Love Letters of the Great War


Mandy Kirkby - 2014
    Some of the letters collected here are eloquent declarations of love and longing; others contain wrenching accounts of fear, jealousy and betrayal; many share sweet dreams of home. But in all the correspondence – whether from British, American, French, German, Russian, Australian and Canadian troops in the height of battle, or from the heartbroken wives and sweethearts left behind – there lies a truly human portrait of love and war. Each of the letters, many of which have never before been published, is introduced by a brief piece about the characters, some of whom were parted for ever by the tragedy of war; others reunited. A century on from the start of the First World War, these letters offer an intimate glimpse into the hearts of men and women separated by conflict, and show how love can transcend even the bleakest and most devastating of realities.

Dreamers of Decadence


Philippe Jullian - 1969
    While public attention was preoccupied with the Impressionists, many painters were reacting in a totally different...and more imaginative way...to the grim horrors of the new industrial society around them. The roots of the Decadents, as these artists came to call themselves, were to be found in the poetic visions of the English Pre-Raphaelites of the 1850s. Their first great Continental exponent was a brilliant and neglected painter of the fantastic, Gustave Moreau; their most obvious expression was 'Art Nouveau,' a style closely interwoven with sinuous and half-unconscious eroticism. Philippe Julian takes the reader on a conducted tour through the bizarre symbolism of this half-forgotten world, introducing him to a large number of writers and artists. Many of these artists...Moreau; Toorop, the brilliant half-Balinese, half-Dutch painter and draftsman; the French Odilon Redon, the great master of Symbolist art; the Viennese Klimt; and the Belgian Khnopff...have been known for some time to a few enthusiasts; In this lively study their inventiveness and skill are explored afresh, and their fantastic imaginings and weird symbolism exposed to a sometimes ironic light. Proud of their romantic appearance, extravagant habits, and outrageous conduct, the artists of the 'mauve nineties' drew on a wide range of writers for their ideas, including not only Poe, Baudelaire, Swinburne, and Wilde, but also less well-known and stranger poets. The book ends with a short anthology of Symbolist themes taken from these writers, and 149 pictures drawn from museums and collection in the Europe and the U.S.

Big Ideas: Explanations, True Stories, Love, Nutrition, Advice, and More


Lynda Barry - 1983
    Like Girls and Boys, Big Ideas features many of her greatest cartoons, including her menacing "Poodle with a Mohawk". Line drawings throughout.

An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories


Ivan BrunettiPhoebe Gloeckner - 2006
    As with Chris Ware’s selections for his best-selling McSweeney’s anthology, Brunetti’s choices make for a highly personal book (“my criteria were simple: these are comics that I savor and often revisit”) that serves as a broad historical overview of the medium and a round-up of some of today’s best and most interesting North American comic artists. Included here are works from such well-known artists as Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Ben Katchor, Charles Burns, Gary Panter, Seth, Phoebe Gloeckner, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Joe Sacco, and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, as well as many other pioneers whose names may be less familiar.Brunetti offers selections from the works of more than seventy-five avant-garde comic artists.  His selections are arranged by genre and grouped thematically. Luxuriously produced and printed in four-color throughout, the book is a must-have for collectors, aficionados, readers of comics, and those generally interested in cutting-edge art and literature.

Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry


Joy Harjo - 2021
    Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry.This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. With work from Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, Layli Long Soldier, among others, Living Nations, Living Words showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, “poetry [that] emerges from the soul of a community, the heart and lands of the people. In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than 500 living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.”

Aesthetics: A Memoir


Ivan Brunetti - 2013
    1967) was drawn to cartoons and comic strips from an early age. Finding inspiration in Spider-Man and Peanuts, he began crafting his own stories and gradually developed a unique style that he applied to imaginative, sometimes shocking subjects. The dark humor of his graphic novels earned him a cult following, yet his illustrations have had broad appeal. Now recognized as an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, Brunetti has published his work in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney’s, among others.This eye-popping illustrated autobiography by Brunetti traces his artistic trajectory and output, from youthful doodles to his latest cover illustrations and comic strips. Aesthetics: A Memoir unearths a trove of previously unpublished materials, including working drawings, sketches for cartoons, book covers, personal photographs, and items from the artist’s collection of toys and handmade objects. In an introductory essay and captions, Brunetti explains—in a voice that is as quirky, smart, and clear as his drawings—his creative process and aesthetic sensibility. This overarching retrospective conveys Brunetti’s philosophy of life and cartooning through his keen words and unforgettable images.

Wilder Mann: The Image of the Savage


Charles Fréger - 2012
    People literally put themselves into the skin of the "savage," in masquerades that stretch back centuries. By becoming a bear, a goat, a stag, a wild boar, a man of straw, a devil, or a monster with jaws of steel, these people celebrate the cycle of life and seasons. The costumes amaze with their extraordinary diversity and prodigious beauty. Work on this project took leading French photographer Charles Fréger to eighteen European countries in search of the mythological figure of the Wild Man.

Granta 108: Chicago


John Freeman - 2009
    The eight-hour work day, the Ponzi scheme and the rhythm and blues have risen from its streets. But Chicago is not just a city of the past. In this dynamic issue, GRANTA brings the one-time industrial hub to life through the eyes of exciting new writers, from home grown stars like George Saunders and Dave Eggers, to immigrants who have come to the city from Bosnia, China and Ethiopia.In this issue, Aleksandar Hemon plays football with Italians and Tibetans along Lake Shore Drive. Chicago born MacArthur 'genius' grant-winning photographer Camilo José Vegara captures the demolition of the city's massive public housing estates. Richard Powers recollects the flood of 1992. Don DeLillo remembers Nelson Algren. Alex Kotlowitz explores the cost of urban violence and Dinaw Mengestu describes moving back home to run his dying father’s messenger business. Plus a sneak preview of Peter Carey's new novel.Finally, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka meditates on the meaning of the city's most visible son, Barack Obama. Out of these stories, which will be wrapped in a beautiful cover by Chris Ware, will arise a vivid portrait of a city remaking itself: a city shredded by violence but poised for a new future; a city that once again has a legitimate claim to being the home of the world's best writers.

Women of the Left Bank


Shari Benstock - 1976
    Maurice Beebe calls it "a distinguished contribution to modern literary history." Jane Marcus hails it as "the first serious literary history of the period and its women writers, making along the way no small contribution to our understanding of the relationships between women artists and their male counterparts, from Henry James to Hemingway, Joyce, Picasso, and Pound."

An Anthology of Madness


Max Andrew Dubinsky - 2013
    Featuring brand new stories and some old favorites, many of these tell-all, gritty tales were originally published on the blog Make It MAD between 2010 and 2012, and have been rereleased in their originality for this special print and digital anthology.

Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana


Gina Arnold - 1993
    Here a personal friend of the band looks at the rise of Nirvana and their effect on American youth culture.

Has Modernism Failed?


Suzi Gablik - 1984
    In describing a world whose central aesthetic paradigm of modernism had lost its vitality, with an "avant-garde" that reflected the culture of consumerism, her book struck a chord in an audience that had once responded to the heroic idealism of modernism. Reprinted many times, Has Modernism Failed? became one of the most popular and influential works of contemporary art criticism. Now Gablik has revised and expanded her work to encompass developments over the last two decades. A new prologue looks at changes in the cultural context of art, especially at the radical split between artists who still proclaim the self-sufficiency of art, "in defiance of the social good," and artists who want art to have some worthy agenda outside of itself. In a new chapter, "Globalization," she looks at the ruthless cultural homogenization of a universal consumer society and how a number of artists and curators are challenging it. And in a passionate new chapter called "Transdisciplinarity" she offers a way forward for individuals to break free of the limiting ideologies of modernism and consumerism and shows how some artists are reflecting both spiritual and social concerns in their art.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women


Elena Favilli - 2016
    This book inspires girls with the stories of great women, from Elizabeth I to Serena Williams.

Genesis of a Music


Harry Partch - 1949
    Having lived mostly in the remote deserts of Arizona and New Mexico with no access to formal training, Partch naturally created theatrical ritualistic works incorporating Indian chants, Japanese kabuki and Noh, Polynesian microtones, Balinese gamelan, Greek tragedy, dance, mime, and sardonic commentary on Hollywood and commercial pop music of modern civilization. First published in 1949, Genesis of a Music is the manifesto of Partch's radical compositional practice and instruments (which owe nothing to the 300-year-old European tradition of Western music.) He contrasts Abstract and Corporeal music, proclaiming the latter as the vital, emotionally tactile form derived from the spoken word (like Greek, Chinese, Arabic, and Indian musics) and surveys the history of world music at length from this perspective. Parts II, III, and IV explain Partch's theories of scales, intonation, and instrument construction with copious acoustical and mathematical documentation. Anyone with a musically creative attitude, whether or not familiar with traditional music theory, will find this book revelatory.

Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle


C.D.C. Reeve - 1995
    Republic is also featured in its entirety.