Literary journals bound by magnets, or designed to look like junk mail. The sharp wit, gorgeous design, and playful why not invention of independent literary publisher McSweeney's have earned it a large and loyal following and made its journals, books, The Believer magazine, and Wholphin DVDs collectible favorites of readers and graphic designers alike. Created by the McSweeney's staff to commemorate their 11th (or 12th) anniversary, this book showcases their award-winning art and design across all the company's activities. It features hundreds of images, interviews with collaborators such as Chris Ware and Michael Chabon, and dozens of insights into McSweeney's quirky creative process and the visual experience of reading.

    Bringing together the rarest art and artifacts from three decades of TMNT comics, TV shows, and films, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Visual History leaves no shell unturned!

    Gombrich, in an introductory essay, calls ‘certain invariant traits of the human psyche.’”—Denis Thomas, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts“This book gathers together various legends and attitudes about artists, ancient and modern, East and West, and gives fascinating insights into attitudes toward artistic creation.  It impinges on psychology, art history and history, aesthetics, biography, myth and magic, and will be of great interest to a wide audience in many fields…. A delightful and unrivalled study.”—Howard Hibbard“Thought provoking and valuable…. To all those interested in psychiatry and art from the perspectives of history, criticism, or therapy and to the wide audience concerned with the psychology of aesthetics and of artistic creation.”—Albert Rothenberg, American Journal of PsychiatryErnst Kris was a psychoanalyst who wrote on a wide variety of subjects, including art.  Otto Kurz was librarian of the Warburg Institute in London.

    This revised and updated edition delivers the lowdown on the latest and the greatest makers and shapers of the manga scene.Through an A–Z directory, we discover the superstars—both human and fictional—of what is now a vast global industry, inspiring advertisers, filmmakers, creative professionals, millions of avid fans, not to mention an entire cosplay lifestyle, in which manga devotees in elaborate costume meet to celebrate the existence of their characters at huge conventions from Los Angeles to Leipzig.From classic maestros—like Osamu Tezuka (creator of Astro Boy) and Katsuhiro Otomo (creator of Akira)—to newcomers such as Hajime Isayama, each entry includes biographical and bibliographical information, descriptions of main characters, and, of course, plenty of examples of the artist’s finest manga spreads and covers.

    Gayford’s journeys, often to fairly inaccessible places, involve frustrations and complications, but also serendipitous encounters and outcomes, which he makes as much a part of the story as the final destination. In chapters that are by turns humorous, intriguing, and stimulating, Gayford takes us to places as varied as Brancusi’s Endless Column in Romania; prehistoric caves in France; the museum island of Naoshima in Japan; the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas; and an exhibition of Roni Horn’s work in Iceland.Interwoven with these tales are journeys to meet artists—Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, Marina Abramovic´ in Venice, Robert Rauschenberg in New York—and travels with artists, such as a trip to Beijing with Gilbert George. These encounters not only provide fascinating insights into the way artists approach and think about their art, but reveal the importance of their personal environments.A perceptive, amusing, and knowledgeable companion, in The Pursuit of Art Gayford takes readers on a tour of art that is immensely entertaining, informative, and eminently readable.

    D?rer's importance in the German High Renaissance was such that he can be considered to embody the movement entirely. His visits to Italy (where he studied most notably with Giovanni Bellini) had a profound effect on his artistic development and enabled him to combine both German and Italian influences in his work. In his later life, D?rer's passion for knowledge and progress led him to research and write on the subjects of art theory and mathematics, making him not only the greatest Northern European artist of his time, but also one of its leading thinkers. This overview of D?rer's entire oeuvre?covering his oil, tempera, and watercolor paintings, copper and wood engravings, and his drawings and sketches?is the perfect introduction to his work.

    It is a perfect window into the cross-currents of today's world, with all its joys and its sorrows. In this remarkably insightful, wide-ranging work of reportage, Franklin Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shining a spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy, and just about everything in between. How Soccer Explains the World is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times.

    Here, Mary Street Alinder--who collaborated with Adams on his memoir and was his assistant in later life--is not reticent about the major emotional episodes in Adams's life, including his marriage and extramarital affairs, and his not-altogether-successful fatherhood. She explores the major artistic influences on his work and gives in-depth profiles of the significant figures in his circle. She also explains the technique and style Adams developed to obtain his unique vision, as well as his uneasiness at becoming a commodity. Ansel Adams: A Biography is an intimate and provocative portrait of the world's most famous photographer.

    This work reveals the growth of an artist who saw no artificial boundary between art and the paying job and who succeeded in putting her indelible stamp on the visual imagination.

    Freedom from an established way of seeing, making, and marketing art fueled their creativity, which in turn inspired the city. Today Los Angeles has four museums dedicated to contemporary art, around one hundred galleries, and thousands of artists. Here, at last, is the book that tells the saga of how the scene came into being, why a prevailing Los Angeles permissiveness, 1960s-style, spawned countless innovations, including Andy Warhol's first exhibition, Marcel Duchamp's first retrospective, Frank Gehry's mind-bending architecture, Rudi Gernreich's topless bathing suit, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, even the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Doors, and other purveyors of a California style. In the 1960s, Los Angeles was the epicenter of cool.

    Over a thousand of these soldiers were Australian. By the end of the war, just one-third of them had survived and Ambon became a place of nightmares, one of the most notorious of all POW camps the war had seen.Many of the men captured were massacred, and of those who initially survived, many later succumbed to the sadistic brutality of the Japanese guards. Starvation also took a fearful toll, and then there were the medical 'experiments'. It was a place almost without hope for those who held on, made worse by the fact that the savagery inflicted on them wasn't limited to their captors but also came from their own. One soldier described their hopelessness towards the end with the bleak words: 'The men knew they were dying.'Yet astoundingly there were survivors and in Ambon they speak of not just the horrors, but the bravery, endurance and mateship that got them through an ordeal almost impossible to imagine.The story of Ambon is one of both the depravity and the triumph of the human spirit; it is also one that's not been widely told. Until now.

    In the years that followed, she published other notable monographs, including "Aila" (2004), "The Eyes, the Ear" (2005) and "Semear" (2007). And now, ten years after her precipitous entry onto the international stage, Aperture has published "Illuminance," the latest volume of Kawauchi's work and the first to be published outside of Japan. Kawauchi's photography has frequently been lauded for its nuanced palette and offhand compositional mastery, as well as its ability to incite wonder via careful attention to tiny gestures and the incidental details of her everyday environment. As Sean O'Hagan, writing in "The Guardian" in 2006, noted, "there is always some glimmer of hope and humanity, some sense of wonder at work in the rendering of the intimate and fragile." In "Illuminance," Kawauchi continues her exploration of the extraordinary in the mundane, drawn to the fundamental cycles of life and the seemingly inadvertent, fractal-like organization of the natural world into formal patterns. Gorgeously produced as a clothbound volume with Japanese binding, this impressive compilation of previously unpublished images is proof of Kawauchi's unique sensibility and her ongoing appeal to lovers of photography.

     Spanning five hundred years of political rivalry, spiritual conflict, and ancestral discord, here are ten fascinating true tales of ambition, greed, jealousy, passion, and fear that are as gripping and meaningful today as they were in their own turbulent times. * Queen Elizabeth I versus Mary, Queen of Scots * English parliament versus King Charles I * Aaron Burr versus Alexander Hamilton * The Hatfields versus the McCoys * Joseph Stalin versus Leon Trotsky * Roald Amundsen versus Robert Scott * The Duchess of Windsor versus the Queen Mother * Bernard Law Montgomery versus George Patton * Lyndon B. Johnson versus Robert F. Kennedy * J. Edgar Hoover versus Martin Luther King Jr.

    The Russian command structure was hopelessly confused, their generals old and incompetent, the Tsar cautious and uncertain. The Russian naval defeat at Tsushima was as farcical as it was complete. The Japanese had defeated a big European power, and the lessons for the West were there for all to see, had they cared to do so. From this curious war, so unsafely ignored for the most part by the military minds of the day, Richard Connaughton has woven a fascinating narrative to appeal to readers at all levels.

    Take a strange and wonderful photographic journey into a world time has forgotten—amusement parks that have been shut down and overgrown.The “artivist” known only as Seph Lawless has spent the last ten years photo-documenting the America that was left behind in the throes of economic instability and overall decline—decrepit shopping malls, houses, factories, even amusement parks.Through nearly two hundred gorgeous and elegiac photographs, Abandoned details Lawless’s journey into what was once the very heart of American entertainment: the amusement park. Here is includes:Disney World’s Discovery Island and River CountryJoyland Amusement ParkDogpatch USAFun Spot Amusement Park and ZooBushkill Amusement ParkLand of OzLake Shawnee Amusement ParkGeauga Lake Amusement ParkSpreeparkChippewa Lake Amusement ParkEnchanted Forest PlaylandAnd more!Lawless visits deserted parks across the country, capturing in stark detail their dilapidated state, natural overgrowth, and obvious duality of sad and playful symbolism. Previously self-published as Bizarro, this updated edition of Lawless’s photographic tribute to decaying American amusement parks contains new content and a new foreword.