Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon


Harvey Kubernik - 2009
    resident who knows them all, "Canyon"" of Dreams" traces the history of the community and its enduring legacy. Taking a deeply personal approach, it uses a multiple-voice narration based on exclusive interviews with the area s musical elite. Because of their close and long-time connection with Kubernik, some of these stars are speaking openly for the first time.Eye-opening both visually and informationally, this is a book no music lover can be without!"Interview highlights include" - For the first time in years, the three surviving Doors talk about performances, recordings, band dynamics, and, of course, Jim Morrison- Randy Meisner reminisces about the Eagles first gig and the recording of One of These Nights - Graham Nash reflects on life with Joni Mitchell and describes writing Our House - Lou Adler discusses his legendary Sunset Strip venues the Whisky a Go-Go, Roxy Theater, Rainbow Bar & Grill, and Tapestry and, with Michele Phillips, reflects on the Monterey Pop Festival.- Slash, a child of the Canyon, details the formation of Guns N' Roses- And much, much more!"

The Voynich Manuscript


Unknown
    It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_...

Vogue and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute: Parties, Exhibitions, People


Hamish Bowles - 2014
    With subjects that both reflect the zeitgeist and contribute to its creation, each exhibi­tion—from 2005’s Chanel, to 2011’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty and 2013’s Punk—creates a provocative and engaging narrative attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors. The show’s opening-night gala, produced in collaboration with Vogue magazine and attended by the likes of Beyoncé, George Clooney, and Hillary Clinton, is regularly referred to as the Party of the Year.Covering the Costume Institute’s history and highlighting exhibitions of the 21st century curated by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton, this book offers insider access of the first order. Anchored by photo­graphs from the exhibitions themselves in tandem with the Vogue fashion shoots they inspired, it also includes images of exhibited objects and party photos from the galas. Drawn from the extensive Vogue archives, the featured stories showcase the photographs of icons such as Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, and Craig McDean; the vision of legendary Vogue editors like Grace Coddington and Tonne Goodman; and the knowledge and wit of writers such as Hamish Bowles and Jonathan Van Meter.

LEGO® Architecture: The Visual Guide


Philip Wilkinson - 2014
    Beautifully illustrated and annotated, this visual guide allows you to explore the LEGO team's creative process in building and understand how LEGO artists translated such iconic buildings into these buildable LEGO sets.Stunning images and in-depth exploration of the real buildings like the Guggenheim™ or the Empire State Building, on which the LEGO Architecture series is based, provide you with a comprehensive look at the creation of these intricate sets. Learn why the LEGO team chose certain pieces and what particular challenges they faced. Read about the inspiration behind the creative processes and what designing and building techniques were used on various sets.Featuring profiles of the LEGO artists and builders who created the series and packaged in a sleek protective slipcase, LEGO Architecture: The Visual Guide is the ultimate illustrated tour of the LEGO Architecture series in all its micro-scale detail.Reviews:"Lego enthusiasts will welcome this remarkable chronological accounting," and the Journal gives the following "VERDICT: Perfect for Lego fans and a great way to transition inquisitive young minds from toys to books." - Library Journal"[I]t is a celebration of the LEGO models as much as it is a celebration of the original buildings." - A Daily Dose of Architecture"A fascinating look into the world's iconic buildings and structures... and the LEGO sets that celebrate them." - GeekDad

Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death


Lisa Takeuchi Cullen - 2006
    What she discovered is that the people who reinvented youth, redefined careers, and reconceived middle age have created a new attitude toward the afterlife. They no longer want to take death lying down; instead, they're taking their demise into their own hands and planning the after-party.Cullen begins her journey at a national undertakers' convention in Nashville, where she checks out the latest in death merchandise. Traveling with her newborn infant on her back, she hears stories of modern-day funerals: lobster-shaped caskets and other unconventional containers for corpses; the booming cremation industry that has spawned a slew of "end-trepreneurs," including a company that turns cremated remains into diamonds; and even mishaps like dove releases gone horribly wrong.Cullen tours the country's first "green" cemetery in South Carolina, meets a mummification advocate at his pyramid in Utah, and visits the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival in Colorado. She crashes a Hmong funeral in Minneapolis and a tango funeral in Washington, D.C.Eye-opening, funny, and unforgettable, Remember Me gives an account of the ways in which Americans are designing new occasions to mark death -- by celebrating life.

Elephant House; or, the Home of Edward Gorey


Kevin McDermott - 2003
    An intimate photographic tour of Edward Gorey's strange and wonderful house.

Treehouses of the World


Pete Nelson - 2004
    20,000 first printing.

Atget's Paris


Eugène Atget - 2001
    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.

Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine


Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz - 2014
    This was the world of medicine when Thomas Dent Mütter began his trailblazing career as a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia during the middle of the nineteenth century.Although he died at just forty-eight, Mütter was an audacious medical innovator who pioneered the use of ether as anesthesia, the sterilization of surgical tools, and a compassion-based vision for helping the severely deformed, which clashed spectacularly with the sentiments of his time.   Brilliant, outspoken, and brazenly handsome, Mütter was flamboyant in every aspect of his life. He wore pink silk suits to perform surgery, added an umlaut to his last name just because he could, and amassed an immense collection of medical oddities that would later form the basis of Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz chronicles how Mütter’s efforts helped establish Philadelphia as a global mecca for medical innovation—despite intense resistance from his numerous rivals.

SuicideGirls


Missy Suicide - 2004
    The punk rock pin-up cultural phenomenon known as suicidegirls.com includes journal entries excerpted from the site and over 200 artful, color photos.

Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law


Jeffrey Rosen - 2019
    Rosen, a veteran legal journalist, scholar, and president of the National Constitution Center, shares with us the justice's observations on a variety of topics, and her intellect, compassion, sense of humor, and humanity shine through. The affection they have for each other as friends is apparent in their banter and in their shared love for the Constitution--and for opera.In Conversations with RBG, Justice Ginsburg discusses the future of Roe v. Wade, her favorite dissents, the cases she would most like to see overruled, the #MeToo movement, how to be a good listener, how to lead a productive and compassionate life, and of course the future of the Supreme Court itself. These frank exchanges illuminate the steely determination, self-mastery, and wit that have inspired Americans of all ages to embrace the woman known to all as "Notorious RBG."Whatever the topic, Justice Ginsburg always has something interesting--and often surprising--to say. And while few of us will ever have the opportunity to chat with her face-to-face, Jeffrey Rosen brings us by her side as never before. Conversations with RBG is a deeply felt portrait of an American hero.

Haunted Air: Anonymous Halloween photographs from c. 1875–1955


Ossian Brown - 2010
    These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognizable, and others. The roots of Halloween lie in the ancient pre-Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men. The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls' Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging "soul cakes" in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay. From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half-remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Halloween was reborn in America. The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival's intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living, and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back.

The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists


Gregory Curtis - 2006
    He takes us with him on his own journey of discovery, making us see the astonishing sophistication and power of the paintings, telling us what is known about their creators, the Cro-Magnon people who settled the area some 40,000 years ago.Beginning in 1879 with Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, who found the astonishing paintings on the ceiling of a cave at Altamira, Curtis takes us among the scholars of prehistory, the archaeologists, the art historians who devoted their lives to studying and writing about the paintings. Among them: the famous Abbé Henri Breuil, who lay on his back in damp caves lit only by a lantern held patiently aloft by his faithful—and silent—female assistant, to produce the exquisite tracings that are the most reproduced renderings of the art; Max Raphael, the art historian who first understood that the animals on the walls were not single portraits but part of larger compositions; the beautiful Annette Lamming-Emperaire, resistance fighter turned archaeologist, whose doctoral thesis was so important that all theory since has flowed from her work; Jean Clottes and others still working as new caves and information come to light. In his own search for the caves’ meaning, Curtis takes us through the major theories—that the art was part of fertility or hunting rituals, or used for religious or shamanistic purposes, or was clan mythology—examining the ways in which ethnography, archaeology, and religion have influenced the thinking about the cave paintings over time.The Cave Painters is rich in detail, personalities, and history—and permeated with the mystery at the core of this art created so many thousands of years ago by human beings who had developed, perhaps for the first time, both the ability for abstract thought and a profound and beautiful way to express it.

One Year on a Bike: From Amsterdam to Singapore


Martijn Doolaard - 2017
    It is simultaneously a travelogue and visual journey. Martijn Doolaard traded the convenience of a car and the distractions of daily life for a cross-continental cycling journey: a biped adventure that would take him from Amsterdam to Singapore. Leaving behind repetitive routines, One Year on a Bike indulges in slow travel, the subtlety of a gradually changing landscape, and the lessons learned through traveling. Venturing through Eastern European fields of yellow rapeseed to the intimate hosting culture and community in Iran, One Year on a Bike is a vivid chronicle of what can happen when the norm is pointedly replaced by exceptional self-discoveries and beautiful scenery. Doolaard shares the gear and knowledge that made his trip possible alongside the passionate curiosities that served as his impetus.

Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers: A History of Torture and Its Instruments


Geoffrey Abbott - 1993
    This bloodcurdling account of instruments of torture through the ages includes descriptions of cells too cramped to allow for lying down, skull crushers, the pendulum, the gridiron, and other gruesome devices.