The Secret Lives of Color


Kassia St. Clair - 2016
    From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history.In this book, Kassia St. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colors and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilization. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture.

Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found


Sophie Blackall - 2011
    The anonymous messages are hopeful and hopeless, funny and sad. Ms. Blackall, award-winning illustrator of Ruby’s Wish and Big Red Lollipop, has turned some of the most evocative (or hilarious) of them into exquisite paintings. Missed Connections is a collection of illustrated love stories. There’s “We Shared a Bear Suit.” “If Not for Your Noisy Tambourine.” “Hairy Bearded Swimmer.” Each is told in the shorthand of a “missed connection,” and then illustrated in Chinese ink and watercolor. The paintings are extraordinary: delicate yet full of feeling, each springing from one little detail of the post into a fully imagined world. Each brings the voyeuristic pleasure of watching love at first sight, and the pleasure of watching an artist discover a fresh new way to tell a story. And not all the connections are missed. Hidden in the book are three pieces that conjure up the magic of love found.

American Widow


Alissa Torres - 2008
    The next morning, he said goodbye to his 7½-months-pregnant wife, Alissa, and headed out the door.In an instant, Alissa's world was thrown into chaos. Forced to deal with unimaginable challenges, Alissa suddenly found herself cast into the role of 9/11 widow, tossed into a storm of bureaucracy, politics, patriotism, mourning, consolation, and, soon enough, motherhood.Beautifully and thoughtfully illustrated, American Widow is the affecting account of one woman's journey through shock, pain, birth, and rebirth in the aftermath of a great tragedy. It is also the story of a young couple's love affair: how a Colombian immigrant and a strong-minded New Yorker met, fell in love, and struggled to fulfill their dreams. Above all, American Widow is a tribute to the resilience of the human heart and the very personal story of how one woman endured a very public tragedy.

By Chance or Providence


Becky Cloonan - 2014
    WolvesAs a lone hunter tracks an elusive beast through the forest, he reflects on his life and past love through a series of flashbacks, bringing the story to a climax that is as romantic as it is savage. This powerful short story begs for multiple read-throughs, never giving concrete answers, but (like the best enigmatic endings) leaves your own conclusions satisfying.2. The MireOn the eve of a great battle, a humble squire is tasked with delivering a letter to a seemingly abandoned castle at the heart of an ill-famed swamp. Met with mysterious apparitions on the way, he slowly unveils the truth behind his journey as his past is re-written over the course of the story.3. DemeterA fisherman's wife tends the garden and animals while her husband is at sea, but secrets buried under the waves begin to bubble to the surface revealing a secret treachery and forgotten truth. The third and final book in a trilogy of critically acclaimed stand-alone stories by award winning creator Becky Cloonan.

Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing: {The Drawing Book for Aspiring Artists of All Ages and Abilities}


Selwyn Leamy - 2017
    Through fifty drawings by great masters past and present, the techniques and ideas behind their master sketches will put you on the path to making your own great drawings.The entries also feature exercises with step–by–step instructions as well as simple diagrams providing further visual explanation to the jargon–free discussion.For aspiring artists of all ages and abilities, Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing will motivate and strengthen your drawing talent.Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing is part of the internationally–bestselling 'Read This' series, which has sold over half–a–million books worldwide and has been translated into over 20 languages.More titles in the 'Read This' series:Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing People by Selwyn LeamyUse This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing by Selwyn Leamy (9781786274052)Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs by Henry Carroll (9781780673356)Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of People by Henry Carroll (9781780676241)Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places by Henry Carroll (9781780679051)Use This if You Want to Take Great Photographs: A Photo Journal by Henry Carroll (9781780678887)Read This if You Want to Be a Great Writer by Ross Raisin (9781786271976)Read This if You Want to Be Instagram Famous edited by Henry Carroll (9781780679679)

The Contract With God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue


Will Eisner - 2005
    It marked the birth of the modern graphic novel and the beginning of an era when serious cartoonists could be liberated from their stultifying comic-book format.More than a quarter-century after the initial publication of A Contract With God, and in the last few months of his life, Eisner chose to combine the three fictional works he had set on Dropsie Avenue, the mythical street of his youth in Depression-era New York City.As the dramas unfold in A Contract With God, the first book in this new trilogy, it is at 55 Dropsie Avenue where Frimme Hersh, the pious Jew, first loses his beloved daughter, then breaks his contract with his maker, and ends up as a slumlord; it is on Dropsie Avenue where a street singer, befriended by an aging diva, is so beholden to the bottle that he fails to grasp his chance for stardom; and it is there that a scheming little girl named Rosie poisons a depraved super’s dog before doing in the super as well.In the second book, A Life Force, declared by R. Crumb to be "a masterpiece," Eisner re-creates himself in his protagonist, Jacob Shtarkah, whose existential search reflected Eisner’s own lifelong struggle. Chronicling not only the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression but also the rise of Nazism and the spread of left-wing politics, Eisner combined the miniaturist sensibility of Henry Roth with the grand social themes of novelists such as Dos Passos and Steinbeck.Finally, in Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood, Eisner graphically traces the social trajectory of this mythic avenue over four centuries, creating a sweeping panorama of the city and its waves of new residents—the Dutch, English, Irish, Jews, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans—whose faces changed yet whose lives presented an unending "story of life, death, and resurrection."The Contract With God Trilogy is a mesmerizing, fictional chronicle of a universal American experience and Eisner’' most poignant and enduring literary legacy.

Am I Overthinking This?: Over-answering life's questions in 101 charts


Michelle Rial - 2019
    This is a book of questions with answers, over-answers, and many charts: Did I screw up? How do I achieve work-life balance? Am I eating too much cheese? Do I have too many plants? Like a conversation with your non-judgmental best friend, Michelle Rial delivers a playful take on the little dilemmas that loom large in the mind of every adult through artful charts and funny, insightful questions. • Building on her popular Instagram account @michellerial, Am I Overthinking This? brings whimsical charm to topics big and small• Offers solidarity for the stressed, answers for the confused, and a good laugh for all• Michelle Rial is an illustrator, writer and photographer who has been publishing charts online for almost a decade. Her work has been featured on USA Today, Fast Company, Vox, designboom, AV Club, and more. Fans of Adulting: How to Become a Grownup in 535 Easy(ish) Steps, Thin Slices of Anxiety, and It's OK to Feel Things Deeply will relate to the humorous dilemmas in Am I Overthinking This?This book serves as a reminder that there isn't always one right answer—and that, sometimes, the only answer is to pick a path and keep moving. • A perfect coffee table, bathroom or bar top conversation-starting book• Makes a great gift for a friend who tends to think about the big and small questions a bit too much

Flight, Vol. 1


Kazu KibuishiJoel Carroll - 2004
    From the maiden voyage of a home-built plane to the adventures of a young courier and his flying whale to a handful of stories about coming of age and letting things go, this first volume of Flight is full of memorable tales that will both amaze and inspire.

Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout


Lauren Redniss - 2010
    A brilliant visual storyteller, Redniss has hand-designed more than 100 color collages to tell Curie’s story, fascinating in its scientific significance and its sometimes whimsical, sometimes haunting mix of romance and intrigue. Bringing together archival photos, images, and clippings with dazzling line drawings and a compelling narrative, Radioactive is far more than just an art book or a graphic novel: It is a stunning visual biography and a true work of art.

Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings


Yoko Ono - 1970
    Back in print for the first time in nearly thirty years, here is Yoko Ono's whimsical, delightful, subversive, startling book of instructions for art and for life."A dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality.""Burn this book after you've read it." -- Yoko Ono"This is the greatest book I've ever burned." -- John Lennon

365 Takes


Andy Warhol - 2004
    He was also a notorious collector who saved practically everything that came his way. In 1994, seven years after the artist's death, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh became the repository not only for a substantial body of his artwork and films, but also for the Time Capsules into which he obsessively deposited a lifetime's worth of ephemera and personal memorabilia. For this book--created in the same format as Abrams' best-selling Earth From Above: 365 Days--the museum has gathered highlights of its collection. Illustrated with almost 400 objects, from paintings to party invitations, the volume also features lively commentaries by the museum's staff as well as quotes from Warhol's own irreverent writings. Timed to coincide with the celebration of the museum's 10-year anniversary, this book will serve as both an introduction to and a handbook for the most extensive collection anywhere of this iconic artist's work.

Heads or Tails


Lilli Carré - 2012
    Carré’s elegant short stories read like the gothic, family narratives of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers, but told visually. Poetic rhythms — a coin flip, a circling ferris wheel — are punctuated by elements of melancholy fantasy pushed forward by character-driven, naturalistic dialogue. The stories in Heads Or Tails display a virtuosic breadth of visual styles and color palettes, each in perfect service of the story, and range from experimental one-pagers to short masterpieces like The Thing About Madeline (featured in The Best American Comics 2008), to graphic novellas like The Carnival (featured in David Sedaris and Dave Eggers’ 2010 Best American Nonrequired Reading, originally published in MOME).

I Only Read It for the Cartoons: The New Yorker's Most Brilliantly Twisted Artists


Richard Gehr - 1999
    For example, did you know that Arnie Levin is a seventy-three-year-old former Beatnik painter with a handlebar mustache and a back decorated by Japan’s foremost tattoo artists?Gehr’s book features fascinating biographical profiles of such artists as Gahan Wilson, Sam Gross, Roz Chast, Lee Lorenz, and Edward Koren. Along with a dozen such profiles, Gehr provides a brief history of The New Yorker cartoon itself, touching on the lives and work of earlier illustrating wits, including Charles Addams, James Thurber, and William Steig.

You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination


Katharine Harmon - 2003
    But maps need not just show continents and oceans: there are maps to heaven and hell; to happiness and despair; maps of moods, matrimony, and mythological places. There are maps to popular culture, from Gulliver's Island to Gilligan's Island. There are speculative maps of the world before it was known, and maps to secret places known only to the mapmaker. Artists' maps show another kind of uncharted realm: the imagination. What all these maps have in common is their creators' willingness to venture beyond the boundaries of geography or convention.You Are Here is a wide-ranging collection of such superbly inventive maps. These are charts of places you're not expected to find, but a voyage you take in your mind: an exploration of the ideal country estate from a dog's perspective; a guide to buried treasure on Skeleton Island; a trip down the road to success; or the world as imagined by an inmate of a mental institution. With over 100 maps from artists, cartographers, and explorers, You are Here gives the reader a breath-taking view of worlds, both real and imaginary.

Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane


The Staff of the Late Show - 2018
    It is the first children’s book that demonstrates what not to say after a natural disaster. On September 19, 2018, Donald Trump paid a visit to New Bern, North Carolina, one of the towns ravaged by Hurricane Florence. It was there he showed deep concern for a boat that washed ashore. “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal,” said President Trump to hurricane victims. “Have a good time!” he told them. The only way his comments would be appropriate is in the context of a children’s book—and now you can experience them that way, thanks to the staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Whose Boat Is This Boat? is an excellent teaching tool for readers of all ages who enjoy learning about empathy by process of elimination. Have a good time!