’s womanizing. Indeed, O’Brien writes, Kennedy’s approach to women and sex was near pathological, beyond the farthest reaches of the media’s imagination at the time. The record makes for an astonishing piece of presidential history.---Michael O’Brien was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and studied at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he received a Ph.D. in history. He is the author of the widely praised John F. Kennedy: A Biography, a full-scale study based on eleven years’ research into letters, diaries, financial papers, medical records, manuscripts, and oral histories; and a concise analytical life of the president, Rethinking Kennedy. He is now emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Fox Valley, and lives in Door County, Wisconsin.

From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time


Sean Carroll - 2009
    In the hands of one of today’s hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself, a period modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed. Increasingly, though, physicists are going out into realms that make the theory of relativity seem like child’s play. Carroll’s scenario is not only elegant, it’s laid out in the same easy-to- understand language that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance, the most popular physics blog on the Net. From Eternity to Here uses ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical physics to explore how properties of spacetime before the Big Bang can explain the flow of time we experience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that we live in a baby universe, part of a large family of universes in which many of our siblings experience an arrow of time running in the opposite direction. It’s an ambitious, fascinating picture of the universe on an ultra-large scale, one that will captivate fans of popular physics blockbusters like Elegant Universe and A Brief History of Time.

Mauve: How One Man Invented a Colour That Changed the World


Simon Garfield - 2000
    In a "witty, erudite, and entertaining" (Esquire) style, Simon Garfield explains how the experimental mishap that produced an odd shade of purple revolutionized fashion, as well as industrial applications of chemistry research. Occasionally honored in certain colleges and chemistry clubs, Perkin until now has been a forgotten man.