Performance


Richard Avedon - 2008
    It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be."--Richard Avedon, 1974The preeminent stars and artists of the performing arts from the second half of the 20th century offered their greatest gifts—and, sometimes, their inner lives—to Richard Avedon. More than 200 are portrayed in Performance, many in photographs that have been rarely or never seen before. Of course, the great stars light the way: Hepburn and Chaplin, Monroe and Garland, Brando and Sinatra. But here too are the actors and comedians, pop stars and divas, musicians and dancers, artists in all mediums with public lives that were essentially performances, who stand at the pinnacle of our cultural achievement. The celebrated author and critic John Lahr offers an elegant assessment of Avedon’s achievement. Four supremely talented artists from the performing arts—Mike Nichols, André Gregory, Mitsuko Uchida, and Twyla Tharp—contribute lively and moving memoirs about their collaborations with Avedon.

332 Magazine Covers


Norman Rockwell - 1979
    Although technically Norman Rockwell was an academic painter, he had the eye of a photographer and, as he became a mature artist, he used this eye to give us a picture of America that was famliar�astonishingly so�and at the same time unique. Rockwell best expressed this vision of America in his justly famous cover illustrations for magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. 332 of these cover paintings, from beloved classics like "Marbles Champion" to lesser-known gems like "Feeding Time," are reproduced in stunning full color in this large-format volume, which is sure to be treasured by art lovers everywhere.

The Hidden Game of Baseball


John Thorn - 1984
    Comprehensive introduction to "new statistics" in baseball.

Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye


Gilles Mora - 1989
    Evans documented the look and feel of much of his native country in a notably distinct way throughout the majority of the twentieth century. This definitive retrospective of Evans's career, which received France's Prix de Nadar and England's Krasna-Kraus Award when first published in hardcover, is now available for the first time as a reduced-format paperback." "Prepared by John T. Hill in cooperation with Gilles Mora, Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye begins with the artist's early abstractions and his project on the Brooklyn Bridge done in collaboration with American poet Hart Crane, and continues through Evans's photographic studies of New England and New York Victorian buildings; his travels to Tahiti and Cuba; his work in Florida and New Orleans; and his three-year involvement with the Farm Security Administration. A highlight of this volume is the material from Evans's highly influential show American Photographs at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, re-created in exactly the sequence that Evans established for the original exhibition." No broader or more comprehensive view of this important, innovative, and distinguished photographer exists to date. With all of the images superbly reproduced from negatives prepared by Thomas Palmer, this volume will long stand as a tribute to an American original.

FreeDarko Presents: The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History


Bethlehem Shoals - 2010
    Yet the game's history cuts much deeper than that. The bottom line, the record books and retired jerseys, can never fully do justice to this wild, chaotic, and energetic game. In between the championships, there's the sight of Earl Monroe, spinning and cajoling his way to every corner of the court; or Allen Iverson, driving headlong into players twice his size.The real history of the game is not its championships, which are indisputable, but the personalities of its heroes, which are, at least, undisputed. It's in the larger-than-life pathos of Wilt, the secret ties that bind Larry Bird to the flashy ABA, and Michael Jordan when he flew a little too high. From the prehistoric teachings of Dr. James Naismith to pioneering superstars such as LeBron James and Kevin Durant, you'll never see roundball the same way again.

Los Alamos


William Eggleston - 2003
    --"Andy Grundberg"~The world is so visually complicated that the word "banal" scarcely is very intelligent to use. All days are similar, no matter what part of this planet we're in. --"William Eggleston"

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.

Baseball When the Grass Was Real: Baseball from the Twenties to the Forties, Told by the Men Who Played It


Donald Honig - 1975
    They shared their memories with him and the result is a book packed with nostalgia, statistics, action, revelations—an extraordinary oral history of baseball in the halcyon days beween the two world wars. Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Dizzy Dean, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, and many others are brought to life through the recollections of Wes Ferrell, Charlie Gehringer, Elbie Fletcher, Bucky Waters, Billy Herman, Cool Papa Bell, Spud Chandler, Pete Reiser, and a host of others. Those were the days when the grass was real, salaries were modest, Bob Feller was America's most famous seventeen-year-old, and idealism was in full swing. "Baseball builds your pride," said pitcher Wes Ferrell, who played it in order "to be a better guy."

Mars Attacks


The Topps Company - 2012
    Edgy, subversive, and darkly comedic, this over-the-top series depicting a Martian invasion of Earth has a loyal following and continues to win new generations of fans. For the first time, this book brings together high-quality reproductions of the entire original series, as well as the hard-to-find sequel from 1994, rare and never-before-seen sketches, concept art, and test market materials. Also included are an introduction by series co-creator Len Brown and an afterword by Zina Saunders, daughter of the original artist, providing an insider’s behind-the-scenes view of the bizarre and compelling world of Mars Attacks.Includes four Mars Attacks trading cards.

Hard Ground


Tom Waits - 2011
    Their initial contact grew into a friendship that O'Brien chronicled for the Miami News, where he began his career as a staff photographer. O'Brien's photo essays conveyed empathy for the homeless and the disenfranchised and won two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. In 2006, O'Brien reconnected with the issue of homelessness and learned the problem has grown exponentially since the 1970s, with as many as 3.5 million adults and children in America experiencing homelessness at some point in any given year.In Hard Ground, O'Brien joins with renowned singer-songwriter Tom Waits, described by the New York Times as "the poet of outcasts," to create a portrait of homelessness that impels us to look into the eyes of people who live "on the hard ground" and recognize our common humanity. For Waits, who has spent decades writing about outsiders, this subject is familiar territory. Combining their formidable talents in photography and poetry, O'Brien and Waits have crafted a work in the spirit of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which James Agee's text and Walker Evans's photographs were "coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative" elements. Letting words and images communicate on their own terms, rather than merely illustrate each other, Hard Ground transcends documentary and presents independent, yet powerfully complementary views of the trials of homelessness and the resilience of people who survive on the streets.

Of Muppets and Men: The Making of the Muppet Show


Christopher Finch - 1981
    After a brief history of the Henson Company and the rest of their work, including Sesame Street, the book breaks down all the major players behind the scenes, including the puppeteers. The second half of the book is a look at one week on the set -- Finch takes the reader day-by-day through the creation of the Linda Ronstadt episode of The Muppet Show.

Eudora Welty: Photographs


Eudora Welty - 1989
    It is unusual, remarkable, for a major writer also to be an accomplished photographer. Eudora Welty is one of the very few whose great talent has been expressed in both photographs and fiction. This book, Eudora Welty: Photographs, brings together in one volume about 250 representative photographs from the few thousand that she took during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Although her camera's view finder compresses much, like the frame in which she conceives her fiction, it finds elements that convey her deep compassion and her artist's sensibilities. From the confines of her native Mississippi these photographs unfold the world of Eudora Welty's art, reaching, extending, and exploring. In the Deep South of Depression times, when she began writing, she discovered the place into which she had been born and which would always be her subject. From here, as these photographs show, she approached and risked the outside world. From rural Mississippi to New Orleans, Charleston, New York City, and Yaddo, and then to Ireland, England, and the Continent, Welty widened her vision and expanded her art. These photographs reveal that both in her fiction and in the pictures she took it has always been in place, in the special qualities of what is local, that she found her impulse.

Photographs


Robert Capa - 1969
    --Margarett Loke, "ARTnews""His coverage of the Spanish civil war established Capa's reputation as a peerless battlefield photojournalist... But he was also a man who loved making pictures of beautiful women, famous men and grand parties. Often overlooked when discussing the Capa legacy, those too, were his life's work. Both Capas--the raconteur of high society and the fearless witness to war--are evident in "Robert Capa: Photographs." The two sides of Capa's work may seem irreconcilable, but they're not. He was recording one world. His own."--Allison Adato, "Life Magazine"

How Life Imitates the World Series


Thomas Boswell - 1982
    The first book from the Washington Post's great baseball writer.

A History of Women Photographers


Naomi Rosenblum - 1994
    In every aspect of the medium -- portraiture, social and scientific documentation, advertising, photo-journalism, personal expression -- women have been highly active creators. Yet their achievements have often been overlooked and occasionally even credited to their male spouses or colleagues.With A History of Women Photographers, Dr. Naomi Rosenblum -- author of A World History of Photography -- helps set the record straight. She explores the work of some 250 women photographers, from Julia Margaret Cameron to Tina Modetti, Margaret Bourke-White, and Cindy Sherman. Her ground-breaking work provides an invitingly readable chronicle both of the women's creativity and of the challenging contexts within which they worked. In addition to the illuminating text and striking photographs are densely detailed individual biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography. All of this has made A History of Women Photographers an invaluable resource.The new edition has 2 new color images (replacing two earlier choices) and 15 additional black-and-white images; the final three chapters have been revised and updated, as have the copious bibliography and biographies.