The beautifully printed, encyclopedic Great Women Sculptors brings together more than 300 artists who have been excluded from institutions and canons on the basis of gender.
The beautifully printed, encyclopedic Great Women Sculptors brings together more than 300 artists who have been excluded from institutions and canons on the basis of gender.
Nico Lang’s powerful American Teenager closely follows seven transgender young adults, rendering complex, searing and sensitive portraits of their lives.
Nico Lang’s powerful American Teenager closely follows seven transgender young adults, rendering complex, searing and sensitive portraits of their lives.
E’s a mystery Picture yourself hanging ten in the famed surf of Hawaii, enjoying a day of better-than-average waves, just having a totally tubular time. Now, imagine that the reason for the high surf is an incoming tropical storm and you missed the forecast this morning.
E’s a mystery Picture yourself hanging ten in the famed surf of Hawaii, enjoying a day of better-than-average waves, just having a totally tubular time. Now, imagine that the reason for the high surf is an incoming tropical storm and you missed the forecast this morning.
Thumbing through a beautifully designed coffee-table book is a sure way to provoke a love of photography. Just in time for the holidays, here are three gorgeous photo books that are sure to please the art or nature lover on your list—and perhaps you can keep one for yourself, too.
Shop Cats of China
Cats have charmed and fascinated humans for millennia. From ancient Egypt to modern times, cats have been depicted in art, mummified in tombs and even immortalized by the popular social media account @bodegacatsofinstagram. In Shop Cats of China, Marcel Heijnen takes readers on a photographic tour of China’s many retail shops, the people who run them—and the furry loiterers who clearly know they’re the stars of the show.
Equal parts street photography, cat portraiture and whimsical poetry, Shop Cats of China is much more than cute pictures of cats. The street scenes in this book, sometimes languid and colorful, sometimes kinetic and full of city life, are lovingly punctuated with haiku and cat stories (written by Ian Row) that add a layer of sweetness and humor to each image. A man pours tea into cups while a relaxed white cat looks directly at the camera and wonders if he’s invited. Red seafood bins surround an orange cat who, ironically, doesn’t like seafood. A spotted cat sits atop a bicycle and waits for a friend. These scenes and others will delight and entertain anyone who is fascinated by the relationship between humans and their cats, while the surrounding textures and colors offer a slice of Chinese shop culture and street life.
Birds
Tim Flach is a world-class nature photographer with the heart of a painter. His new book, Birds, offers a unique and up-close view of his avant-garde wildlife photography. The glossy pages full of shockingly sharp images show many elegant and rare birds, from songbirds and parrots at rest, to raptors and birds of paradise in flight. Feathers look like landscapes, beaks glisten like gold and onyx, and the birds’ elegant postures make them all look like royalty. The bright colors are so beautiful that they seem almost unnatural, while the details look real enough that you could reach out and touch them. Full of personality and exquisite artistry, Birds will mesmerize nature lovers with its compassion and profound beauty.
Night on Earth
Though it’s normally hidden under the cover of darkness, the world can look magical at night, as photographer Art Wolfe reveals in his remarkable new book. One of the first images in Night on Earth is a stunning, almost overwhelming photograph of Mount Etna in Sicily, erupting purple ash. A perfectly round moon peeks out from behind the plumes of dangerous-looking dark smoke as pink, red and blue clouds dance around in the background of the night sky. It’s a compelling shot to start this dazzling collection, which is filled with impressive images.
To capture these cinematic nightscapes, Wolfe traveled to all seven continents and photographed starry skies, animals, humans, natural scenery and cities. The result is an assemblage of unusual sights that occur while most people are asleep—including black rhinoceroses rambling through Etosha National Park in Namibia, fishermen on stilts in Myanmar, late-night commuters in Tokyo, penguins ambling on the shores of an island in the Atlantic Ocean and an offering floating on the Ganges River in Varanasi, India. Organized into helpful chapters, such as “Stars and Shadows” and “The Creatures of the Night,” these 250 pages of vibrant color photographs will wow anyone who’s curious about the mysteries that unfold from dusk until dawn.
Spanning 30 years, Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing From the London Review of Books delivers a wonderful sampling of Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel’s nonfiction work, which includes essays, reviews and autobiographical writings. In these erudite yet accessible pieces, Mantel tackles a variety of topics, from Anne Boleyn’s sister-in-law and other figures of Tudor history, to pop singer Madonna, to England’s current royal family. Mantel’s commanding intelligence and inimitable style are on full display throughout. Her examinations of history, female identity and popular culture make this collection an excellent book club pick.
Zadie Smith reflects on an unprecedented time in America in Intimations, a collection of six essays focusing on the year 2020. Despite its brevity, this powerful book gives book clubs plenty to talk about. In sharply observed, compassionate prose, Smith examines politics, the murder of George Floyd and its repercussions, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and life under lockdown. Themes of isolation, social justice, family and the writing process will provide points of connection for all types of readers as Smith draws on personal experience to create essays that are moving and resonant.
In The End of the End of the Earth, Jonathan Franzen explores environmental concerns and reflects on writers past and present. Franzen, who is a passionate birder, visits locales across the globe to indulge his passion, and his travels supply wonderful material for some of the book’s central pieces. There are also essays on authors Edith Wharton and William T. Vollmann, which offer new perspectives on both authors. Written with humility, humor and visionary insight, Franzen’s wide-ranging collection is certain to generate rewarding dialogue among book club members.
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations brings together key nonfiction writings by Toni Morrison (1931–2019). Covering four decades, the volume collects more than 40 pieces including Morrison’s eulogy for James Baldwin, her Nobel Prize lecture on the importance of language, commencement speeches and works of political analysis and literary criticism. Morrison’s impassioned views on race, feminism and American society ensure that this book will stand the test of time. Reading groups will find no shortage of rich discussion material here.
Four beloved authors turn to the essay form in these incisive collections.
Timothy Dumas, former managing editor of Greentown News, is obsessed with the most infamous murder mystery to occur in America’s wealthiest community, Greenwich, Connecticut. For years, Dumas has written about the headline-grabbing slaying of 15-year-old Martha Moxley, found beaten to death on the lawn of her home on Halloween, 1975. Now, with Greentown, Dumas offers one final examination of the case.
The brutal murder of the young all-American beauty, as chronicled by Dumas, begins with a no-holds-barred overview of Ground Zero, the remote Belle Haven community of Greenwich, nicknamed “Greentown,” a place where nothing is as it seems. Something evil and decadent lurks in the rows of gabled mansions along the tree-lined streets in the monied enclave, home of the nation’s tony jet set, Hollywood royalty, and political power brokers. Dumas shatters the myth of this suburban Shangri-La with his probing, uncompromising look at the girl’s last hours and the crime’s aftermath. However, it is the author’s crisp, lean writing style that lends the work its power. Dumas’s relentless search does not prevent him from finding the underlying humanity of the principals in this sordid event. The author ventures bravely into the minds of each of the key players, using their individual voices to weave a colorful tapestry of grief, deception, and hypocrisy. The writer is at his best when he allows them to speak their deepest fears and secrets. Some elements of the case surfaced immediately police disclosed that the murder weapon was a woman’s golf club and that the last person to see the dead girl was Thomas Skekel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy. Others, however, remain a mystery. With the complete revelation of the grisly murder, the Belle Haven community, long protective of its reputation and distrustful of outsiders, closed ranks, stymying the police investigation. Every lead rushed to a frustrating dead end, witnesses suddenly became strangely mute, suspects were captured and quickly released.
To his credit, Dumas veers away from the type of doting fascination with the rich and famous that writer Dominick Dunne exhibited in his popular A Season in Purgatory, which is also based on the Moxley case. Instead, Dumas focuses his attention on the seemingly ill-fitting puzzle pieces of the unsolved murder. Why would a killer choose the carefree, fun-loving Moxley teen for such a gruesome death? Why was the clumsy six-iron used as a murder weapon? How did a stranger get past the defenses of the heavily guarded Belle Haven community? Was it an inside job? In short, Dumas’s Greentown is the perfect example of what a treasure trove of research can become in the hands of a capable writer.
Reviewed by Robert Fleming.
Timothy Dumas, former managing editor of Greentown News, is obsessed with the most infamous murder mystery to occur in America’s wealthiest community, Greenwich, Connecticut. For years, Dumas has written about the headline-grabbing slaying of 15-year-old Martha Moxley, found beaten to death on the lawn of her home on Halloween, 1975. Now, with Greentown, Dumas offers […]
In You Are Here (For Now), artist and author Adam J. Kurtz is vulnerable, wise and hilarious as he doles out advice and comfort to anyone who’s really going through it.
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever received? Sometimes the worst advice comes from the people who love us the most. I won’t go into it (oops, bad start to an interview), but someone who loves me was enabling me when what I really needed was a full reset.
Advice is always going to be highly subjective, even when it comes from the most intuitive and special people in our lives. I make sure to be especially transparent about that when dispensing any myself, including within my books.
What motivates you to motivate others? Is motivation even the right word for it? I don’t think it’s motivation so much as me continually searching for a way to be OK—yes, me, an infamously (to myself) not OK person—and then wanting to share it with as many people as possible. In the last few years, and particularly as I did more speaking, I realized that my weirdo-brain way of thinking through shit actually sounds a lot like other peoples’ inner monologues, and so I began to think that maybe there’s power in opening up the conversation to others.
Do you remember the first time you reached a “vibe equilibrium” (when good vibes and bad vibes can coexist)? How sustainable is such a state? “GOOD VIBES ONLY” is tone-deaf at this point because we’re all in the jello now! It’s pandemic year two, and everybody is simultaneously struggling through very real hardships and loss while still experiencing moments of joy and celebrating milestones in spite of everything. That’s the vibe equilibrium I’m talking about. Turns out, it’s pretty sustainable. In fact, it’s the only thing that works, because pure ignorance is dangerous, but focusing solely on the news cycle makes it impossible to feel good at all.
“Pure ignorance is dangerous, but focusing solely on the news cycle makes it impossible to feel good at all.”
When you sit down to write, who do you imagine you’re talking to? What role does the idea of an audience play in your process? This is literally SO mentally-ill-gay-Jew of me, but at least half the time I’m just talking to myself. I mean, aren’t we all? Even our most objective advice and anecdotes are still rooted in our own lived experiences. I think about a younger version of myself, or a friend sitting across from me on the couch talking through their current mix of stress and insecurity.
I am totally a secret-keeper and confidant for people, and it’s an honor to be “that friend” for the people I love. I imagine my readers as friends who are going through it right now, and since it’s not always appropriate to instigate a heart-to-heart, I thought about this book as a way for readers to opt-in to talk about all the stuff we don’t usually talk about—like failure, shame, anxiety and death.
What is it about being glib that helps you cope? Is this a way to reach deeper levels of honesty? I mean, yes, in the way that my favorite deadpan, self-deprecating humor is often incredibly honest. It’s also the kind of deep-level honesty that this poor barista did not ask for. So it’s about finding the funny silver lining for yourself, but also making sure that you have and respect boundaries.
Has the shift in how we talk about self-care changed our lived experience of it? If so, do you think this change is for the better? Yes yes yes yes yes. I am so grateful for the way this conversation continues to change, and I try to be very intentional about my use of the phrases “self-care,” “mental health” and “mental illness.” It’s so necessary for us to allow ourselves and one another to acknowledge mental well-being in a mainstream, practical, actionable way.
Seeing Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles, two incredible Black women at the top of their games, speak openly about mental health and even deprioritize their passion, pride and income to focus inward is so incredible. It means a lot to me to have a small part in this conversation that continues to unfold around all of us.
“I thought about this book as a way for readers to opt-in to talk about all the stuff we don’t usually talk about—like failure, shame, anxiety and death.”
It often feels like it’s becoming increasingly hard to be a human being. Is there reprieve from this? If so, where do you find it in your own life? I think we’re simply seeing more ways of being and are subsequently faced with far more comparisons and possibilities than before. It’s hard for me to realize I’m unhappy if I don’t know how happy I could theoretically be! But many of the same tools that hurt us (hi, social media) can also bring us comfort, inspiration and community. I always think of my art as a breadcrumb trail left out in the universe to attract my people. Sharing this process has brought incredible friendships, and my husband, into my life. Not to mention a book deal . . .
What music has helped you stay alive? What’s the soundtrack of your life right now? Michelle Branch’s “The Spirit Room” meant absolutely everything to me as a teen. It came out around the same time that my family moved from Canada to the USA and I was coming to terms with my sexuality and how it conflicted with our Jewish religion. “Goodbye to you, goodbye to everything that I knew,” sung in such literal terms, meant the world to me as a 13-year-old. It’s that album’s 20-year anniversary this year, and she’s rerecorded it, so I’ve had that in rotation, a fresh take on the words and melodies that are hard-wired into my brain.
Alanis Morissette’s “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” also must receive credit for being an incredible, dense, vulnerable look into a young, intelligent and complex mind. Sometimes I think that if Alanis Morissette could find joy and success in her art on a complicated path through teen fame and pain, I can do my thing and have that be enough.
Speaking of musicians, did you mean for the handwritten parts of the book to look like the cover of Drake’s “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late”? Oh my god, get away from me!!!!!!! I’d been doing this thing for many years, and when that album came out, so many people asked me if I worked on it. That type was actually created by the street artist JIMJOE, and when I first moved to New York, he had tagged the door downstairs “OK OK OK OK NO PROBLEMS.” I wish I had written THAT first, but I’ve saved the photo and still might get it tattooed some day.
Give ’til it hurts You’ve made big travel plans for the summer, and then you receive the call: Aunt Agnes, Cousin Curtis, and the rest of the family have rented a big house near the beach, and everyone is expected to be there for the month of July. Sigh . . . Guess where you’ll be spending your summer vacation? You need a little pick-me-up gift for yourself, under the circumstances. What gift doesn’t require a security deposit, seven-day advance purchase, or a Saturday night stay? Why, books, of course! Photographer Jeffrey Kraft’s exquisite photographs of Parisian cubbyholes and artifacts are not intended to entice one to visit the city; rather, his Literary Paris (Watson-Guptill, $18.95, 0823028305) is meant for those who have already been. The images are meant to inspire a memory from a time that has passed; this is not a fancy collection of tourists’ snapshots. Kraft has arranged his remembrances alongside excerpts from literary works by authors who stayed in Paris for extended periods of time. Kraft has captured the glimpse, the detail, the moment, rather than structures and sites. He offers an idea of what remains in the mind and heart, even years after the visit itself has ended. A wonderful gift for the Francophile in your life.
Ben Jonson said, He was not of an age, but for all time. He was, of course, speaking of his friend William Shakespeare. Children’s book author Aliki has written and illustrated William Shakespeare and the Globe (HarperCollins, $15.95, 006027820X), which describes not only Shakespeare’s life, work, and times, but even acknowledges visionary Sam Wannamaker, who spent years resurrecting the Globe. The book is designed much like a script, with acts and scenes and characters. An interesting add-on is the list of words and expressions, complete with illustrations, credited to Shakespeare; for example, sweets to the sweet and hush were apparently invented by the Bard himself. Seems we’ve been quoting Shakespeare without realizing it! Cities like Paris and London must make use of every tidbit of soil that can be found; as acreage diminishes in our growing world, green thumbs everywhere are striving to be more and more creative with their craft. Artisan has published Window Boxes: Indoors and Out with this in mind. Authors James Cramer and Dean Johnson offer fragrant, beautiful, and useful options for the, uh, land-challenged. Cramer and Johnson offer optional locations (who says a window-box is limited to being wooden, square, and outside?) and year-round planting options (a thriving garden in January?) With this book, the decision is no longer how to create a miniature garden, but rather how many miniature gardens you can create. Soil sold separately! Of course, if we’re talking land for land’s sake, Antarctica has land to spare. It’s been 85 years since Ernest Shackleton and the 27-member crew of the Endurance set out to cross the Antarctic on foot. Less than 100 miles from its destination, the Endurance was caught in an ice pack and was badly damaged. For over 20 months, the crew (along with 69 sled dogs) was marooned, but no lives were lost. Two books commemorate this remarkable true story of adventure and perseverance. First, there’s Knopf’s The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition ($29.95, 0375404031), a sophisticated account of the expedition. There’s also Ice Story: Shackleton’s Lost Expedition (Clarion, $18, 0395915244), which may be better-suited to younger explorers. Both books feature expedition photographer Frank Hurley’s photographs and offer a chronological summary of this death-defying journey. Hurley started the expedition with professional equipment, but his final shots were taken with a pocket camera. Endurance author Caroline Alexander, in association with the American Museum of Natural History, carefully researched this volume, complete with some of Hurley’s photographs that had not been published previously. Ice Story author Elizabeth Cody Kimmel presents the journey in storybook format, but the information is accurate and anecdotal. Both books would make great gifts for anyone who has a taste for adventure and hopeful endings.
Agnes and Curtis decide that the grown-ups need to take the children to the waterpark which happens to be 50 miles away for the day. Fifty miles can seem like 500 without Fun on the Run: Travel Games and Songs (Morrow Junior Books, $17, 0688146600). Brimming with silly stories, limericks, brain teasers, and songs, this book helps to fill travel time without batteries or messy cleanup. Familiar songs and games such as The Ants Go Marching and Hangman are included, but Fun on the Run contains nearly 125 pages of other games and songs that can be a part of any trip. If you still confuse Darth Vader with Darth Maul, fear not; Dorling Kindersley has published two books that will help you keep the prequel and the original trilogy straight: Star Wars Episode I: the Visual Dictionary ($19.95, 0789447010) and Star Wars Episode I: Incredible Cross Sections ($19.95, 078943962X). Like their predecessors (or would it be their descendants?), these books are designed to keep facts, characters, and plots straight. Archaeologist David West Reynolds, an obvious choice for the author, approaches this much like he did his previous Star Wars works. One feels as if he is on an archaeological dig or scientific study of another world. May the source be with you!
Give ’til it hurts You’ve made big travel plans for the summer, and then you receive the call: Aunt Agnes, Cousin Curtis, and the rest of the family have rented a big house near the beach, and everyone is expected to be there for the month of July. Sigh . . . Guess where you’ll […]
Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Fourteen-year-old Till was murdered in a nondescript barn in the Mississippi Delta. But few know the barn still stands today, or fully understand its history. Thompson believes we should.
