The Story of Art


E.H. Gombrich - 1950
    Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject. The Story of Art, one of the most famous and popular books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over four decades. Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject.For the first time in many years the book has been completely redesigned. The illustrations, now in colour throughout, have all been improved and reoriginated, and include six fold-outs. The text has been revised and updated where appropriate, and a number of significant new artists have been incorporated. The bibliographies have been expanded and updated, and the maps and charts redrawn. The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur. The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur.

The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait


Daniel Mark Epstein - 2011
    Madison Square Garden, 1974, sheds light on Dylan’s transition from folk icon to rock star, his family life in seclusion, his subsequent divorce, and his highly anticipated return to touring. Tanglewood,1997, reveals how Dylan revived his flagging career in the late 1990s—largely under the influence of Jerry Garcia—discovering new ways of singing and connecting with his audience, and assembling the great bands for his Never Ending Tour. In a breathtaking account of the Time Out of Mind sessions, Epstein provides the most complete picture yet of Dylan’s contemporary work in the studio, his acceptance of his laurels, and his role as the éminence grise of rock and roll today. Aberdeen, 2009, brings us full circle, detailing the making of Dylan’s triumphant albums of the 2000s, as well as his long-running radio show.Drawing on anecdotes and insights from new interviews with those closest to the man—including Maria Muldaur, Happy Traum, D. A. Pennebaker, Nora Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Dylan’s sidemen throughout the years—The Ballad of Bob Dylan is a singular take on an artist who has transformed generations and, as he enters his eighth decade, continues to inspire and surprise today.

Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter


Michelle Mercer - 2004
    Throughout Shorter's extraordinary fifty-year career, his compositions have helped define the sounds of each distinct era in the history of jazz.Filled with musical analysis by Mercer, enlivened by Shorter's vivid recollections, and enriched by more than seventy-five original interviews with his friends and associates, this book is at once an invaluable history of music from bebop to pop, an intimate and moving biography, and a story of a man's struggle toward the full realization of his gifts and of himself.

We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered


Mark Andersen - 2018
    The repercussions of what went down politically both in the USAand UK back then are still very much felt today.”—Kosmo Vinyl, former manager of The Clash“The Clash are remembered as much for their blistering music as their gritty yet hopeful message to listeners worldwide. In this first serious look at The Clash’s music and meaning, post–commercial success, the authors mix thoughtful reflection with grassroots political analysis in an effort to inspire a new generation of music fans and activists to Cut the Crap.”—Craig O’Hara, author of The Philosophy of Punk: More than Noise! The Clash was an incendiary paradox of revolutionary conviction, musical ambition, and commercial drive. We Are The Clash is a gripping tale of how the band—fractured by its Top 10 success—fought to reinvent and purify itself as George Orwell’s 1984 loomed. This extraordinary effort crashed headlong into a wall of internal contradictions, personal tragedy, and rising rightwing power as personified by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.While the world teetered on the nuclear abyss, British miners waged a life-or-death strike, and tens of thousands died from US guns in Central America, Clash cofounders Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon set out to rebuild the band after ejecting guitarist Mick Jones and drummer Topper Headon. Bolstered by coconspirators Bernard Rhodes and Kosmo Vinyl, and three twentysomething recruits—drummer Peter Howard and guitarists Nick Sheppard and Vince White—The Clash launched a desperate last stand, shattering the band just as its controversial final album, Cut the Crap, was emerging.Authors Andersen and Heibutzki weave together extensive archival research and in-depth original interviews with virtually all of the key players involved to tell a moving story of idealism undone by human frailty amid a climatic turning point for our world.

A Scene in Between: Tripping Through the Fashions of UK Indie Music 1980-1988


Sam Knee - 2013
    There's been much coverage of punk, postpunk and the acid-house rave era of the early 90s, but the scene surrounding independent guitar-based music of the mid-80s has been largely overlooked. "A Scene In Between" looks at Britain's fashions, personalities and youth cultures from that era. Bands featured include Television Personalities, My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Smiths, The Pastels, The Vaselines and more obscure bands such as The Shop Assistants, The Flatmates and countless others. Author Sam Knee has reconnected with a vast network of people and resources to unearth literally hundreds of previously unpublished photographs of the bands, fans, clubs and street fashion of the time. Taking a sartorial angle, he looks at anoraks, oversized jumpers, leather trousers, bowl-cut hairdos, blouse shirts, stripey tees and box jackets. Dave Conway of My Bloody Valentine and Douglas Hart of The Jesus and Mary Chain contribute reminiscences.

God Needs To Go: Why Christian Beliefs Fail


J.D. Brucker - 2012
    It brings comfort, purpose, and sense of pride. These feelings mean so much to the Christian. But are these feelings justified? Do Christians have good reason to trust the truth of their beliefs? Author J. D. Brucker brings forth a short collection of arguments against Christian beliefs, exposing the falsehoods of the faith so many all around the world cherish.

French Chic - The "Secret" to French Style


Ali Martine - 2015
    French women know the intrinsic value of classic basics and integrate their favorite clothes and accessories based upon years of experience perfecting their unique sense of style. French women know how to create a sense of intrigue. And it’s not achieved by wearing a barrage of latest trends or designers. It’s about having the confidence to dress up a simple white button-down, incorporating their signature flair, for a far more interesting and sophisticated look. Most women tend to buy everything that catches their eye. There’s not much discernment, just buying power. And these women have the overstuffed closets to show for it. I must warn you – This book is not just another simplistic buying guide to achieve a French chic look. Nor will I insult you with cliché advice on incorporating scarves into your daily wardrobe. I would like to offer you a different perspective. This book includes advice and insights about making empowering choices when it comes to what is hanging in your closet. The choice to simplify, buy less, and keep only fabulous items. The choice to honor your body first and foremost. And the choice to invest in your wardrobe.

Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever


Mark O'Connell - 2013
    It fills our Facebook feeds. It keeps afloat a whole armada of late-night comedians, YouTube auteurs, and twitter wits … an endless stream of "Worst Things Ever." Recall, if you will, Rebecca Black's chart-topping disasterpiece, "Friday." Or “The Room”, Tommy Wiseau's cinematic tragedy turned cult farce. Or the devout Spanish septuagenarian who produced an infamously botched, and now stunningly ubiquitous, retouching of a 19th-century fresco of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Internet era has fueled an obsession with these and other acts of cultural cluelessness. Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without some new aesthetic travesty spreading across the globe in the form of ones and zeros, spawning countless remixes and riffs, like the world's biggest inside joke. And once more the cry goes up: Fail! Epic Fail!But what, exactly, draws us to these futile attempts at making songs, movies, and art? What are the essential ingredients that render a ridiculous failure sublime? More important, what does our seemingly insatiable appetite for the "succès d'incompetence" say about our aesthetic impulses? Our ethical ones? Is our laughter all in good fun or is something more sinister at work?

Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd


Mark Blake - 2007
    From the moment the metronomic pulse of a heartbeat thudded out to begin "Speak to Me" to the soaring guitar solo that climaxed "Comfortably Numb," these self-effacing men in their late fifties stole the show. Almost a year later, the death of their troubled founder-member Syd Barrett made headline news worldwide. Both events signaled a kind of closure to the remarkable tale of one of the world's biggest bands. Now, in the first full-length history of the group for more than fifteen years, Mark Blake tells the story of how a group of middle-class Englishmen conquered the world. Drawing on his own interviews with all of the band members, interviews with the group's friends, road crew, producers, former housemates and university colleagues, as well as musical contemporaries including Pete Townshend and Alice Cooper, Comfortably Numb follows Pink Floyd all the way from the early psychedelic nights at UFO in the mid-sixties to the stadium-rock and concept-album zenith of the seventies, and finally the acrimonious schism that sundered the band in the '80s and '90s.

Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession


Ian Bostridge - 2014
    Written in 1828, in the last months of the young Schubert's life, 'Winterreise' ("Winter's Journey"), has come to be considered the single greatest piece of music ever written for the male solo voice. Deceptively brief - the twenty-four short poems are performed uninterrupted in 70 minutes - it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that no music of its kind has ever equalled. Originally intended to be sung to an intimate gathering, performances of 'Winterreise' now pack the greatest concert halls around the world. Drawing on his firsthand experience with this work (he has performed it more than one hundred times), on his musical knowledge, and on his training as a scholar, Ian Bostridge teases out the enigmas and subtle meanings of each song, exploring the world and the states of heart and mind in which Schubert created them, and the exquisite resonance and affinities that continue, even today, to move us so profoundly.

Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World


John Szwed - 2010
    Weekly").One of the most remarkable figures of the twentieth century, Alan Lomax was best known for bringing legendary musicians like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, and Burl Ives to the radio and introducing folk music to a mass audience. Now John Szwed, the acclaimed biographer of Miles Davis and Sun Ra, presents the first biography of Lomax, a man who was as influential as he was controversial-trailed for years by the FBI, criticized for his folk- song-collecting practices, denounced by some as a purist and by others as a popularizer. This authoritative work reveals how Lomax changed not only the way everyone in the country heard music but also the way they viewed America itself.

Biltmore Estate


Ellen Erwin Rickman - 2005
    Created in the 1890s by George Washington Vanderbilt, a member of one of America's wealthiest families, the estate combined a 250-room French Renaissance-style chateau with 125,000 acres of gardens, forests, and working farms. Biltmore House served as Vanderbilt's primary residence for almost 20 years. After Mr. Vanderbilt's death in 1914, life at Biltmore continued for his wife Edith and daughter Cornelia. In 1930, Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil and her husband, Hon. John Francis Amherst Cecil, opened Biltmore House--the largest private home in the United States--to the public, firmly establishing the Asheville area as a major tourist destination.

Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews


Calvin Tomkins - 2013
    Casual yet insightful, Duchamp reveals himself as a man and an artist whose playful principles toward living freed him to make art that was as unpredictable, complex, and surprising as life itself. Those interviews have never been edited and made public, until now. "The Afternoon Interviews," which includes an introductory interview with Tomkins reflecting on Duchamp as an artist, guide and friend, reintroduces the reader to key ideas of his artistic world and renews Duchamp as a vital model for a new generation of artists.Calvin Tomkins was born in 1925 in Orange, New Jersey. He joined the New Yorker as a staff writer in 1960. His many profiles include John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Leo Castelli, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Cindy Sherman and Jasper Johns. Tomkins is the author of 12 books, including "The Bride and the Bachelors" (1965), "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" (1971), "Lives of the Artists" (2008) and "Duchamp: A Biography" (1996).

The Rolling Stone Interviews


Joe Levy - 1971
    The greatest interviews with the greatest rock stars, movie stars, and cultural icons -- uncensored and unfiltered -- are published together in one remarkable volume in celebration of Rolling Stones 40th anniversary.

Life


Keith Richards - 2010
    Now, at last, the man himself tells us the story of life in the crossfire hurricane.