As you pore over these pages, you'll be transported back to an era when leadership and dignity went hand in hand. Alongside touching images of our 44th president embracing his fellow citizens are some of his most inspirational and timely quotes, such as, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America” and “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

    Bursting with color, vivid imagery, and bouts of whimsy mixed with deeply intimate insights, the sketchbooks capture the texture of personal experience in a dizzying variety of illustrative styles and layouts that run the gamut from street portraits to stream-of-consciousness doodles, comics, and pop-ups. The Sketchbook Project World Tour presents the most compelling, surprising, and visually stunning examples from this one-of-a-kind artistic treasury.

    The nineteenth century experienced an explosion of epidemics such as cholera and diphtheria, driven by industrialization, urbanization and poor hygiene. In this pre-color-photography era, accurate images were relied upon to teach students and aid diagnosis. The best examples, featured here, are remarkable pieces of art that attempted to elucidate the mysteries of the body, and the successive onset of each affliction. Bizarre and captivating images, including close-up details and revealing cross-sections, make all too clear the fascinations of both doctors and artists of the time. Barnett illuminates the fears and obsessions of a society gripped by disease, yet slowly coming to understand and combat it. The age also saw the acceptance of vaccination and the germ theory, and notable diagrams that transformed public health, such as John Snow's cholera map and Florence Nightingale's pioneering histograms, are included and explained. Organized by disease, "The Sick Rose" ranges from little-known ailments now all but forgotten to the epidemics that shaped the modern age. It is a fascinating "Wunderkammer" of a book that will enthrall artists, students, designers, scientists and the incurably curious everywhere.

    This striking assertion is at the heart of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, which weaves together biography, history, and fascinating insights into art and technology to create a boldly original portrait of America on the threshold of modernity. The story of Muybridge—who in 1872 succeeded in capturing high-speed motion photographically—becomes a lens for a larger story about the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life. Solnit shows how the peculiar freedoms and opportunities of post–Civil War California led directly to the two industries—Hollywood and Silicon Valley—that have most powerfully defined contemporary society.

    His skilled, wonderfully atmospheric photos of Paris's parks, buildings, streets, store windows, prostitutes, workers, and even door handles are a joy to behold. This abbreviated volume contains a selection of Atget's best photographs and is the perfect introduction to this master photographer's work.

    So what does it mean to dress like a woman?Dress Like a Woman turns that question on its head by sharing a myriad of interpretations across history. The book includes more than 240 incredible photographs that illustrate how women’s roles have changed over the last century. The women pictured in this book inhabit a fascinating intersection of gender, fashion, politics, culture, class, nationality, and race. You’ll see some familiar faces, including trailblazers Shirley Chisholm, Amelia Earhart, Angela Davis, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Michelle Obama, but the majority of photographs are of ordinary working women from many backgrounds and professions. Pioneering scientists and mathematicians, leading civil rights and feminist activists, factory workers and lumberjacks, stay-at-home moms and domestic workers, and artists and musicians; all express their individual style and dress to get the job done. With essays by renowned fashion writer Vanessa Friedman and New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay, Dress Like a Woman offers a comprehensive look at the role of gender and clothing in the workplace—and proves that there’s no single way to dress like a woman.

    This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.

    This striking book showcases the treasures from first ladies throughout history, ranging from Martha Washington's silk dress and dressing mirror to Michelle Obama's 2009 inaugural gown and jewelry. These and many other unforgettable objects--including gowns, tableware, and invitations from beloved first ladies such as Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, Barbara Bush, Hilary Clinton, and more--tell the story of the first ladies as public and private figures. They illustrate how these women, thrust into an influential and visible role by happenstance of marriage, adapted themselves and the role of first lady by taking on responsibilities as campaigners, hostesses, and policy advocates.The Smithsonian First Ladies Collection features many treasures not on view at the exhibit. Complete with an insider's look at the acquisition, conservation, and exhibition of the pieces as well as a timeline of all forty-six first ladies, this is a must-have for anyone fascinated by these incredible women and their roles in American culture and political life.

    Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.

    You've read the Brothers Grimm, you've watched the Disney cartoons, and you cheered as these virtuous women lived happily ever after. But real princesses didn't always get happy endings. Sure, plenty were graceful and benevolent leaders, but just as many were ruthless in their quest for power and all of them had skeletons rattling in their royal closets. Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe was a Nazi spy. Empress Elisabeth of the Austro-Hungarian empire slept wearing a mask of raw veal. Princess Olga of Kiev slaughtered her way to sainthood while Princess Lakshmibai waged war on the battlefield, charging into combat with her toddler son strapped to her back. Princesses Behaving Badly offers true tales of all these princesses and dozens more in a fascinating read that's perfect for history buffs, feminists, and anyone seeking a different kind of bedtime story.

    “The average American woman,” Nimoy writes, “weighs 25 percent more than the models selling the clothes. There is a huge industry built up around selling women ways to get their bodies closer to the fantasy ideal. Pills, diets, surgery, workout programs. . . . The message is ‘You don't look right. If you buy our product, you can get there.’” Leonard Nimoy, best known to the public from his role as Spock on Star Trek, has been a lifelong photographer. His work has been widely exhibited and is in numerous private and public collections. A previous book of his photographs, Shekhina, was published in 2002.

    Her passion for forgotten and neglected buildings became a plea for preservation. Gone is a unique pairing of modern photographs and historical novella. Foote offers a heartbreaking look at one man's loss as Union troops burn his home in the last days of the Civil War. Dickerson shares fascinating and haunting photographs, shining a poignant light on the buildings which survived Sherman's burning rampage across the Confederacy, only to fall victim to neglect, apathy and poverty. GONE is a powerfully moving volume that will change how you see the forgotten buildings that hide in obscurity across the Southern landscape.

    This book, the permanent embodiment of Edward Steichen's monumental exhibition, reproduces all of the 503 images that Steichen described as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world. Photographs made in all parts of the world, of the gamut of life from birth to death. A classic and inspiring work, The Family of Man has been in print for more than 40 years. The New York Times once wrote that it symbolizes the universality of human emotions. First produced by a magazine publisher and sold by the hundreds of thousands on newsstands and in airport shops, The Family of Man has been in more recent years published by the Museum. It has been continuously in print since 1955; the present thirtieth-anniversary edition was prepared from original photographs with all new duotone plates in 1986.

    Colourful, fascinating and funny, this is the first time these cult images have been published outside Japan.

    As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “The Human Encyclopedia” who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves.Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist’s reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever.