BOOKS

    Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this distinctive collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans , this volume brings together for the first time more than fifty of Steinbeck's finest essays and journalistic pieces on Salinas, Sag Harbor, Arthur Miller, Woody Guthrie, the Vietnam War and more. This edition is edited by Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw and Steinbeck biographer Jackson J. Benson.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop there, and this flow of people and commodities made it America's central clearinghouse, laboratory, and factory. Between the end of World War II and 1960, Mies van der Rohe's glass and steel architecture became the face of corporate America, Ray Kroc's McDonald's changed how we eat, Hugh Hefner unveiled Playboy, and the Chess brothers supercharged rock and roll with Chuck Berry. At the University of Chicago, the atom was split and Western civilization was packaged into the Great Books.Yet even as Chicago led the way in creating mass-market culture, its artists pushed back in their own distinct voices. In literature, it was the outlaw novels of Nelson Algren (then carrying on a passionate affair with Simone de Beauvoir), the poems of Gwendolyn Brooks, and Studs Terkel's oral histories. In music, it was the gospel of Mahalia Jackson, the urban blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and the trippy avant-garde jazz of Sun Ra. In performance, it was the intimacy of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, the Chicago School of Television, and the improvisational Second City whose famous alumni are now everywhere in American entertainment.Despite this diversity, racial divisions informed virtually every aspect of life in Chicago. The chaos—both constructive and destructive—of this period was set into motion by the second migration north of African Americans during World War Two. As whites either fled to the suburbs or violently opposed integration, urban planners tried to design away “blight” with projects that marred a generation of American cities. The election of Mayor Richard J. Daley in 1955 launched a frenzy of new building that came at a terrible cost—monolithic housing projects for the black community and a new kind of self-satisfied provincialism that sped the end of Chicago's role as America's meeting place.In luminous prose, Chicago native Thomas Dyja re-creates the story of the city in its postwar prime and explains its profound impact on modern America.

    Shows how to create abstract paintings within the rules of realism through a list of tools and materials, lessons on applying traditional elements to abstract art, and projects with instructions and color illustrations.

    Beautiful and durable, they appealed to book lovers who appreciated not only a book's content but also the quality and craftsmanship of its binding. Unfortunately, the introduction of machine-binding methods, while making books widely available at reasonable prices, also largely curtailed the art and craft of making fine books by hand.This expert guide offers a solution. In its pages, craftspeople can learn the traditional methods of bookbinding and produce high-quality hand-bound books themselves. Thorough, detailed instructions, with over 270 helpful illustrations by the author, cover materials, tools, and equipment (including making your own); fundamental procedures and technical methods; rebinding an old book; making a slipcase, and other essentials. Also included are well-illustrated, step-by-step directions for eight binding projects: dust jacket; blank book, single signature; folio; blank book, four signatures; manuscript binding; music binding; and two more.Clearly written and easy to follow, this manual will be indispensable to those wishing to create high-quality handcrafted bindings themselves; it will also serve as a valuable reference for students and professionals in publishing and its allied trades.

    Hailed by Robert Creeley as "both a deeply useful work book and an unequivocal delight," and by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the last thirty-five years, it appears here in a revised and expanded version several years in the making. Rothenberg's revision follows the structure and themes of the original version while reworking the contents to include a European section and a large number of newly gathered and translated poems that reflect the work set in motion since 1968.

    The experience of this collection may be likened to getting run over by a 666-car locomotive engineered by Lucifer. This is the cream of grotesquerie's crop, a Whitman's Sampler of the heinous, and an absolutely gut-wrenching celebration of the furthest extremities of the scatological, the taboo, the unconscionable, and the blasphemous." -Edward Lee, author of THE HAUNTER OF THE THRESHOLD and THE DUNWICH ROMANCE If you thought Volume One was intense, you ain't seen nothing yet! Twenty-eight masters of the extreme contribute their most hardcore tales to the anthology that only Blood Bound Books could publish: D.O.A. II. Wrath James White, Jack Ketchum, Robert Devereaux, J.F. Gonzalez, David Quinn, Shane McKenzie, John McNee and many more. Pull back the coroner's sheet, hold your breath, and enjoy the ride. THIS IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH.

    . .Even in this age of e-mail, faxes, and instant messaging, nothing has ever replaced the power of a love letter. Much the way light displays every color when passed through a prism, love letters express the spectrum of our emotions, offering a colorful glimpse into the soul of the writer, and of the writer’s beloved. For passionate readers and lovers of words, a letter is irresistible.Internationally renowned collector David Lowenherz sifted through hundreds and hundreds of historical and contemporary epistles and selected the most ardent, witty, whimsical, sexy, clever, and touching letters for this inspiring collection. Unlike interviews or biographies, these letters give us marvelous insight into the lives of some of history’s most famous lovers and provide intimate glimpses into the hearts of some whose fervent or amusing expressions of devotion will come as a great surprise. Zelda Fitzgerald to Scott FitzgeraldMichelangelo Buonarroti to Vittoria ColonnaWolfgang Amadeus Mozart toConstanze MozartHarry Truman to Bess WallaceKhalil Gibran to Mary HaskellBenjamin Franklin to Madame BrillonHoratio Nelson to Emma HamiltonGeorge Bush to Barbara PierceHenry VIII to Anne BoleynElizabeth Barrett Browning to George BarrettJack London to Anna StrunskyMarc Chagall to Bella ChagallErnest Hemingway to Mary WelshJack Kerouac to Sebastian SampasAlfred Dreyfus to Lucie DreyfusMarjorie Fossa to Elvis PresleyVita Sackville-West to Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West Ludwig van Beethoven to the “Immortal Beloved”Emma Goldman to Ben ReitmanFrida Kahlo to Diego RiveraDylan Thomas to Caitlin ThomasFranz Kafka to Felice BauerNapoleon Bonaparte to Josephine BonaparteAbigail Smith to John AdamsJohn Ruskin to Euphemia RuskinGeorge Sand to Gustave FlaubertSimone de Beauvoir to Nelson AlgrenAnaïs Nin to Henry MillerVoltaire to Marie Louise DenisJames Thurber to Eva ProutGeorge Bernard Shaw to Stella CampbellSarah Bernhardt to Jean RichepinMarcel Proust to Daniel HalevyFrank Lloyd Wright to Maude Miriam NoelAnne Sexton to Philip LeglerElizabeth I to Thomas SeymourOscar Wilde to Constance LloydKatherine Mansfield to John Middleton MauryCharles Parnell to Katherine O’SheaLewis Carroll to Clara Cunnyngham

    Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt and Mussolini were a gift for them and, as this collection shows, one they weren't about to turn down. This book shows that humour was one of the key weapons of war, with countries using cartoons to demoralise their opponents and maintain morale. Each country had its own style: the British liked understatement, showing people drinking cups of tea while bombs fell, whilst the Germans chose Churchill serving up a cocktail of blood, sweat and tears to an emaciated and sickly British lion. Showcasing the very best cartoons from Britain, the USA, Germany, Russia plus the work of all of WWII's greatest cartoonists, including Bill Mauldin, Fougasse, Emett, David Low and Graham Laidler (Pont), this book is guaranteed to make you laugh.

    Much of it is drawn from the oral testimony of countrymen (including poachers) still living when the book was written.'Here, from stubble to stewing pot, are all the facts that can be assembled; science, literature, mythology, superstition, semantics, venery, and a rich swathe of countryman's talk . . . This delightful book.' Observer

    In 1653, the twenty-one-year-old son of an innkeeper, the artist Jan Vermeer, registered as a master painter with the city's Guild. Vermeer married well, had many children, and enjoyed a respectable local reputation as a painter until his death in 1675. But it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that his genius was widely appreciated. Today, Vermeer's thirty-five paintings are regarded as masterpieces.In Vermeer, Anthony Bailey presents a compelling portrait of Vermeer's life and character, long lost in history. Bailey re-creates the atmosphere of the times, introduces Vermeer's contemporaries, and portrays his domestic life in vibrant detail. Drawing on period documents and his own intense curiosity, Bailey sheds light on the science and artistry behind the glorious, almost mystical, paintings. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Vermeer will stand as the classic work on Vermeer for years to come.

    No other book has managed to relate the aesthetic evolution and technical innovations of photography with such an absorbing combination of clarity, scholarship and enthusiasm.

    The Beats helped make literature a democracy. All one needed, they believed, was passion and a love of the written word. The names of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs and their friends are well known to the reading public at large, and on its face the beat movement appears to have been an exclusively male phenomenon. But the Beat movement's publicity did not necessarily reflect the reality of its literature and spirit. This singular book is devoted to contributions of women to the body and spirit of the Beat revolution.The women included in this anthology run the gamut from the famous---Carolyn Cassady and Jan Kerouac-to the relatively undiscovered-Mary Fabilli and Helen Adam. The art, prose, and poetry selected represent the full range and development of their work. The women whose work is featured in this anthology were talented rebels with enough courage and creative spirit to turn their backs on "the good life" that the fifties promised and forge their way to San Francisco and Greenwich Village. They dared to attempt to create lives of their own and make their own way. Today an unprecedented amount of brilliant, imaginative and highly experimental writing by women is being recognized and applauded. This anthology looks back to the antecedents for this greater liberty of expression. It is a testament to the lives of the women who helped shape the Beat era. Together, their voices form an energetic force field of consciousness that manifested at a rich and difficult time in cultural history.Women of the Beat Generation profiles 40 women --Precursors, MusesWriters, and Artists-including Elise Cowen, Diane di Prima, Hettie Jones, Joan Vollmer Burroughs, Jan Kerouac, Jane Bowles, Carolyn Cassady, Edie Parker KerouacEileen Kaufman, Joyce Johnson, Denise Levertov, Brenda Frazer, Anne Waldman, Jay DeFeo, Joan Brown, and many othersWomen of the Beat Generation highlights the lives and work of these female iconoclasts, and ensures the world will not forget their contributions to its transformation.

    In The Undressed Art, writer-naturalist Peter Steinhart investigates the rituals, struggles, and joys of drawing. Reflecting on what is known about the brain’s role in the drawing process, Steinhart explores the visual learning curve: how children begin to draw, how most of them stop, and what brings adults back to this deeply human art form later in life.  He considers why the face and figure are such commanding subjects and describes the delicate collaboration of the artist and model. Here is a powerful reminder that no revolution in art or technology can undermine our vital need to draw.

    The truth is, according to INTERPOL records, more than 20,000 stolen works of art are missing—including Rembrandts, Renoirs, van Goghs, and Picassos. Museum of the Missing offers an intriguing tour through the underworld of art theft, where the stakes are high and passions run strong. Not only is the volume beautifully written and lavishly illustrated—if all the paintings presented here could be gathered in one museum it would be one of the finest collections in existence—it tells a story as fascinating as any crime novel. This gripping page-turner features everything from wartime plundering to audacious modern-day heists, from an examination of the criminals’ motivations to a look at the professionals who spend their lives hunting down the wrongdoers. Most breathtaking of all, this invaluable resource offers a “Gallery of Missing Art,” an extensive section showcasing stolen paintings that remain lost—including information about the theft and estimated present-day value—and which may never be seen again.