Book picks similar to
This Is Mars by Xavier Barral


photography
science
astronomy
non-fiction

Art Forms in Nature


Ernst Haeckel - 1974
    This volume highlights the research and findings of this natural scientist. Powerful modern microscopes have confirmed the accuracy of Haeckel's prints, which even in their day, became world famous. Haeckel's portfolio, first published between 1899 and 1904 in separate installments, is described in the opening essays. The plates illustrate Haeckel's fundamental monistic notion of the -unity of all living things- and the wide variety of forms are executed with utmost delicacy. Incipient microscopic organisms are juxtaposed with highly developed plants and animals. The pages, ordered according to geometric and -constructive- aspects, document the oness of the world in its most diversified forms. This collection of plates was not only well-received by scientists, but by artists and architects as well. Rene Binet, a pioneer of glass and iron constructions, Emile Galle, a renowned Art Nouveau designer, and the photographer Karl Blossfeld all make explicit reference to Haeckel in their work.

Gregory Heisler: 50 Portraits: Stories and Techniques from a Photographer's Photographer


Gregory Heisler - 2013
    From his famously controversial portrait of President George H.W. Bush (which led to the revocation of Heisler’s White House clearance) to his evocative post-9/11 Time magazine cover of Rudolph Giuliani, to stunning portraits of Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Hillary Clinton, Michael Phelps, Muhammad Ali, and many more, Heisler reveals the creative and technical processes that led to each frame. For Heisler’s fans and all lovers of photography, Gregory Heisler: 50 Portraits offers not only a gorgeous collection of both black-and-white and color portraits, but an engrossing look at the rarely seen art of a master photographer at work. With a foreword by New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

National Geographic Greatest Landscapes: Stunning Photographs That Inspire and Astonish


National Geographic Society - 2016
    With vast deserts in twilight, snowcapped mountain ranges at the brink of dawn, a forest in the height of autumn colors, these indelible images will magnify the beauty, emotion, and depth that can be captured in the split second of a camera flash, taking readers on a spectacular visual journey and offering an elegant conduit to the world around them. Paired with illuminating insights from celebrated photographers, this beautiful book weaves a vibrant tapestry of images that readers will turn to again and again.

Ansel Adams: A Biography


Mary Street Alinder - 1996
    Here, Mary Street Alinder--who collaborated with Adams on his memoir and was his assistant in later life--is not reticent about the major emotional episodes in Adams's life, including his marriage and extramarital affairs, and his not-altogether-successful fatherhood. She explores the major artistic influences on his work and gives in-depth profiles of the significant figures in his circle. She also explains the technique and style Adams developed to obtain his unique vision, as well as his uneasiness at becoming a commodity. Ansel Adams: A Biography is an intimate and provocative portrait of the world's most famous photographer.

Cosmos


Carl Sagan - 1980
    In the book, Sagan explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science. The book also discusses the underlying premises of science by providing biographical anecdotes about many prominent scientists throughout history, placing their contributions into the broader context of the development of modern science.The book covers a broad range of topics, comprising Sagan's reflections on anthropological, cosmological, biological, historical, and astronomical matters from antiquity to contemporary times. Sagan reiterates his position on extraterrestrial life—that the magnitude of the universe permits the existence of thousands of alien civilizations, but no credible evidence exists to demonstrate that such life has ever visited earth.

The Hubble Cosmos: 25 Years of New Vistas in Space


David H. DeVorkin - 2015
    Relive key moments in the monumental Hubble story, from launch through major new instrumentation to the promise of discoveries to come. With more than 150 photographs including Hubble All-Stars—the most famous of all the noteworthy images—The Hubble Cosmos shows how this telescope is revolutionizing our understanding of the universe.

The Practical Astronomer


Will Gater - 2010
    Illustrated throughout with detailed photographs and illustrations, and using clear, easy-to-follow text, The Practical Astronomer takes you on a step-by-step journey from the basics of what can be seen with the naked eye, to how you can view more distant objects such as the planets of the solar system, and even galaxies far, far away-all in your own backyard.

Weegee's World


Miles Barth - 2000
    It captures bygone New York at its most raucous, dangerous, and outrageous. Grisly murders, tragic accidents, gawking crowds, along with intimate human-interest and high-society images, are all captured by Weegee's flash. Interpretive essays, an annotated chronology, bibliography, filmography, and a list of exhibitions complete this comprehensive volume.

Letters From An Astrophysicist


Neil deGrasse Tyson - 2019
    Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by unveiling his candid correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of one hundred letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto. His succinct, opinionated, passionate, and often funny responses reflect his popularity and standing as a leading educator.Tyson’s 2017 bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry offered more than one million readers an insightful and accessible understanding of the universe. Now, revealing Tyson’s most candid and heartfelt writing yet, Letters from an Astrophysicist introduces us to a newly personal dimension of Tyson’s quest to understand our place in the cosmos.

Extreme Cosmos: A Guided Tour of the Fastest, Brightest, Hottest, Heaviest,Oldest, and Most Amazing Aspects of Our Universe


Bryan Gaensler - 2011
    The universe is all about extremes, and in this engaging and thought-provoking book, astronomer Bryan Gaensler gives a whirlwind tour of the galaxies, with an emphasis on its fastest, hottest, heaviest, brightest, oldest, densest, and even loudest elements. From supernova explosions a billion times brighter than the sun to an asteroid the size of a beach ball, Extreme Cosmos offers a fascinating, fresh, and informed perspective of the remarkable richness of the universe, and the incredible physics that modern astronomy has revealed.

Universe: A Journey from Earth to the Edge of the Cosmos


Nicolas Cheetham - 2006
    He leads us into a celestial panorama that extends for 130 billion trillion kilometres in every direction and allows us to explore nearly 200 of the astronomical views.

Full Moon


Michael Light - 1999
    For the first time NASA has allowed 900 of its 'master' negatives and transparencies to be taken offsite for electronic scanning so as to produce the sharpest images of space that we have ever seen. From this selection of 'master' photographs Michael Light has distilled a single composite journey beginning with the launch, followed by a walk in space, and orbit of the Moon, a lunar landing and exploration and a return to Earth with an orbit and splash-down. Five enormous gatefold panoramas show the extraordinary lunar landscape.These photographs reveal not only the hardware of lunar exploration in exquisite details but also the profound aesthetics of space in what could be described as the ultimate landscape photography. The reader is encouraged to view these pictures as more than a spectacle. You start to experience them with a sense of the accompanying disorientation and excitement that the astronauts themselves would have felt. The Moon's surface and its extraordinary light are presented with awesome clarity.Full Moon was originally published in 1999 to mark the 30th anniversary of the first landing on the Moon. It was a milestone publication for the millennium, greeted with acclaim worldwide and published in eight countries. This new compact edition preserves all the superb quality of reproduction which was so evident in the original and makes this extraordinary work available to a still wider readership.

American Photographs


Walker Evans - 1938
    The original edition of American Photographs was a carefully prepared letterpress production, published by The Museum of Modern Art in 1938 to accompany an exhibition of photographs by Evans that captured scenes of America in the early 1930s. As noted on the jacket of the first edition, Evans, "photographing in New England or Louisiana, watching a Cuban political funeral or a Mississippi flood, working cautiously so as to disturb nothing in the normal atmosphere of the average place, can be considered a kind of disembodied, burrowing eye, a conspirator against time and its hammers." This seventy-fifth anniversary edition of American Photographs, made with new reproductions, recreates the original 1938 edition as closely as possible to make the landmark publication available for a new generation. American Photographs has fallen out of print for long periods of time since it was first published, and even subsequent editions--two of which altered the design and typography of the book in small but significant ways--are often available only at libraries and rare bookstores. This version, like the fiftieth-anniversary edition produced by the Museum in 1988, captures the look and feel of the very first edition with the aid of new digital technologies.

Life: A Journey Through Time


Frans Lanting - 2006
    He made pilgrimages to true time capsules like a remote lagoon in Western Australia, spent time in research collections photographing forms of microscopic life, and even found ways to create visual parallels between the growth of organs in the human body and the patterns seen on the surface of the earth. The resulting volume is a glorious picture book of planet earth depicting the amazing biodiversity that surrounds us all. Lanting's true gift lies beyond his technical mastery: it is his eye for geometry in the beautiful chaos of nature that allows him to show us the world as it has never been seen before. From crabs to jellyfish, diatoms to vast geological formations, jungles to flowers, monkeys to human embryos, LIFE is a testament to the magical beauty of life in all its forms and is Lanting's most remarkable achievement to date. The photographer: Dutch-born Frans Lanting has been hailed as one of the great nature photographers of our time. For the past two decades he has documented wildlife and our relationship with nature in environments from the Amazon to Antarctica. Exhibits of his photographs have been shown at major museums in Paris, Milan, Tokyo, New York, Madrid, and Amsterdam. Lanting's previous TASCHEN titles include Eye to Eye, Jungles, and Penguin. The editor: Christine Eckstrom is a writer and editor specializing in natural history. She collaborates with Lanting on fieldwork, books, and other publishing projects from their home base in California.

Deep Future


Stephen Baxter - 1985
    Along the way Stephen Baxter looks at our place in the universe, considers the possibility that we are in fact alone, and wonders whether that fact gives us the right to inherit everything. He also looks at how we might strive to overcome the limitations of the physical universe and win the deepest future. Stephen Baxter has brought his trademark narrative flair and imaginative brilliance to the latest ideas in physics and cosmology and produced a breathtaking guide to our possible futures.