My Ideal Bookshelf


Jane MountMiranda July - 2012
    In MY IDEAL BOOKSHELF, dozens of leading cultural figures share the books that matter to them most; books that define their dreams and ambitions and in many cases helped them find their way in the world. Contributors include Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Keller, Michael Chabon, Alice Waters, James Patterson, Maira Kalman, Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, Miranda July, Alex Ross, Nancy Pearl, David Chang, Patti Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Dave Eggers, among many others. With colorful and endearingly hand-rendered images of book spines by Jane Mount, and first-person commentary from all the contributors, this is a perfect gift for avid readers, writers, and all who have known the influence of a great book.

Art Through the Ages


Helen Gardner - 1926
    With this book in hand, thousands of students have watched the story of art unfold in its full historical, social, religious, economic, and cultural context, and thus deepened their understanding of art, architecture, painting, and sculpture. By virtue of its comprehensive coverage, strong emphasis on context, and rich, accurate art reproductions, GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES has earned and sustained a reputation of excellence and authority. So much so, that in 2001, the Text and Academic Authors Association awarded both the McGuffey and the "Texty" Book Prizes to the Eleventh Edition of the text. It is the first art history book to win either award and the only title ever to win both prizes in one year. The Twelfth Edition maintains and exceeds the richness of the Gardner legacy with updated research and scholarship and an even more beautiful art program featuring more color images than any other art history book available. The Twelfth Edition features such enhancements as more color photographs, a stunning new design, and the most current research and scholarship. What's more, the expanded ancillary package that accompanies GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES, features a wealth of tools to enhance your students' experience in the course. With each new copy of the book, students receive a copy of the ArtStudy 2.0 CD-ROM--an interactive electronic study aid that fully integrates with the Twelfth Edition and includes hundreds of high-quality digital images, plus maps, quizzes, and more.

Peter Lindbergh. a Different Vision on Fashion Photography


Peter Lindbergh - 2016
    The image didn t just bring revered faces together for the first time; it marked the beginning of a new fashion era and a new understanding of female beauty. Coinciding with his major retrospective at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, this book gathers more than 400 images from four decades of Lindbergh s photography to celebrate his unique and game-changing storytelling and the new romantic and narrative vision it brought to art and fashion. Whether in striking single portraits or dramatic situations of figure and setting, we trace the photographer s cinematic inflections and his provocative play with female archetypes as subjects adopt the guise of dancers, actresses, heroines, and femmes fatales. Raw and seductive at once, we see how Lindbergh s trademark monochrome pictures also redefined standards of beauty by emphasizing spirit and personality as much as looks, celebrating the elegance and sensuality of older women, and privileging natural and authentic beauty in an era of pervasive retouching. In a testimony to Lindbergh s illustrious status in the fashion world, his images are contextualized by commentaries from collaborators such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Nicole Kidman, Grace Coddington, Cindy Crawford, and Anna Wintour, who chose Lindbergh to shoot her first US Vogue cover. Their tributes explain what makes Lindbergh s images so unique and powerful. Exhibition Peter Lindbergh. A Different History of Fashion at Kunsthal, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, September 10, 2016 February 12, 2017Text in English, French, and German"

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe


Theodore Gray - 2009
    Includes a poster of Theodore Gray's iconic photographic periodic table of the elements! Based on seven years of research and photography by Theodore Gray and Nick Mann, The Elements presents the most complete and visually arresting representation available to the naked eye of every atom in the universe. Organized sequentially by atomic number, every element is represented by a big beautiful photograph that most closely represents it in its purest form. Several additional photographs show each element in slightly altered forms or as used in various practical ways. Also included are fascinating stories of the elements, as well as data on the properties of each, including atomic number, atomic symbol, atomic weight, density, atomic radius, as well as scales for electron filling order, state of matter, and an atomic emission spectrum. This of solid science and stunning artistic photographs is the perfect gift book for every sentient creature in the universe.

Past Mortems: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors


Carla Valentine - 2017
    She spent ten years training and working as an Anatomical Pathology Technologist: where the mortuary slab was her desk, and that day's corpses her task list.Past Mortems tells Carla's stories of those years, as well as investigating the body alongside our attitudes towards death - shedding light on what the living can learn from dead and the toll the work can take on the living souls who carry it out. Fascinating and insightful, Past Mortems reveals the truth about what happens when the mortuary doors swing shut or the lid of the coffin closes . . .

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink


Elvis Costello - 2015
    Costello went into the family business and had taken the popular music world by storm before he was twenty-four.Costello continues to add to one of the most intriguing and extensive songbooks of the day. His performances have taken him from a cardboard guitar in his front room to fronting a rock and roll band on your television screen and performing in the world's greatest concert halls in a wild variety of company. Unfaithful Music describes how Costello's career has somehow endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning, even managing the occasional absurd episode of pop stardom.This memoir, written with the same inimitable touch as his lyrics, and including dozens of images from his personal archive, offers his unique view of his unlikely and sometimes comical rise to international success, with diversions through the previously undocumented emotional foundations of some of his best known songs and the hits of tomorrow. The book contains many stories and observations about his renowned co-writers and co-conspirators, though Costello also pauses along the way for considerations on the less appealing side of infamy.Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink is destined to be a classic, idiosyncratic memoir of a singular man.

In the Heights: Finding Home


Lin-Manuel Miranda - 2021
    The show’s vibrant mix of Latin music and hip-hop captured life in Washington Heights, the Latino neighborhood in upper Manhattan. It won four Tony Awards and became an international hit, delighting audiences around the world. For the film version, director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) brought the story home, filming its spectacular dance numbers on location in Washington Heights. That’s where Usnavi, Nina, and their neighbors chase their dreams and ask a universal question: Where do I belong? In the Heights: Finding Home reunites Miranda with Jeremy McCarter, co-author of Hamilton: The Revolution, and Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Pulitzer Prize–winning librettist of the Broadway musical and screenwriter of the film. They do more than trace the making of an unlikely Broadway smash and a major motion picture: They give readers an intimate look at the decades-long creative life of In the Heights. Like Hamilton: The Revolution, the book offers untold stories, perceptive essays, and the lyrics to Miranda’s songs—complete with his funny, heartfelt annotations. It also features newly commissioned portraits and never-before-seen photos from backstage, the movie set, and productions around the world. This is the story of characters who search for a home—and the artists who created one.

Rat Girl


Kristin Hersh - 2010
    In 1985, Kristin Hersh was just starting to find her place in the world. After leaving home at the age of fifteen, the precocious child of unconventional hippies had enrolled in college while her band, Throwing Muses, was getting off the ground amid rumors of a major label deal. Then everything changed: she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and found herself in an emotional tailspin; she started medication, but then discovered she was pregnant. An intensely personal and moving account of that pivotal year, Rat Girl is sure to be greeted eagerly by Hersh's many fans.

Chihuly: 365 Days


Dale Chihuly - 2007
    Chihuly: 365 Days is a richly illustrated photo survey of his entire four-decade career, with more than 500 pictures showing all facets of his work—from intimate smaller pieces to the tremendous outdoor installations that have thrilled millions of visitors. There are also personal photos of the artist; of “Team chihuly” at the Boathouse, his studio in Seattle, Washington; and of his marvelous drawings—all selected by the artist himself. Most of the photographs have never before been published.Quotations from and about Chihuly, as well as descriptions of his various types of works and short texts on his most prominent series pieces, accompany the images. The captions also act as a chronology of his life and work.

SignLanguage


Viggo Mortensen - 2002
    With an essay by Kevin Power.

The Art and Flair of Mary Blair: An Appreciation


John Canemaker - 2003
    The stylishness and vibrant color of Disney films in the early 1940s through mid-1950s came primarily from artist Mary Blair. In her prime, she was an amazingly prolific American artist who enlivened and influenced the not-so-small worlds of film, print, theme parks, architectural decor, and advertising. At its core, her art represented joyful creativity and communicated pure pleasure to the viewer. Her exuberant fantasies brimmed with beauty, charm, and wit, melding a child's fresh eye with adult experience. Blair's personal flair comprised the imagery that flowed effortlessly and continually for more than a half a century from her brush. Emulated by many, she remains inimitable: a dazzling sorceress of design and color.

Women in Clothes


Sheila Heti - 2014
    It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities—famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Tavi Gevinson, Miranda July, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with photographs, interviews, personal testimonies, and illustrations. Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women’s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

Audrey: The 60s


David Wills - 2012
    Audrey: The 60s is a landmark photographic chronicle of her film and fashion career during those tumultuous years. Regarded as one of the most beautiful and best-dressed women in the world, Audrey Hepburn had timeless appeal—and this breathtaking photographic collection compiled by David Wills, author of Marilyn Monroe: Metamorphosis, captures this legendary star at the height of her career—from Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the Vogue fashion shoots with world-class photographers that captured her unique, trendsetting style.

Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution


Cedar Lewisohn - 2006
    Developing out of the graffiti-writing tradition of the 1980s through the work of artists such as Banksy and Futura 2000, it has long since reached the mainstream. Street Art is the first measured, critical account of the development of this global phenomenon.  Tracing street art’s origins in cave painting through the Paris walls photographed by Brassai in the ’20s through the witty, sophisticated imagery found on city streets today, the book also features new and exclusive interviews with key figures associated with street art of the last 35 years, including Lady Pink, Barry McGee, Shepard Fairy, Futura 2000, Malcolm McLaren, Miss Van, and Os Gemeos. Street Art reveals the extent to which the walls and streets of cities around the world have become the birthplace of some of the most dynamic and inspirational art being made today.

From Alice to Ocean: Alone Across the Outback


Rick Smolan - 1992
    Her 1,700-mile solo journey across the Australian outback was a cover story in National Geographic, and her account of her trek has become a worldwide bestseller. Now the photographer who originally took the pictures for the NG story combines Davidson's text with his award winning photos, most never before published.