The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo
by Irving Stone
from NAL Trade
Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo's David, New American Library releases a special edition of Irving Stone's classic biographical novel-in which both the artist and the man are brought to life in full. A masterpiece in its own right, this novel offers a compelling portrait of Michelangelo's dangerous, impassioned loves, and the God-driven fury from which he wrested the greatest art the world has ever known.
Kirby: King of Comics
by Mark Evanier
from Abrams
“I don’t think it’s any accident that . . . the entire Marvel universe and the entire DC universe are all pinned or rooted on Kirby’s concepts.” —Michael Chabon
The Art of Looking Sideways
by Alan Fletcher
from Phaidon Press
Alan Fletcher's The Art of Looking Sideways is an absolutely extraordinary and inexhaustible "guide to visual awareness," a virtually indescribable concoction of anecdotes, quotes, images, and bizarre facts that offers a wonderfully twisted vision of the chaos of modern life. Fletcher is a renowned designer and art director, and the joy of The Art of Looking Sideways lies in its beautiful design. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters with titles like "Colour," "Noise," "Chance," "Camouflage," and "Handedness," Fletcher's book, which he describes as "a journey without a destination," is "a collection of shards" that captures the sensory overload of a world that simply contains too much information. In one typical section, entitled "Civilization," the reader encounters six Polish flags designed to represent the world, a photograph of an anthropomorphic handbag, Buzz Aldrin's boot print on the moon, drawings of Stone Age pebbles, a painting of "Ireland--as seen from Wales," and a dizzying array of quotations and snippets of information, including the wise words of Marcus Aurelius, Stephen Jay, and Gandhi's comment, "Western civilization? I think it would be a good idea." Fletcher's mastery of design mixes type, space, fonts, alphabets, color, and layout combined with a "jackdaw" eye for the strange and profound to produce a stunning book that cannot be read, but only experienced. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk
Alan Fletcher's The Art of Looking Sideways is an absolutelyextraordinary and inexhaustible "guide to visual awareness," a virtuallyindescribable concoction of anecdotes, quotes, images, and bizarre facts thatoffers a wonderfully twisted vision of the chaos of modern life. Fletcher is arenowned designer and art director, and the joy of The Art of LookingSideways lies in its beautiful design. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters withtitles like "Colour," "Noise," "Chance," "Camouflage," and "Handedness,"Fletcher's book, which he describes as "a journey without a destination," is "acollection of shards" that captures the sensory overload of a world that simplycontains too much information. In one typical section, entitled "Civilization,"the reader encounters six Polish flags designed to represent the world, aphotograph of an anthropomorphic handbag, Buzz Aldrin's boot print on the moon,drawings of Stone Age pebbles, a painting of "Ireland--as seen from Wales," anda dizzying array of quotations and snippets of information, including the wisewords of Marcus Aurelius, Stephen Jay, and Gandhi's comment, "Westerncivilization? I think it would be a good idea." Fletcher's mastery of designmixes type, space, fonts, alphabets, color, and layout combined with a "jackdaw"eye for the strange and profound to produce a stunning book that cannot be read,but only experienced. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk
Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders
by William R. Drennan
from University of Wisconsin Press
In response to the scandal generated by his open affair with the proto-feminist and free love advocate Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright had begun to build Taliesin as a refuge and "love cottage" for himself and his mistress (both married at the time to others).
Conceived as the apotheosis of Wright’s prairie house style, the original Taliesin would stand in all its isolated glory for only a few months before the bloody slayings that rocked the nation and reduced the structure itself to a smoking hull.
Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs.
In response to the scandal generated by his open affair with the proto-feminist and free love advocate Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright had begun to build Taliesin as a refuge and "love cottage" for himself and his mistress (both married at the time to others).
Conceived as the apotheosis of Wright’s prairie house style, the original Taliesin would stand in all its isolated glory for only a few months before the bloody slayings that rocked the nation and reduced the structure itself to a smoking hull.
Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs.
Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography
by David Michaelis
from Harper
Amazon Significant Seven, October 2007: There's no book this year that made people's eyes light up when I told them about it more than Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis's new biography of cartoonist Charles Schulz. (And when they saw the obvious-but-brilliant Chip Kidd-designed cover, their eyes got even brighter.) Everyone, it seems, feels a personal connection to Peanuts (a name, by the way, that Schulz always hated), but few have a sense of the artist whose small troupe of big-headed characters still lives at the center of our imagination. If some mystery about the man still remains after reading Michaelis's sharp, engaging, and level-headed biography that's no fault of the biographer--in fact, it's to his credit. Michaelis parses Schulz's particular combination of Midwestern reserve and steely determination and the strip's still-surprising balance of exuberance and misery, and he reminds us what a colossal cultural force it became, especially in the 1960s. But even as he ingeniously finds sources for Schulz's four-panel vignettes in the events of his biography, he recognizes that the true, sometimes inexplicable drama of his life took place when he sat down every day for 50 years to trace Linus's wobbly strands of hair, fill in Snoopy's black nose, and, time and again, letter the words "Good grief." --Tom Nissley
Charles M. Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the least understood figures in American culture. Now acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us the first full-length biography of the brilliant, unseen man behind Peanuts: at once a creation story, a portrait of a native genius, and a chronicle contrasting the private man with the central role he played in shaping the national imagination.
It is the most American of stories: How a barber's son grew up from modest beginnings to realize his dream of creating a newspaper comic strip. How he daringly chose themes never before attempted in mainstream cartoons—loneliness, isolation, melancholy, the unending search for love—always lightening the darker side with laughter and mingling the old-fashioned sweetness of childhood with a very adult and modern awareness of the bitterness of life. And how, using a lighthearted, loving touch, a crow-quill pen dipped in ink, and a cast of memorable characters, he portrayed the struggles that come with being awkward, imperfect, human.
With Peanuts, Schulz profoundly influenced America in the second half of the twentieth century. But the humorous strip was anchored in the collective experience and hardships of the artist's generation—the generation that survived the Great Depression, liberated Europe and the Pacific, and came home to build the prosperous postwar world. Michaelis masterfully weaves Schulz's story with the cartoons that are so familiar to us, revealing how so much more of his life was part of the strip than we ever knew.
Based on years of research, including exclusive interviews with the cartoonist's family, friends, and colleagues, unprecedented access to his studio and business archives, and new caches of personal letters and drawings, Schulz and Peanuts is the definitive epic biography of an American icon and the unforgettable characters he created.
Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split
by Laurie Perry
from HCI
If you've ever been dumped, duped, or three minutes from crazy, you'll love Crazy Aunt Purl. Side-splittingly funny and profoundly moving, Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair is the true-life misadventures of Laurie Perry, aka Crazy Aunt Purl, a slightly neurotic, displaced Southerner trying to create a new life after her husband leaves her to 'get his creativity back.' (Whatever that means.) But will she get her groove back in a tiny rented apartment, with a mountain of boxes, visible panty lines, and a slight wine-and-Cheetos problem?
"I was a thirty-something woman living alone with four cats. I was probably going to be divorced. I was on the short bus to crazy. I pictured my grandmother making hoop-skirted yarn cozies for the toilet paper. I pictured myself making doilies for furniture that I did not own. I saw my cats wearing knitted hats with lace appliqués. From my vantage point, knitting seemed like 100 percent of some road I did not want to walk down."
Yet, surprisingly, it's knitting that saves her and emboldens her to become fully engaged in life again--to discover new friends; to take risks, however scary; and to navigate the ins and outs of the modern dating scene.
"Dating has changed in a decade. Now there is a higher chance of meeting someone who has an internet porn addiction than someone who has a job. In Los Angeles, your dinner companion might have served time in Pelican Bay or run a meth lab. Or, worst of all, he might spend all night talking about his agent, his craft, and what it means to grow as an actor. Then he'll ask you to read his screenplay."
And such is life in this quirky, irreverent memoir, a spin-off of the blog phenomenon, www.crazyauntpurl.com, one of the most successful online diaries in history, exploding to an international fan base of enthusiastic readers. But don't worry, you don't have to knit to love Aunt Purl. You just have to know what it feels like to have loved, to have lost, or to have taken a leap of faith. We've all been there: Pass the wine.
Painter in a Savage Land: The Strange Saga of the First European Artist in North America
by Miles Harvey
from Random House
In this vibrantly told, meticulously researched book, Miles Harvey reveals one of the most fascinating and overlooked lives in American history. Like The Island of Lost Maps, his bestselling book about a legendary map thief, Painter in a Savage Land is a compelling search into the mysteries of the past. This is the thrilling story of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, the first European artist to journey to what is now the continental United States with the express purpose of recording its wonders in pencil and paint. Le Moyne’s images, which survive today in a series of spectacular engravings, provide a rare glimpse of Native American life at the pivotal time of first contact with the Europeans–most of whom arrived with the preconceived notion that the New World was an almost mythical place in which anything was possible.
In 1564 Le Moyne and three hundred other French Protestants landed off the coast of Florida, hoping to establish the first permanent European settlement in the sprawling territory that would become the United States. Their quest ended in gruesome violence, but Le Moyne was one of the few colonists to escape, returning across the Atlantic to create dozens of illustrations of the local Native Americans–works of lasting importance to scholars. Today, he is also recognized as an influential early painter of flowers and plants.
A Zelig-like persona, Le Moyne worked for some of the most prominent figures of his time, including Sir Walter Raleigh. Harvey’s research, moreover, suggests a fascinating link to the notorious Mary Queen of Scots. Largely forgotten until the twentieth century, Le Moyne’s pieces have become increasingly sought after in the art world–at a 2005 auction, a previously unknown book of his botanical drawings sold for a million dollars.
In re-creating the life and legacy of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Miles Harvey weaves a tale of both intellectual intrigue and swashbuckling drama. Replete with shipwrecks, mutinies, religious wars, pirate raids, and Indian attacks, Painter in a Savage Land is truly a tour de force of narrative nonfiction.
Praise for Painter in a Savage Land
"Inspired, beautiful, and wholly original. Miles Harvey is an archeologist of forgotten stories, a master of finding astounding characters folded into the crevices of withered documents. In Painter in a Savage Land, he has breathed life into a thrilling and unlikely tale that, in the end, connects us all." --Robert Kurson, author of Shadow Divers and Crashing Through
"Like some lovable sleuth of the esoteric--a sort of scholarly Columbo--Miles Harvey has a way of stumbling onto intriguing historical tales entirely missed by others. With equal parts rigor and wonder, he has transported us to a surprising dawn-world when a bewildered Europe was making its first contacts with a bizarre and vulnerable continent." --Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers
"A fantastic brew of art, exploration and exploitation. Miles Harvey's story bristles with surprises on every page." --Laurence Bergreen, author of Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu and Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
"Miles Harvey has outdone himself with this absorbing account of the life and work of a mysterious French artist who was the first European to record visual impressions of North America. Harvey's investigation into the curious life, swashbuckling adventures and enduring legacy of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues is appealing on a number of compelling levels, adeptly done with style, elegance and a sure sense of story." --Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness, Among the Gently Mad and A Splendor of Letters
"Insatiable curiosity and fierce pursuit of fact combine to create a graceful exploration of worlds old and new." --Kirkus Reviews
"A fascinating exploration of the obscure life and violent times of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. … Harvey's volume hits the sweet spot for both adventure buffs and history fans." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"One astonishing discovery after another …Â Harvey's groundbreaking, fun-to-read biography blows dust off significant swathes of history and makes for a rousing read." --Booklist (starred review)
"[A] rip-roaring account of Le Moyne's adventures. ... It's a testament to Harvey's research and style that he can powerfully evoke a man about whom so few documentary traces remain." --Entertainment Weekly
The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics)
by Giorgio Vasari
from Oxford University Press, USA
These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance," was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael. This new translation, specially commissioned for the World's Classics series, contains thirty-six of the most important lives and is fully annotated.
Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe (Whitney Museum of American Art Book)
by K. Michael Hays
from Yale University Press
From his geodesic dome to books popularizing the terms “spaceship earth” and “synergetics,” the life mission of R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was to create living environments that minimized consumption of the earth’s resources while maximizing interconnections with global systems of information and transportation. This book explores Fuller's extraordinary body of work focusing on his wide-ranging and sometimes controversial role within the worlds of art, architecture, and utopian thought.
The book chronicles Fuller’s profound, often prophetic contributions, including his environmentally sensitive building designs. The essays illuminate the underappreciated thematic interactions of many sculptors, painters, musicians, and architects with this self-described “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist,” including contemporary artists wrestling with Fuller’s legacy today.
Reproductions of original drawings and models—including those for Fuller’s 4D house, Wichita House, the Montreal Expo dome, and the sole extant Dymaxion car—plus a reprinted 1966 New Yorker profile on Fuller by Calvin Tomkins, complete the fascinating tribute.
Lust for Life
by Irving Stone
from Plume
LUST FOR LIFE is a fictionalized biography of the Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh and is based primarily on Van Gogh's three volumes of letters to his brother, Theo. Van Gogh was a violent, clumsy and passionate man who was driven to the extremity of exhaustion by his fervor to get life -- the essence of it -- into paint. Irving Stone treats the artist with great compassion and gives us a portrait that is sympathetic but fair.
+++
