Los Angeles-based company Flamingo Estate is known for the home goods it sells, but it’s also an actual estate—a midcentury mansion that has been painstakingly, lovingly transformed into a modern-day oasis and pleasure garden. Flamingo Estate: The Guide to Becoming Alive is a perfect encapsulation of Flamingo Estate itself, which is to say that it’s lush, deeply considered and extremely difficult to describe with any kind of concision. As Flamingo Estate founder Richard Christiansen himself says about the book in its first pages, “It’s less a blueprint and more of a practice.” But beyond its structural extravagance, the book’s premise is simple: It’s a guide to radical pleasure, which Christiansen believes comes from the garden. He crams gorgeous photography, astute personal observations and interviews with visionary entrepreneurs like Martha Stewart and Kelly Wearstler into a nearly 500-page, beautifully bound volume, and what follows is almost like an anthology of high-end design magazines like Purple or Apartmento. The book opens with a conversation with famed environmentalist Jane Goodall, who distills Christiansen’s naturecentric philosophy of living into a series of wise observations. “Even though the world is bleak today, we’re surrounded by little miracles,” she says, “and we’re surrounded by people who tackle the impossible and succeed.” Flamingo Estate may be best known for its luxury candles, but after reading this book, you’re likely to consider it as a self-help resource as well.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
