How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum


Keri Smith - 2008
    In this captivating guided journal, readers are encouraged to explore their world as both artists and scientists. The mission Smith proposes? To document and observe the world around you. As if you've never seen it before. Take notes. Collect things you find on your travels. Document findings. Notice patterns. Copy. Trace. Focus on one thing at a time. Record what you are drawn to. With a series of interactive prompts and a beautifully hand-illustrated two-color package, readers will enjoy exploring and discovering the world through this gorgeous book.

Mapping Manhattan: A Love (And Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers


Becky Cooper - 2013
    Along her journey she met police officers, homeless people, fashion models, and senior citizens who had lived in Manhattan all their lives. She asked the strangers to “map their Manhattan” and to mail the personalized maps back to her. Soon, her P.O. box was filled with a cartography of intimate narratives: past loves, lost homes, childhood memories, comical moments, and surprising confessions. A beautifully illustrated, PostSecret-style tribute to New York, Mapping Manhattan includes 75 maps from both anonymous mapmakers and notable New Yorkers, including Man on Wire aerialist Philippe Petit, New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov, Tony award-winning actor Harvey Fierstein, and many more.Praise for Mapping Manhattan:“What an intriguing project.”—The New York Times“A tender cartographic love letter to this timeless city of multiple dimensions, parallel realities, and perpendicular views.” —Brain Pickings“Cooper’s beautiful project linking the lives of New Yorkers is one that will continue to grow.” —Publishers Weekly online

There and Back: Photographs from the Edge


Jimmy Chin - 2021
    Filmmaker, photographer, and world-class mountaineer Jimmy Chin goes where few can follow to capture stunning images in death-defying situations. There and Back draws from his breathtaking portfolio of photographs, captured over twenty years during cutting-edge expeditions on all seven continents—from skiing Mount Everest, to an unsupported traverse of Tibet’s Chang Tang Plateau on foot, to first ascents in Chad’s Ennedi Desert and Antarctica’s Queen Maud Land.Along the way, Chin shares behind-the-scenes details about how he captured such astounding images in impossible conditions, and tells the stories of the legendary adventurers and remarkable athletes he has photographed, including Alex Honnold, the star of his Academy Award–winning documentary film Free Solo; ski mountaineer Kit DesLauriers; snowboarder Travis Rice; and mountaineers Conrad Anker and Yvon Chouinard. These larger-than-life images, coupled with stories of outsized drive and passion, of impossible goals with life or death stakes, of partnerships forged through incredible hardship, are sure to inspire wonder and awe.

Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers


Janet Malcolm - 2013
    Malcolm is "among the most intellectually provocative of authors," writes David Lehman in The Boston Globe, "able to turn epiphanies of perception into explosions of insight."Here, in Forty-one False Starts, Malcolm brings together essays published over the course of several decades (largely in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books) that reflect her preoccupation with artists and their work. Her subjects are painters, photographers, writers, and critics. She explores Bloomsbury's obsessive desire to create things visual and literary; the "passionate collaborations" behind Edward Weston's nudes; and the character of the German art photographer Thomas Struth, who is "haunted by the Nazi past," yet whose photographs have "a lightness of spirit." In "The Woman Who Hated Women," Malcolm delves beneath the "onyx surface" of Edith Wharton's fiction, while in "Advanced Placement" she relishes the black comedy of the Gossip Girl novels of Cecily von Zeigesar. In "Salinger's Cigarettes," Malcolm writes that "the pettiness, vulgarity, banality, and vanity that few of us are free of, and thus can tolerate in others, are like ragweed for Salinger's helplessly uncontaminated heroes and heroines." "Over and over," as Ian Frazier writes in his introduction, "she has demonstrated that nonfiction—a book of reporting, an article in a magazine, something we see every day—can rise to the highest level of literature."One of Publishers Weekly's Best Nonfiction Books of 2013

Art as Therapy


Alain de Botton - 2013
    Art as Therapy is packed with 150 examples of outstanding art, with chapters on Love, Nature, Money, and Politics outlining how these works can help with common difficulties. For example, Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter helps us focus on what we want to be loved for; Serra's Fernando Passoa reminds us of the importance of dignity in suffering; and Manet's Bunch of Asparagus teaches us how to preserve and value our long-term partners.De Botton demonstrates how art can guide and console us, and along the way, help us to better understand both art and ourselves.

The Writer's Desk


Jill Krementz - 1996
    Photographs of fifty-five prominent writers at their desks are accompanied by the writers' own comments on their working lives and workplaces.

America's Wilderness: The Photographs Of Ansel Adams With The Writings Of John Muir


John Muir - 1990
    Adams's breathtaking images are accompanied by excerpts from the writings of Sierra Club founder John Muir, the renowned conservationist who devoted his life to celebrating and preserving the American wildnerness.

Maps


Aleksandra Mizielińska - 2012
    It features not only borders, cities, rivers, and peaks, but also places of historical and cultural interest, eminent personalities, iconic animals and plants, cultural events, and many more fascinating facts associated with every region of our planet.

Faces of Africa


Carol Beckwith - 2004
    Drawn from their work over the past thirty years, this book is an inclusive look at the people and cultures from across this broad continent.With their unique eye for Africa and its inhabitants, Beckwith and Fisher have brought forth a masterpiece in the genre—and a moving, personal tribute to some of the most beautiful people on Earth.

Strong Is the New Pretty: A Celebration of Girls Being Themselves


Kate T. Parker - 2017
    Girls being silly. Girls being wild, stubborn, and proud. Girls whose faces are smeared with dirt and lit up with joy. So simple and yet so powerful, Strong Is the New Pretty celebrates, through more than 175 memorable photographs, the strength and spirit of girls being 100% themselves.Real beauty isn’t about being a certain size, acting a certain way, wearing the right clothes, or having your hair done (or even brushed). Real beauty is about being your authentic self and owning it. Kate T. Parker is a professional photographer who finds the real beauty in girls, capturing it for all the world to see in candid and arresting images.A celebration, a catalog of spirit in words and smiles, an affirmation of the fact that it’s what’s inside you that counts, Strong Is the New Pretty conveys a powerful message for every girl, for every mother and father of a girl, for every coach and mentor and teacher, for everyone in the village that it takes to raise a strong and self-confident person.

1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up


Julia Eccleshare - 2009
    It is the latest in the best-selling 1001 series, and its informative reviews are the key to differentiating the "must-read" books from all the rest in the realm of children’s books. Whether you are a parent seeking to instill a love of reading in your child, an educator or counselor looking for inspiration, or a young reader with a voracious appetite, this guide to the best writing for children and young adults covers the spectrum of children’s literature. It is organized by age group—from board books to YA novels and all the gradiations in between. Each entry features evaluations by a team of international critics complete with beautifully reproduced artwork from the featured title. The beloved classics are here, but the guide also takes a global perspective and includes the increasingly diverse contributions from African American and Latino authors and illustrators—not to mention important books from around the world.

A Novel Bookstore


Laurence Cossé - 2009
    Rebelling against the business of bestsellers and in search of an ideal place where their literary dreams can come true, Ivan and Francesca open a store where the passion for literature is given free rein. Tucked away in a corner of Paris, the store offers its clientele a selection of literary masterpieces chosen by a top-secret committee of likeminded literary connoisseurs. To their amazement, after only a few months, the little dream store proves a success. And that is precisely when their troubles begin. At first, both owners shrug off the anonymous threats that come their way and the venomous comments concerning their store circulating on the Internet, but when three members of the supposedly secret committee are attacked, they decide to call the police. One by one, the pieces of this puzzle fall ominously into place, as it becomes increasingly evident that Ivan and Francesca’s dreams will be answered with pettiness, envy and violence.

Gustav Klimt: 1862-1918


Gilles Néret - 1992
    In his own time, Kilmt (1862-1918) was a highly successful painter, draftsman, muralist, and graphic artist; in the intervening years, iconic works such as The Kiss have been elevated to nothing less than cult status. Klimt's unfading popularity attests to the appeal of not only his aesthetic sensibilities but also that of the recurrent universal themes in his work: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death. He once wrote, "I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night...Who ever wants to know something about me...ought to look carefully at my pictures." With this overview of Klimt's work, readers will delight in taking up that challenge.About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Harry Potter: the Creature Vault


Jody Revenson - 2014
    K. Rowling's wizarding world. Harry Potter: The Creature Vault is a fascinating look at how this menagerie was brought to life for the blockbuster Harry Potter film series. Detailed profiles of each creature include rare concept illustrations, behind-the-scenes photography, and filmmaking secrets from the Warner Bros. archive. A removable poster picturing each of the creatures and an interactive Eeylops Owl Emporium catalog complete this must-have package.

Shoes: A Celebration of Pumps, Sandals, Slippers More


Linda O'Keeffe - 1996
    The Chanel toe. Jackie O's pump. Marilyn's stiletto. And lotus shoes and fetish shoes, shoes made for coronations and inaugurations, Cinderella's slipper, shoes of tulle, brocade, rhinestone, python, fish scales, and feathers, and much, much, more, including the two-foot-high wooden chopines of the 16th century and their resurgence as the platform shoes of the 1960s and 1970s.Shoes, now with over 357,000 copies in print, is an obsessive, over-the-top extravaganza-chunky, full-color, and irresistible, it contains page after page of seductive photographs and information about women's shoes.Created for the woman who's a passionate shoe lover-and what woman isn't?--Shoes features over 1,000 glorious photographs, most of them taken for the book. Includes Footnotes (fascinating facts about shoes); Foot Soldiers (profiles of master shoemakers from David Little to Andrea Pfister); and The Shoe that Left an Imprint, focusing on one shoe that changed history-remember Courrage's futuristic go-go boot? Shoes is, as they say, to die for.