Book picks similar to
Wine: A Graphic History by Benoist Simmat


non-fiction
graphic-novels
graphic-novel
nonfiction

The Jungle


Kristina Gehrmann - 2018
    Not many works of literature can boast that their publication brought about actual social and labor change, but that's just what The Jungle did, as it led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In today's society, where labor and safety of the food we eat remain key concerns for all, Sinclair's shocking story still resonates. Bringing new life and energy to this classic work, adapter and illustrator Kristina Gehrmann takes Sinclair's prose and transforms it through pen and ink, allowing you to discover (or rediscover) this book and see it from a whole new perspective.

The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman


Raymond Briggs - 1984
    It satirises the Falklands War. The book presents the story of the war in the format of a picture book for young children. It is written in a simple style with large, brightly coloured illustrations. Neither the Falkland Islands, the belligerent countries, nor their leaders are named in the text. Instead, the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the Argentine dictator General Leopoldo Galtieri are presented as a pair of metal monsters who send men to fight over a "sad little island" populated by a few shepherds who eat nothing but mutton. The old woman (who is "not real [but] made of Iron") derives from Thatcher's nickname "the Iron Lady", while the General (who is "not real [but] made of Tin Pots") derives from the slang term "tin-pot general" or "tin-pot dictator", meaning a petty authoritarian type. The book mentions several ways in which soldiers (who were "all real men, made of flesh and blood ... not made of Tin Pots or Iron") were killed or maimed; the pictures accompanying these parts of the text are monochrome pencil sketches, as opposed to the full-colour caricatures in the rest of the book. Following the victory by the soldiers of the Old Iron Woman, there are various celebrations, to which the maimed are not invited in case their appearance spoils the fun (a reference to actual occurrences at Falklands War memorial events).[citation needed] The refusal of either side to admit responsibility for civilian casualties is satirised with the statement that three of the islanders were killed, but that "nobody was to blame".

Incognegro


Mat Johnson - 2008
    This undercover work was known as 'going incognegro'. Zane Pinchback's latest case hits close to home: his brother has been arrested for murder.

Asterix Omnibus, vol. 9


Albert Uderzo - 2001
    That’s the problem for Histrionix and the beautiful Melodrama in Asterix and the Great Divide. Asterix and Obelix face a dangerous double agent in Asterix and the Black Gold. And it’s two Gauls and a baby when Asterix and Obelix tare of an abandoned infant—and try to keep it out of Roman hands—in Asterix and Son.

Paying the Land


Joe Sacco - 2020
    To the Dene, the land owns them and it is central to their livelihood and very way of being. But the subarctic Canadian Northwest Territories are home to valuable resources, including oil, gas, and diamonds. With mining came jobs and investment, but also road-building, pipelines, and toxic waste, which scarred the landscape, and alcohol, drugs, and debt, which deformed a way of life.In Paying the Land, Joe Sacco travels the frozen North to reveal a people in conflict over the costs and benefits of development. Sacco recounts the shattering impact of a residential school system that aimed to “remove the Indian from the child”; the destructive process that drove the Dene from the bush into settlements and turned them into wage laborers; the government land claims stacked against the Dene Nation; and their uphill efforts to revive a wounded culture.

A Field Guide to Redheads: An Illustrated Celebration


Elizabeth Graeber - 2016
    Illustrated by Elizabeth Graeber, a redhead herself, this pretty little hardcover gift book presents a pantheon of 100 famous redheads, both real and fictional. Each page is a treat in how it surprises and pleases, acting as a field guide to every type of redhead, whether amber or auburn, ginger or strawberry: David Bowie and Rita Hayworth; Archie, Adele, and Axl Rose; Malcolm X, Sylvia Plath, and Yosemite Sam; Eric the Red, Louis C.K., Anne of Green Gables; Woody Woodpecker and Morris the Cat. Not to mention Napoleon, Shirley Temple, and those Raggedy Twins, Ann and Andy.   If you are a redhead, celebrate your place among such distinguished company. If you love, or are loved by, a redhead, discover just how special the world is that you orbit.

Motel of the Mysteries


David Macaulay - 1979
    Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

What We See in the Stars: An Illustrated Tour of the Night Sky


Kelsey Oseid - 2017
     Combining art, mythology, and science, What We See in the Stars gives readers a tour of the night sky through more than 100 magical pieces of original art, all accompanied by text that weaves related legends and lore with scientific facts. This beautifully packaged book covers the night sky's most brilliant features--such as the constellations, the moon, the bright stars, and the visible planets--as well as less familiar celestial phenomena like the outer planets, nebulae, and deep space. Adults seeking to recapture the magic of youthful stargazing, younger readers interested in learning about natural history and outer space, and those who appreciate beautiful, hand-painted art will all delight in this charming book.

How to Make Money Like a Porn Star


Neil Strauss - 2005
    From her tousled bedroom hair to her name–all the porn stars in this world take their names from supermodels and sports cars–she is adult entertainment's prototypical femme fatale. Her life is the collision of countless troubled–childhood cliches and grown–up wet dreams, projected onto her as surely as her videos project their blue light onto lonely men around the world.From its first panel, How to Make Money Like a Porn Star draws the reader into the dark world of girls like Claudia, the men who fantasize about them, and the monsters who control them. In the hands of Rolling Stone writer Neil Strauss and illustrator Bernard Chang, this adult graphic novel weaves together black humor and blacker reality. Like all great American stories, it features humble beginnings, life–changing tragedy, stripping, abuse, implants, fame, addiction, bigger implants, abduction, gunplay, downfall, and even bigger implants. Not to mention a thousand shades of latex and L'Oreal.Part parody, part morality tale, here is the truth about the porn life, its outsized visual splendor captured in a comic parade of doe–eyed centerfolds, its essence distilled in a story that will haunt every reader who has ever wondered where his next fantasy is coming from.

Who I Am and What I Want


David Shrigley - 2003
    In this mock autobiographical collection his mischievous drawings capture life's anxieties and ambitions from the mundane to the surreal. Here, at last, is The Truth about beer, doctors, shadow puppets, lunch, dolphins, boredom, and supernatural forces. Seductively strange and addictively amusing, this edgy little book welcomes the uninitiated and rewards the faithful.

French Milk


Lucy Knisley - 2007
    The museums, the cafs, the parks. An artist like Lucy can really enjoy Paris in January. If only she can stop griping at her mother. This comic journal details a mother and daughters month-long stay in a small apartment in the fifth arrondissement. Lucy is grappling with the onslaught of adulthood. Her mother faces fifty. They are both dealing with their shifting relationship. All the while, they navigate Paris with halting French and dog-eared guidebooks.

47 Ronin


Mike Richardson - 2014
    Opening with the tragic incident that sealed the fate of Lord Asano, 47 Ronin follows a dedicated group of Asano’s vassals on their years-long path of vengeance!

This Is Your Mind on Plants


Michael Pollan - 2021
    Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings?

In Waves


A.J. Dungo - 2019
    With his passion for surfing uniting many narratives, he intertwines his own story with those of some of the great heroes of surf.

Castle in the Stars: The Space Race of 1869


Alex Alice - 2014
    It’s the space race in 1869 in a kind of alternate past. … When you see the book itself, it’s this big, oversized object with this incredible watercolor comics style, and it’s this really big, epic, sweeping story of a boy following in his mother’s discovery and then opening up the solar system, but in the age of the 1800s. It’s got a kind of steampunk but also a kind of young, classic children’s story feel to it.”