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For the animal aficionado

Feature by Julie Hale

Do you know someone who likes animals a lot more than they like people? We’ve rounded up a gaggle of delightful books that celebrate creatures great and small.

Award-winning naturalist and author Sy Montgomery has visited remote regions of the world to study some of nature’s most uncommon creatures. She looks back on what she’s learned from them about communication, sensitivity and kindness in How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals, beautifully illustrated by Rebecca Green. In this funny, moving book, Montgomery recounts transformative episodes with beasts both domesticated and exotic. “Being with any animal is edifying,” she writes, “for each has a knowing that surpasses human understanding.” From Clarabelle, a “pretty and elegant” tarantula, to the playful, 40-pound Pacific octopus Octavia, the animals in Montgomery’s book have unique dispositions that align them with humankind. Montgomery’s writing is rich and lyrical, her insights invaluable. And as all animal lovers know, “Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways.”

HONORING THE ANIMALS
A touching tribute to the creatures we let into our hearts and homes, Love Can Be: A Literary Collection About Our Animals brings together contributions from a remarkable lineup of authors. Susan Orlean, Lalita Tademy, Rick Bass, Joyce Carol Oates, Alexander McCall Smith and Juan Felipe Herrera are among the 30 writers spotlighted in this excellent anthology. Standout selections include a moving essay by Delia Ephron about the bond between pets and humans; Dean Koontz’s remembrance of his golden retriever, Trixie; and an ingenious cat-inspired poem by Ursula K. Le Guin. Literature fans will love the photos of authors and their animal companions that accompany each piece. In keeping with the spirit of the season, proceeds from sales of the book will go to animal charities. This is a heartwarming, hopeful anthology.

PAMPERED POOCHES
In Puppy Styled: Japanese Dog Grooming: Before & After, Grace Chon celebrates dog grooming the Japanese way, with hand-scissoring techniques to create cuts that play up the personalities of canine clients. For this irresistible volume, Chon—an acclaimed pet photographer—snapped nearly 50 pups as they transitioned from scruffy to smart. She writes that Japanese dog grooming “has one objective: to make the dog as cute as possible!” Cuteness undoubtedly abounds in the book, along with fresh ideas for turning your frowzy mutt into a chic chien. Check out Rocco, a Yorkshire terrier whose bangs get lopped into an asymmetrical ’do, or Bowie, a bichon frise whose wayward tangles are trimmed to form a fluffy nimbus. From start to finish, Puppy Styled is crammed with tail-wagging glamour.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Do you know someone who likes animals a lot more than they like people? We’ve rounded up a gaggle of delightful books that celebrate creatures great and small.

PhotographyArt

A feast for the eyes

Feature by Julie Hale

For the visual aesthete, a gorgeous book is always a great gift. If you’re shopping for a gallery-goer, an artist or someone who could use a creative boost, check out one of the bright selections below.

During a 23-year career that has taken her to 70 countries, Pulitzer- Prize winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario has documented the turmoil in hotspots like Libya, Pakistan and Iraq. Twice kidnapped in the line of duty, she delivers a spectacular retrospective of her work with Of Love & War, a majestic collection that captures the drama of everyday existence in war zones around the world. With chapters chronicling Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the refugee crisis and women in the military, the volume is a testament to the endurance of humanity. Excerpts from Addario’s diaries and personal correspondence, along with essays by war correspondent Dexter Filkins and others, provide context for the images. Addario explains that bearing witness to conflict is part of what drives her work. Photography is “proof,” she says. “There is no disputing an image.” And there is no disputing the impact of this revelatory collection.

SURVEY OF AESTHETICS
Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh formed the New York design firm Sagmeister & Walsh in 2012, and they’re quite a team. He’s from Austria; she’s a native New Yorker. He’s created album covers for David Byrne and the Rolling Stones; she’s a website-design whiz who’s worked with Barneys, Levi’s and Jay-Z. Together, they’ve produced an intriguing new volume, Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty, an in-depth exploration of a timeless topic. Drawing upon the work of philosophers and scientists, the authors evaluate the complex power of beauty and its effects on our emotions and actions. They also take stock of the cultural landscape, with a look at developments in advertising, fashion and architecture, and the ways in which aesthetics factor into their impact. With an elegant slipcase, innovative graphics and page after page of stunning imagery, this is a book you can judge by its cover. From start to finish, Beauty lives up to its title.

A CREATIVE SISTERHOOD
During her art-student days, Danielle Krysa noticed that her textbooks were decidedly slanted toward male artists. She turns the tables with A Big Important Art Book (Now with Women): Profiles of Unstoppable Female Artists—and Projects to Help You Become One. In this inspiring volume, Krysa—a painter, collagist and founder of the art website the Jealous Curator—spotlights an international roster of women working in a range of mediums. Polish crochet artist Olek uses yarn to cover everything from a life-size train to the bull that stands on Wall Street. Bunnie Reiss designs whimsical murals that reflect her Eastern European background. Along with breathtaking visuals, each chapter contains a thoughtful exercise that can help readers turn their creative aspirations into realities. “Every artist is a storyteller in some way,” Krysa writes. Whether you’re a dedicated maker or a part-time dabbler, this book can show you how to access and share your own special story.

From Oliver Jeffers. Copyright © 2018 by Oliver Jeffers. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Rizzoli.

 

MASTER OF MANY MEDIUMS
Words fail to do justice to the genius on display in Oliver Jeffers: The Working Mind and Drawing Hand. A native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Jeffers is an acclaimed artist and author. Now 41 and based in Brooklyn, he’s given TED talks, collaborated with U2 and produced an astonishing body of work, with drawings, collages, installations, paintings and picture books that range from surreal to playful to politically pointed. Jeffers’ new volume offers a wonderful sampling of this output. His singular vision shines forth in works that tweak cultural icons (Lady Liberty holds aloft a tiny match instead of a torch in the drawing “New Liberty”) and address social issues (guns grow on a tree in the collage “Land of Plenty”). Throughout, Jeffers provides input on his working methods and milestone projects. With an intro by Bono, this magnificent volume is a must for the art lover.

A VIEW OF HUMANKIND
In Civilization: The Way We Live Now, curators William A. Ewing and Holly Roussell have assembled a captivating visual chronicle of contemporary life across the globe that features images by today’s top photographers, including Thomas Struth, Larry Sultan, Lauren Greenfield and Cindy Sherman. The book was inspired, Ewing writes, by “an appreciation of the phenomenal complexity of civilization, and a curiosity to see how different photographers have dealt with it.” Indeed, Civilization presents a mosaic of moods, textures and techniques. The volume is organized into eight sections that address unique aspects of modern culture, from the cities we’ve constructed to the technological wonders we’ve conceived. Intimate portraits and teeming crowds bring home the diverse nature of humanity. Capturing the multiplicity of lived experience in an era of accelerated change, this provocative collection is a classic of its kind.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

For the visual aesthete, a gorgeous book is always a great gift. If you’re shopping for a gallery-goer, an artist or someone who could use a creative boost, check out one of the bright selections below.

NonfictionPhotographyCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: Become a ‘Gram master

Feature by Susannah Felts

If you have an Instagram account, it’s almost certain you’ve wondered about the ways of Instagram “influencers,” people who make a living by mastering this photo-sharing social media service. Tezza (née Tessa Barton) demystifies it all in Instastyle. Total newb to Instagram? Tezza is here with the absolute basics on setting up an account and photography 101 tips. But she also digs deep into concepts like weekly workflow, creating grid layouts, the art of the “flat lay,” writing captions, running contests, editing tools, styling food for photos and more. (Sample tip: Odd numbers appeal to the eye.) It might all seem, humorously, a little much to those of us who casually document our pets, babies and the occasional vacation. But I found this peek into the high-stakes influencer game fairly fascinating—and I can’t help but imagine that a few decades from now, after technology has marched on, this book will surely be a wonderful “how we lived then” relic. Right now, it’ll make a great holiday gift for the budding ’Grammer in your life.

THE ARTISTS’ WAY
In Artists’ Homes: Live/Work Spaces for Modern Makers, photographer and author Tom Harford Thompson lets the smallest details in the homes and workspaces of U.K.-based artists do the work of telling their stories. For this project, Thompson insisted on no styling, staging or “tidying up,” and the resulting images hum with quiet authenticity. “Some may dismiss these details as just so much clutter,” he writes, “but they often tell us more about the people who live there than their choice of sofa or new car.” The artists and makers include a potter, a sculptor, a classic-car dealer, a journalist and many more. Tidbits of backstory are tucked into thoughtful captions surrounding photos, so people, rather than places, are the real subjects here. This book feels less intended as design inspiration and more as an unfiltered peek into creative lives.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES
A similar approach can be found in famed stylist Wendy Goodman’s May I Come In?: Discovering the World in Other People’s Houses. Like Thompson, Goodman, driven by curiosity, makes a study of the interiors of artistic individuals. “[T]he most captivating rooms exist where decoration is a by-product of a person’s passions in life,” she writes. But Goodman’s quest is fueled by A-list access, and the spaces she explores belong to figures like Richard Avedon, Donatella and Gianni Versace and Todd Oldham. The homes on display here are sometimes quite posh and ornate, and other times more modest but rip-roaringly colorful, bursting with aesthetic whimsy. Goodman’s introductory essays are wonderful soupçons of observation; of Gloria Vanderbilt, she writes, “Nothing better illustrates her originality, or instinct for design, than the bedroom she created on East Sixty-Seventh Street, where she covered every inch of the room—walls, floor, and ceiling—with a collage of cut-up quilts.” Come, settle in for a look at the living quarters of the cultural elite.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Go on a behind-the-scenes tour of the homes of artists and tastemakers in this month's Lifestyles column.
NonfictionPhotographyNature

It’s home, and it’s the only one we’ve got

Feature by Alice Cary

The world never stops being amazing and mysterious, as these four books remind us. Each offers a unique perspective, challenging readers to observe their surroundings as never before.

Who wouldn’t want to see the photo album of astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the International Space Station? Infinite Wonder: An Astronaut’s Photographs from a Year in Space is a remarkably mesmerizing accomplishment, especially given the microgravity environment. Kelly not only had to brace himself and his camera to keep from floating around but also had to pan the camera quickly when focusing his lens on Earth, galloping by at 17,500 miles per hour.

Take a look inside the phone booth-size quarters where Kelly slept in a green sleeping bag attached to a wall. Check out his space-walk selfies and a shot of him watching his twin brother Mark’s appearance on “Celebrity Jeopardy.” Kelly took dazzling shots of sunsets, sunrises, auroras, New York City, Hurricane Patricia and Paris after the 2015 terrorist attack. Following in the footsteps of his artist mother, to whom this book is dedicated, he also created “Earth Art,” amazingly colorful photos that vary from realistic shots to the seemingly abstract, showing islands in the Bahamas, fiery Peruvian volcanoes and an opalescent Iran resembling shimmering gold filaments.

True to its title, Infinite Wonder offers an amazing array of jaw-dropping photographs unlike any you’ve ever seen before.

Lotus flower from Flora. © Dorling Kindersley: Gary Ombler/Kew Gardens, 2018.

 

PLANT PEERING
How about a botany primer on steroids? The subject bursts to life with a winning combination of stunning photographs and clear, concise scientific explanations in Flora: Inside the Secret World of Plants. Such lavishness comes naturally; the book is a joint venture between the Smithsonian and London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As Smithsonian Gardens Director Barbara W. Faust explains in her foreword: “The otherworldly beauty of the magnified subjects made me feel like I had landed on Lilliput and happened upon old friends who had been supersized!”

This weighty tome takes on the fundamentals with chapters on stems and branches, seeds and fruits, roots, leaves, flowers and plant families. Within each chapter are fabulous arrays of topics: nitrogen fixing, the strangler fir, fragrant traps, exploding seedpods and a variety of mini essays on plants in art. The photographs will lure you in like insects to a Venus flytrap. See the fine hairs that cover stinging nettles, the volcanic center of a corpse flower and the soft, springy tissues of a furled fern.

Spend some time with Flora, and you’re bound to look at the world differently.

FRESH, FANCIFUL TAKES
It’s easy to get lost in the pages of Seeing Science: An Illustrated Guide to the Wonders of the Universe, a marvelous mishmash of facts and illustrations by artist and lay scientist Iris Gottlieb. This unusual collection, perfect for browsing, is divided into sections covering life, Earth and the physical sciences. Readers of all ages and diverse scientific backgrounds will find factoids of interest: In 1970, two bullfrogs were sent into space to test motion sickness because their internal systems of balance are similar to humans’. Or how about this: Some ghost “encounters” can be explained by the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, which causes hallucinations.

Gottlieb’s illustrations are fun, funky and informative, and her quirky sense of humor and intellectual curiosity up the entertainment value of Seeing Science.

FOREST BATHING
If all the data about climate change has left you down in the dumps, revitalize yourself with The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition, an abridged edition of German forester Peter Wohlleben’s bestselling book about the many secrets of our deep-rooted forest friends. This seems like a book that’s meant to be illustrated, after all, and these luminous photographs from around the world underscore Wohlleben’s intriguing explanations and arguments.

Just as Temple Grandin has revolutionized the way people think about livestock, Wohlleben is changing the conversations people have about trees by revealing the ways they react and communicate in social networks. While this book is full of inspiring photographs, it’s also meant to be read, not simply perused. Happily, Wohlleben’s lively writing style makes that a snap, with passages that ask, “So why do trees live so long? After all, they could grow just like wild flowers: grow like gangbusters for the summer, bloom, set seed, and then be recycled into humus.”

Tackling everything from “Community Housing” (animals and insects that inhabit trees) to “Street Kids” (urban trees), The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition leads readers on a thought-provoking nature expedition.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The world never stops being amazing and mysterious, as these four books remind us. Each offers a unique perspective, challenging readers to observe their surroundings as never before.

PhotographyCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: February 2019

Feature by Susannah Felts

File this one under “Titles Whose Time Has Come.” Sure, there are other guides to the chemical intricacies of cannabis and its therapeutic properties, but none are quite like Nikki Furrer’s A Woman’s Guide to Cannabis: Using Marijuana to Feel Better, Look Better, Sleep Better—and Get High Like a Lady, which keeps a central question in mind at all times: How do I help my mom discover the joys and benefits of this amazing stuff? Furrer thoroughly and conversationally lays out the uses of cannabis (analgesic, antidepressant, anti-anxiety, anti-aging and more); explains the whole sativa/indica breakdown; and explores the differences between THC and CBD. If you’re already a cannabis consumer, you’ll be a much better informed one for having read this book. If you’re new to the green? Well, hi(gh), glad you’re here!

Speaking of evergreen topics: Creativity and how to nurture it is one of them, but Conscious Creativity: Look. Connect. Create. strikes me as a truly fresh take on the subject. This is a redefining of creativity as an improved state of being in a world that constantly wears us down. Partly it’s the bright, wabi sabi photos accompanying the text; partly it’s Philippa Stanton’s encouraging but matter-of-fact tone. This book doesn’t try too hard to be inspiring, and as such, it succeeds. Plus, I love Stanton’s attitude toward mess: “The amorphous contents of a drawer which have been secretly shaming you might in fact turn out to be a creative liberation,” she writes. The exercises she provides are designed to make you see and experience surroundings in a new way—to utilize boredom, to notice color, to challenge ingrained perception. Note to self: Put down yo’ phone and pick up this book. 

“I often forget just how many people lack basic photography skills,” I groused recently to a friend. A tad harsh? Perhaps, but seriously—with just a few smart tips, anyone can snap much better photos, no matter the camera. And in the Instagram age, doesn’t this qualify as a life skill? Henry Horenstein’s Make Better Pictures is a succinct, handy resource for shutterbugs of all stripes, with each page focused on a single aspect of photography. Take “Clubbing,” page 85, which offers four practical tips for shooting at low-light events and concerts. Or “Hip,” page 103, which details the advantages of positioning your camera not at eye level. Throughout, a single image illustrates each topic. 

 

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

File this one under “Titles Whose Time Has Come.” Sure, there are other guides to the chemical intricacies of cannabis and its therapeutic properties, but none are quite like Nikki Furrer’s A Woman’s Guide to Cannabis: Using Marijuana to Feel Better, Look Better, Sleep Better—and Get High Like a Lady, which keeps a central question […]
PhotographyMemoirLiteratureFilmArt

Gift books: For the film buff who dreams in black and white

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

A glamorous person deserves a glamorous present.

These four books, created by cinephiles for cinephiles, are perfect picks for the film buff in your life: They usher readers behind the scenes and offer a bit of dish, a lot of insight and plenty of glam Old Hollywood fun.

The Hollywood Book Club by Steven Rea
Steven Rea’s The Hollywood Book Club: Reading with the Stars is filled with black-and-white photos of actors from Tinseltown of yore reading at home and on set, poolside and at kitchen tables. The stars’ artful poses and occasional sly grins keep things interesting, a la Gregory Peck looking up from To Kill a Mockingbird. Film critic and photo archivist Rea’s witty captions add color and context. He explains the meaning behind the featured books and offers insider details (Edward G. Robinson collected French Impressionist art; Bette Davis’ husband wanted a divorce because she read too much). This fascinating dive into Hollywood history is a splendidly starry way to add to your TBR pile.

Letters from Hollywood by Rocky Land & Barbara Hall
Rocky Lang and Barbara Hall know movies. Lang, son of a studio executive, is a producer, director and writer; Hall is a film historian and archivist. Their compendium Letters from Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking is an excellent reference and engrossing exploration of American film from the silent era through the 1970s. Letters to and from famous actors, directors and more (Bela Lugosi, Katharine Hepburn, Claudia McNeil, Irving Berlin, Tom Hanks) are augmented by photos and other ephemera. Film buffs will revel in flipping to favorite luminaries, checking out surprising pen pals, admiring vintage stationery design and pondering the vanished art of writing letters. As Peter Bogdanovich writes in the foreword, “What a great idea!”

The Movie Musical! by Jeanine Basinger
At the beginning of The Movie Musical! Jeanine Basinger writes, “I was raised on musicals, and I love them.” That affection is evident in this 650-plus-page master class and love letter to the form and its practitioners. The author, a film historian and author of 11 other film books, takes readers on an edifying journey through the evolution of Hollywood musicals, from “the arrival of sound” in 1927’s The Jazz Singer to present-day extravaganzas like Bohemian Rhapsody (and La La Land, which she Does Not Like). She offers insight on what makes a musical, reveals the ways in which art and business collide and assesses the appeal of everyone from Gene Kelly to Diana Ross to Channing Tatum. Devotees will delight in revisiting beloved films—and making a list of musicals to watch ASAP.

Home Work by Julie Andrews
In this follow-up to 2008’s Home, Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton dive into Andrews’ movie-making era, which began in 1962 when Walt Disney offered her the lead role in Mary Poppins. In Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, the authors bring us along on Andrews’ thrilling movie star journey with fascinating revelations about films like The Sound of Music, Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, and Andrews’ second husband Blake Edwards’ 10 and That’s Life (the latter was their final film together; he died in 2010 after a 41-year marriage). Andrews was initially insecure in front of the cameras, but that soon gave way to using stage-honed instincts to inhabit characters from the outside in—via costumes and wigs, as well as, say, giving Ms. Poppins stiffly turned-out feet “to punctuate the impression of Mary’s character when flying.” Andrews shares diary entries, too, as she muses on the perpetual tug-of-war between family and work; the depression that plagued so many colleagues, including Edwards; and memorable trips abroad. Home Work is a multifaceted and absorbing 20-year tour of Hollywood through the eyes of one of its most beloved players.

These four books, created by cinephiles for cinephiles, are perfect picks for the film buff in your life.

NonfictionPhotographyNature

Gift books: For the human who likes animals more than people

Feature by Alice Cary

Cats, dogs and wildlife mixed with humor, art and photographic beauty—these books offer a bit of everything. 

What I Lick Before Your Face by Jamie Coleman
The title alone is laugh-worthy: What I Lick Before Your Face and Other Haikus by Dogs. Given the brevity of the form, you’ll find yourself scarfing down nuggets like this one, called “Standing,” as if they were dog treats: “I sometimes feel bad / That I don’t get as happy / Whenever you sit.” The snark is always spot-on, such as in “Walkies”: “I have come to loathe / That singsong voice you employ / It demeans us both.” Jamie Coleman’s entertaining little volume just begs for a feline follow-up.

Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby by Matthew Inman
There’s plenty more dog humor in Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby. The magic of Matthew Inman’s irreverent cartoons is that he imagines what cats, dogs and babies are thinking while doting humans tend to them. Inman is a master of emotion in both his art and prose, calling a dog an “affable ball of fur” and a “lovable idiot” while a baby is an “obese, naked leprechaun” and a “relentless ScreamBall.” Ultimately, Inman is full of heart, such as when he writes, “Understand that befriending a cat is like befriending a hurricane. It’ll be violent. It’ll be devastating. But in the eye of the storm, in that calm, serene center, it’ll be beautiful.” Of course, he adds the inevitable kicker: “And then it’ll just be violent again.”

A History of Art in 21 Cats by Nia Gould
British artist Nia Gould combines her passion for art and cats in her uniquely whimsical A History of Art in 21 Cats. Each section includes one of Gould’s marvelous cat-imagined masterpieces, such as a feline Frida Kahlo-style portrait, complete with a floral headpiece and costume, paired with a succinct but informative discussion of magic realism. Few could pull off such an equally artistic and edifying feat, which includes an utterly purr-fect Pablo Picasso cat and a stately, whiskered Mona Lisa. Be forewarned: Your museum trips may never be quite the same.

Unforgettable Portraits by Rosamund Kidman Cox
Animal lovers are bound to lose themselves in the 70 memorable color photographs from the London Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competitions, collected in Rosamund Kidman Cox’s Unforgettable Portraits. Cyril Ruoso’s young snub-nosed monkey looks like a stuffed toy perched in a tree in China’s Qinling Mountains. An angry queen ant photographed in the Cambodian forest by Piotr Naskrecki wears an expression eerily similar to that of an NFL linebacker waiting for the snap. Wildlife fans will relish the surprises waiting on each and every page.

Cats, dogs and wildlife mixed with humor, art and photographic beauty—these books offer a bit of everything.

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Gift books: For the artistic soul plugged in to all creative outlets

Feature by Alice Cary

Creativity is often born under unexpected circumstances, as these books so beautifully demonstrate.

The Art of Love by Kate Bryan
Married British artists Idris Khan and Annie Morris have a framed sign in their London home that’s meant to be ironic: “An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist.” Of course, two highly talented artistic souls living and creating together can be a dream, a nightmare or a highly charged bit of both, as evidenced by the endlessly fascinating stories revealed in The Art of Love: The Romantic and Explosive Stories Behind Art’s Greatest Couples.

British art curator Kate Bryan—a lively, informed guide—profiles 34 artistic couples, ranging from 1880 to the present, including the likes of Françoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, and Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Asli Yazan’s illustrations of these artists add a wonderful touch of color, helping to bring their personalities to life.

Bryan writes that her goal was to “present as many different perspectives on artists in love as possible.” She focuses on how these relationships affected each creator’s art instead of chronicling the melodrama—yet she does dole out a variety of delicious tidbits, like the fact that even after Frida Kahlo divorced Diego Rivera, who was 21 years her senior, she “continued to mother the wayward beast, even running him baths with rubber ducks.” Oh my.

Skip by Molly Mendoza
Art and story meld beautifully in Skip, Molly Mendoza’s virtuoso graphic novel about fear and courage, friendship, change and creativity. In a dystopian world rife with the threat of attacking “tech-hounds,” a child named Bloom and his guardian, Bee, live on a lake’s island, subsisting on duck eggs and fish. After hearing a radio SOS, Bee announces that she must leave, asking Bloom to be brave until she comes back from her rescue mission—except she never returns.

While skipping stones one day, Bloom suddenly finds himself in a completely different world, where he meets a mysterious creature named Gloopy who’s having a hard time fulfilling his creative spirit and fitting into his community. Bloom and Gloopy join forces and “skip” into several different worlds, facing a myriad of dangerous creatures: a giant, lonely bird and a universe creator named Lily, who urges Gloopy to follow his creative desires. Mendoza describes her own artistic style as “chaotic yet rhythmic,” and her multicolored, imaginative creations make Skip a memorable, action-packed adventure, full of bold swirls of both color and emotion.

Body by Nathalie Herschdorfer
Curator and art historian Nathalie Herschdorfer has compiled a glorious celebration of the human form with more than 350 images from over 175 photographers in Body: The Photography Book. As she notes in the preface, contemporary photography reflects society’s changing standards of beauty and opens up “new pathways for bodily representations and perspectives beyond the traditional nude.” With artists like Sally Mann, Herb Ritts, Cindy Sherman and Liu Bolan, the sweepingly broad perspectives are fascinating, a mix of fantasy and reality.

You’ll see a 3D ultrasound of an 8-month-old yawning, the hunched figures of elderly people walking, sculpturelike nudes, baseball players in action, a crowd of happily dancing people at a Scottish Town Hall Christmas party and even the colorfully abstract, highly magnified view of the connections between human nerve cells. There are disturbing images as well—an anorexic young woman, a man’s face after a fight, scars left on a refugee’s back by the Taliban. Youth, love, joy, movement, health, disease, celebration—Body honors the many sizes, shapes and moments that make us all human.

Shoot for the Moon by Tim Walker
Shoot for the Moon takes its title from a Norman Vincent Peale quotation: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars.” It’s an apt title, for renowned British fashion photographer Tim Walker spends his life among stars, creating famously surreal wonderlands within his images.

A follow-up to a previous volume, Story Teller, Shoot for the Moon focuses Walker’s lens on the darker side of his imagination, somewhere he’d “been previously too scared to visit.” In a brief introduction, he writes, “Like every child, I had a fear of the dark—but now I know that it is here, in the shadows, that the magic is hidden.”

And what magic there is! These images are at times fun, funky, bizarre, glamorous, spooky and over the top, featuring celebrities like Claire Foy, RuPaul, Bill Hader, Tommy Lee Jones, Tilda Swinton and Whoopi Goldberg, all like you’ve never seen them before. A number of comments are included from models like Kate Moss, who says: “Tim’s magic is that he makes fantasy believable. He makes otherworldly images that seem so accessible.” Fashion fans will quickly lose themselves in these wonder-filled pages.

Creativity is often born in unexpected circumstances, as these books so beautifully demonstrate.
NonfictionSocial SciencePhotographyGraphic Memoirs

Gift books: For resisters & persisters

Feature by Alice Cary

Four books celebrate our friends who fight for justice, the right to love, the power to tell their own stories and the possibility of a better future. They’re also the perfect gift for a budding ally who wishes to learn more.

Activist by KK Ottesen
One can’t help but feel inspired by the over 40 interviews and black-and-white portraits compiled in Activist: Portraits of Courage, written and photographed by KK Ottesen, a Washington Post contributor and author of a similarly styled book, Great Americans. Ottesen’s powerful photographs immediately draw readers in, adding to the intimacy of these highly readable first-person interviews, all introduced by a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

In content, layout and style, this is an engrossing, inviting volume, one that spotlights a wide range of figures, from age 21 to 94. There are well-known personalities like John Lewis, Ralph Nader, Angela Davis, Billie Jean King, Bernie Sanders and Marian Wright Edelman. Then there are relative newcomers to the scene, such as Jayna Zweiman, co-founder of the 2016 Pussycat Project; Linda Sarsour, the Palestinian American co-chair of the 2017 Women's March; and transgender actor Nicole Maines, the anonymous plaintiff in a Maine Supreme Judicial Court regarding gender identity and bathroom use in schools. Maines speaks of knowing from an early age, “I didn’t feel the need to hide who I was. Nobody else had to, so why should I?”

Seeing Gender by Iris Gottlieb
After reading last year’s Seeing Science and now Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression, I’ve become an incurable Iris Gottlieb fan. No matter what the topic, this graphic artist has a singular knack for presenting an imaginative array of art and text in an informative, exciting way.

Early on, this new book features a helpful spread of 24 gender terms, including agender, cisgender, gender dysphoria and intersex. “All of us are shapeshifters,” Gottlieb explains. In straightforward, vibrantly illustrated prose that is neither politicized nor reactionary, Gottlieb further explores these terms, while also discussing such varied topics as gender etiquette, gender biology, sex verification in sports, Frida Kahlo, Laverne Cox, Prince, gender violence, Stonewall, #MeToo and much, much more. Gottleib also includes her own story, noting that “she” is her pronoun of choice for the time being, that she identifies as a boy (“for now”), is asexual, has struggled with anorexia and in 2018 had both breasts removed, a surgical transformation she bravely describes with a series of “after” photos.

No matter your age or inclination, Seeing Gender presents an extraordinarily helpful discussion in a way that’s both personal and powerful. As Gottlieb concludes, “The process of learning about gender is never finished.”

Drawing Power edited by Diane Noomin
Many books have been born from the #MeToo movement, but perhaps none so comprehensively resonant as Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival. In vastly divergent styles, 63 female cartoonists—of different races, ages, nationalities and sexual orientations—tell their immensely varied, poignant stories here, demonstrating the power of their medium.

Emil Ferris (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters) describes how she found her way back to cartoons decades after being sexually brutalized by a relative while watching a Mr. Magoo special on TV. As a result, her beloved cartoons felt suddenly poisoned, and for years she turned instead to fine art and illustrating. Finally, while working on the aforementioned graphic novel, Ferris noticed that she “found herself using a cartoonier style when I needed to talk about difficult things . . . especially those revelatory moments when a character confronts abuse, fear and shame.”

As Drawing Power so strikingly proves, cartoons do indeed provide the perfect forum for sharing these intensely intimate, painful stories. And editor Diane Noomin offers an important distinction, noting, “The artists in this collection present themselves not as victims but rather as truth tellers, shining light on the dirty secrets of abusers.”

How to Cure a Ghost by Fariha Róisín
As an Australian Canadian based in Brooklyn, Fariha Róisín knows all too well how tricky it is trying to navigate the world as a queer Muslim femme. “i was born to this sticky mess, this stark confusion.” she writes in How to Cure a Ghost, her powerful biographical collection of 50 poems, beautifully complemented by abstract illustrations from Monica Ramos.

In a sensual, evocative style reminiscent of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, Róisín acknowledges, “i am tied to this skin, although I may not always understand it.” She chronicles her father’s challenges as an immigrant and her mother’s struggles as a Muslim woman with mental illness. Róisín remembers being 7 and briefly taking a “white name”—Felicity Hanson—to try to gain acceptance from a neighbor. She describes watching 9/11 unfold on television from her home in Sydney, Australia, saying that as a Muslim, “this world was not built for us.” Her virginity was stolen by a man who got her pregnant, telling her “it’s not a big deal.”

Despite everything, Róisín writes of hope, boldly declaring, “i am better now. i gave birth to myself, a new beginning, a robust cycle. i rewrote the scriptures of my mother’s pasts, and her mother’s pasts. i am in the throes of survival, i am lived. i am living. it’s astonishing.”

Four books celebrate our friends who fight for justice, the right to love, the power to tell their own stories and the possibility of a better future.
NonfictionPhotographyFood & DrinkCookbooks

Lifestyles: May 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

Take a journey around the globe via the bookstores, recipes and fruits featured in this month’s lifestyles roundup.

★ Bookstores

For a bibliophile, it doesn’t get any better than Bookstores: A Celebration of Independent Booksellers, a coffee-table stunner featuring images by London-based photographer Horst A. Friedrichs. With every turn of the page, you’ll take a journey around the globe and through the stacks—from Spoonbill & Sugartown in Brooklyn, New York, to the curious Baldwin’s Book Barn in Pennsylvania, to idiosyncratic shops in the U.K., Germany, Austria and more. Along the way you’ll meet the owners who have made bookselling their lives’ work and art. They share how they came to the trade, what makes their shops unique and why the work—and the books themselves, of course—continues to matter so darn much in an age of, well, you know. I want to visit every single one of these bookstores, but that’s probably a tall order. Just knowing they exist, and holding this gorgeous artifact in my hands, feels like enough.

The Kitchen Without Borders

The other night my husband fixed a delicious Syrian meal: ma’areena soup, a bit like pasta Bolognese but decidedly different thanks to a seven-spice blend common to Middle Eastern cooking. We found this dish in The Kitchen Without Borders, a cookbook from Eat Offbeat, a New York City-based catering company that works with immigrant and refugee chefs. Eat Offbeat honors and shares the “special food memories our chefs have brought with them,” write Wissam Kahi and Manal Kahi, Lebanese siblings who began their careers with the simple wish to share their Syrian grandmother’s hummus. The book features dishes from Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Venezuela and more. Profiles of the chefs appear between recipes for dishes such as fattoush, musabbaha (chickpea salad) and chicken shawarma. It feels like a true global community endeavor.

The Book of Difficult Fruit

Twenty-six fruits, A to Z, form the basis for poet and pie-maker Kate Lebo’s lovely, meandering essays in The Book of Difficult Fruit. Beginning with aronia, or chokeberry, Lebo weaves personal stories with facts from nature and science, resulting in a difficult-to-classify literary and culinary exploration—the best kind, in my opinion. Ever wondered what exactly a maraschino cherry is? Lebo will tell you, and then she’ll tell you about the almond flavor of stone-fruit pits, and then about cherry trees in her backyard, and about a strange brush with new neighbors, and about how to make real maraschino cherries. And on you go, through durian and elderberry, through Norton grape and Osage orange, all the way to zucchini—a curious, lyrical, alphabetical adventure.

Take a journey around the globe via the bookstores, recipes and fruits featured in this month’s lifestyles roundup.
NonfictionPhotographyCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: August 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

Connect to nature through humor, embroidery and art with the three wonderful books featured in this month’s lifestyles column.

★ Subpar Parks

Everyone’s a critic nowadays, and you can find a one-star online rating for even the most unassailable things—including the United States National Park Service. Finding this curiously funny, national park enthusiast Amber Share set out to apply her hand-lettering and graphic design chops to a series of art prints that poke fun at the shortsightedness of those dismissive and disappointed reviewers. First shared via Instagram, the project is now in book form, expanded with juicy facts about the parks. Subpar Parks is a clever adaptation, both playful and earnest in its appreciation for these storied landmarks. Did you know that Katmai National Park hosts an online competition called “Fat Bear Week” or that NASA has tested lunar rovers at Great Sand Dunes National Park? Share’s delightful book will make a terrific gift for anyone who loves our country’s natural wonders—and has a sense of humor about them.

Mystical Stitches

“Stitching by hand slows down the body and, over time, slows down the mind. It brings us . . . into the calmer, more restful alpha brain wave state,” writes Christi Johnson in Mystical Stitches, an embroidery guide with an emphasis on the power of symbols. Johnson first provides the fundamentals of the craft: a range of stitches and the sorts of design work they’re handy for. A treasury of symbols follows, including moon phases, Zodiac signs, animals and many other images from the natural world. The whole volume centers embroidery within spiritual practice, and if you’re already drawn to the mystical, you’ll likely reach for the floss soon after exploring these alluring pages. “By working with images and forms that correspond to the feeling and emotion we’d like to bring about in our own life, we are acting upon the idea that all things are interrelated in this tapestry of existence,” Johnson writes. “We can speak to our subconscious through the symbols in our immediate world, and get the subconscious aligned with the conscious mind.”

The Atlas of Disappearing Places

The Atlas of Disappearing Places beautifully harnesses the powers of art and metaphor to get urgent ideas across. Through maps and other works made from ink on dried seaweed, Christina Conklin illustrates the damage wrought to coastlines and what we could still lose to climate change and rising sea levels. Along with these visuals, Conklin and her collaborator, Marina Psaros, co-founder of the King Tides Project, present the stories of 20 hot spots around the globe, each ending with a “speculative vignette about the future.” Throughout, they emphasize an understanding of the ocean as a body, “so that we can more closely identify with—and possibly empathize with—the ocean, our original home.” The result is a striking and deeply researched work of art and environmental activism.

Connect to nature through humor, embroidery and art with the three wonderful books featured in this month’s lifestyles column.
Pop CulturePhotographyMemoirHistoryArts & Culture

Battles for the bookshelf

Review by James Webb

If you're searching for a gift for a member of the greatest generation, this season's offerings of World War II books provide an exciting range of choices. With the phenomenal popularity of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation as an incentive, publishers have combed archives and other sources to produce books that give new, eye-opening accounts of the war to readers young and old still fascinated by this pivotal event in world history.

What better place to start than Page One: The Front Page History of World War II as Presented in The New York Times. This is a compilation of selected issues of the nation's greatest newspaper covering our nation's greatest crisis and it makes for fascinating reading. Each front page is reproduced in its entirety, and you can't help but take note of the way the headlines grow in point size as the years go on. The smaller stories of the war can be just as fascinating as the headlines. Not many people know that the U.S. mainland the Aleutian Islands in Alaska was actually attacked twice in the summer of 1942, which a careful reading of these front pages will reveal.

A similar approach can be found in The Second World War: An Illustrated History of World War II, Volume I, edited by the writer and literary critic Sir John Hammerton. This is a massive set of books that reprint the journal The War Illustrated, a popular British publication that covered the war practically from its inception. For the true aficionado of WWII memorabilia, this is as close to source materials as you're likely to get. Where else would you find the verbatim dispatch of a Russian journalist as he waits in Moscow, listening to the sound of German guns only 70 miles from the city? Or the account of an RAF bomber crew, shot down over the Atlantic, who survived nine days in a life raft before finally being rescued? Maybe you'll want to get the volume covering the beginnings of the war, or perhaps the one concerning America's entry into the conflict. A truly interested reader will want to have them all.

Another excellent entry is Our Finest Hour: Voices of the World War II Generation. While it contains only a fraction of the vast archives of Life's World War II photographs, every picture included here is superb. In truth, words aren't needed, but contemporaneous material from the magazine enhances the photographs. Photographers for Life have always had a knack for capturing a story on film. Whether it's a colonel kneeling before the flag-draped body of his son on Okinawa, or the mute exhaustion of a foot soldier after D-Day, words aren't even necessary; each photo conveys a wealth of information and emotion.

Five years after its original publication Andy Rooney's My Warhas been reissued in a gift edition with a new forward by Tom Brokaw. Rooney was a young sergeant writing for Stars and Stripes during the war, and he was eyewitness to some of the most momentous events in this nation's history. He focuses not on the planning sessions or the summit meetings or even the crucial battles though he was present at many of these things but rather on the experiences of the common soldier. Whether it be the pilots who bombed Germany despite their horrendous casualty rate, or the foot soldiers who plodded across Europe, Rooney tells their story. Drafted at the war's beginning, he began as a member of an artillery company, but used his writing background to gain a position with the Army's newspaper. Rooney tells his story in such an appealing, matter-of-fact style that the reader feels like he is part of a private conversation. An excellent, funny and moving book, My War makes a worthy addition to any World War II bookshelf.

Now if you're wondering, Which of these books should I buy my Granddad? we have a surprising answer for you. If he's a veteran of the war, he'd enjoy any of these selections, but we would be willing to bet that Max Allen Collins' For The Boys: The Racy Pin-Ups of World War IIwould put the biggest grin on his face. This is a full color collection of the arty and racy pin-ups and posters that ended up on the walls and jackets and bombers of the soldiers of the war. It may be politically incorrect, but it's history. Just don't give it to him while the great-grandkids are around!

A personal favorite among the new World War II books is one of the most unusual books on the war I've ever seen. While we all have been raised to think of the war as one fought in black and white, in newsreels and grainy photographs, The Second World War In Color by Stewart Binns and Adrian Wood is just that a collection of color photographs of the war. Adolph Hitler lounges in a smartly cut blue pin-stripe suit and olive bombers warm up with brown beaches, blue skies and green palm trees in the background. This book is at times jaw-droppingly amazing; somehow the color makes the impact of the war more immediate.

From funny posters to heartbreaking photographs, these new books bring to life the experience of World War II and provide fascinating reading for the veterans who were there and for those who want a revealing glimpse of history in the making.

If you're searching for a gift for a member of the greatest generation, this season's offerings of World War II books provide an exciting range of choices. With the phenomenal popularity of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation as an incentive, publishers have combed archives and other sources to produce books that give new, eye-opening accounts […]
PhotographyArts & Culture

Wild things: stunning gifts from the natural world

Review by Julie Hale

Award-winning nature photographer Art Wolfe spent three years capturing the images in The Living Wild, a splendid volume of pictures that pays tribute to the natural world and the creatures who inhabit it. More than 140 species are offered here, including rarities like the never-before-photographed Bornean bay cat. Wolfe has a compassionate eye and, with the use of a wide-angle lens, has taken care to include each species' natural environment in his photographs. The results are miracles of composition and light. These pictures deliver not only benign pandas, furtive wolves and lanky camels, but the places where they live, from the green forests of China's Qinling Mountains to the golden dunes of the Gobi Desert.

A wealth of information on each species is included in The Living Wild. Also provided are the stories behind the shots. Authored by Wolfe himself, capsule summaries reveal how the photographer managed to capture each stunning image. Those interested in the seemingly serendipitous process that is nature photography will find the artist's anecdotes intriguing.

In addition to vibrant visuals, The Living Wild offers essays by some of the world's leading conservationists, Jane Goodall among them, who emphasize the book's underlying message of what's at stake in the new millennium: nothing less than the extinction of many of the animals depicted due to disease, overhunting and habitat destruction. While a few of Wolfe's subjects are what he calls the success stories of conservation animals like the gray whale and the bald eagle whose numbers have been nursed back to higher levels most of the creatures shown are living on an environmental edge. In the end, these timeless photographs serve as a reminder to the viewer that nature is not inexhaustible.

Art Wolfe is joined by other celebrated photographers in Wild Asia, a rich visual journey through the world's largest, most environmentally diverse continent. Asia's extent resists definition, writes naturalist Mark Brazil in the book's introduction, and the pictures that comprise this vivid volume prove him right. Focusing on a different geographical area in each chapter, Wild Asia tours the Indian Himalayas, the forests of Japan and the Russian tundra, as well as other locales. In cataloguing the creatures these landscapes support, Wolfe and company have taken pictures that distill the innocence and savagery, playfulness and brutality that make the wild what it is wild. Special features include the famously elusive Himalayan snow leopard and the world's largest lizard, southern Asia's Komodo Dragon.

Contributed by a group of renowned naturalists, Wild Asia's text is both accessible and informative, a fine complement to these first-class photographs. Without being heavy-handed, the book examines conservation issues, gently reminding readers that the natural diversity Asia offers is at the mercy of man. The companion volume to a 10-part documentary that appeared on the Discovery Channel in the fall of 2000, Wild Asia is nothing if not reverent, a breathtaking testament to a complex continent and the delicate alliance that exists there between species and environment.

Award-winning nature photographer Art Wolfe spent three years capturing the images in The Living Wild, a splendid volume of pictures that pays tribute to the natural world and the creatures who inhabit it. More than 140 species are offered here, including rarities like the never-before-photographed Bornean bay cat. Wolfe has a compassionate eye and, with […]

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