Category Archives: Books

Top New Travel Books: “Drives Of A Lifetime” (National Geographic)

Drives of a Lifetime - National Geographic - 500 of the World's Greatest Roadtrips -The possibilities are endless: Take Colorado’s San Juan Skyway for a 10,000-foot climb over towering mountain passes. Or travel the ancient Silk Road on an expedition across Central Asia and through time. Or why not drive the perimeter of Puerto Rico, a tropical paradise with many beaches along the way? 

Compiled from the favorite trips of National Geographic’s legendary travel writers, Drives of a Lifetime spans the globe to reveal the best celebrated and lesser-known road trips on the planet. Inside this fully updated and revised edition–featuring more than 20 new drives–you’ll find routes through spectacular landscapes, ideas for quick getaways, leisurely journeys of discovery, and revelations of secret worlds beyond Google Maps. Some are legendary long-distance odysseys; others are easy day trips close to home, taking you down charming local byways. All will inspire you to pack up the car and hit the road.

Whatever your taste and budget, you’ll find plenty of routes tailored to your interests. Alongside detailed descriptions, full-color maps guide the way and planning tips help you make the most of your journey; top 10 lists offer quick, easy side trip ideas. Beautiful, informative, and inspiring, this luxurious volume is a lifelong resource that readers will treasure.

Read more purchase

Art & Photography Books: “Dreamscapes & Artificial Architecture” (Gestalten)

DREAMSCAPES & ARTIFICIAL ARCHITECTURE IMAGINED INTERIOR DESIGN IN DIGITAL ART - Gestalten - June 2020This inspiring compilation of the most innovative projects in digital art covers the work of the artists and creatives at the forefront of this aesthetic. Discover Filip Hodas and his captivating pop culture dystopia artwork series, explore Massimo Colonna’s surrealist urban landscapes and dive into the abstract compositions of Ezequiel Pini, founder of Six N. Five studio.

Digital renderings have long served architects and interior designers to help visualize spaces before the building begins. But a new generation of digital artists are taking this craft a step further to create otherworldly scenes that can’t, and won’t, ever be built.

DREAMSCAPES & ARTIFICIAL ARCHITECTURE IMAGINED INTERIOR DESIGN IN DIGITAL ART - Gestalten - June 2020

Dreamscapes & Artificial Architecture presents the work of leading creatives from across the globe, exploring the infinite ways to conceptualize utopian oases and dystopian nightmares. With their roots in spatial design, their ideas present a new creative current defined by the fusion of digital techniques such as computer rendering and 3D art, and an aesthetic that moves between fantasy and reality. Freed from the constraints of the physical world, these dreamscapes expand the possibilities for architecture and interior design.

Read more or purchase

Literature: “Shakespeare And Company” Digitizes Reading Library Of Joyce, Hemingway & De Beauvoir

Shakespeare and Company lending library cards

Shakespeare And CompanyGertrude SteinJames JoyceErnest HemingwayAimé CésaireSimone de BeauvoirJacques LacanWalter Benjamin.

What do these writers have in common? They were all members of the Shakespeare and Company lending library.

In 1919, an American woman named Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookshop and lending library in Paris. Almost immediately, it became the home away from home for a community of expatriate writers and artists now known as the Lost Generation. In 1922, she published James Joyce’s Ulysses under the Shakespeare and Company imprint, a feat that made her—and her bookshop and lending library—famous around the world. In the 1930s, she increasingly catered to French intellectuals, supplying English-language publications from the recently rediscovered Moby Dick to the latest issues of The New Yorker. In 1941, she preemptively closed Shakespeare and Company after refusing to sell her last copy of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to a Nazi officer.

The Shakespeare and Company Project uses sources from the Beach Papers at Princeton University to reveal what the lending library members read and where they lived. The Project is a work-in-progress, but you can begin to explore now. Search and browse the lending library members and books. Read about joining the lending library. Download a preliminary export of Project data. In the coming months, check back for new features and essays.

Website

Top New Books: “The Idea Of The Brain” By Matthew Cobb – “A Supercomputer”

The Idea of the Brain - Matthew Cobb - April 2020Although it might seem to be a story of ever-increasing knowledge of biology, Cobb shows how our ideas about the brain have been shaped by each era’s most significant technologies. Today we might think the brain is like a supercomputer. In the past, it has been compared to a telegraph, a telephone exchange, or some kind of hydraulic system. What will we think the brain is like tomorrow, when new technology arises?

For thousands of years, thinkers and scientists have tried to understand what the brain does. Yet, despite the astonishing discoveries of science, we still have only the vaguest idea of how the brain works. In The Idea of the Brain, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb traces how our conception of the brain has evolved over the centuries.

READ EXCERPT OF FIRST 30 PAGES

The result is an essential read for anyone interested in the complex processes that drive science and the forces that have shaped our marvelous brains.

Matthew Cobb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester. His previous books include Life’s Greatest Secret:The Race to Discover the Genetic Code, which was shortlisted for the the Royal Society Winton Book Prize, and the acclaimed histories The Resistance and Eleven Days in August. He is also the award-winning translator of books on the history of molecular biology, on Darwin’s ideas and on the nature of life.

Read more or purchase

Travel & Culture: Greek Island Of Hydra In 1960’s – “A Theatre For Dreamers” By Novelist Polly Samson

From The Guardian (May 23, 2020):

A Theatre For Dreamers - Polly Samson - April 2020I first went to Hydra six years ago, when it was simply a beautiful Greek island and not a place I went to commune with its ghosts. I don’t think I was even aware that it was the island Leonard Cohen had lived on, and knew nothing of Charmian Clift, George Johnston and the bohemian community they fostered.

Bloomsbury Publishers: 1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen.

Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels.

Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost – and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.

Polly Samson is an English novelist, lyricist and journalist. She is married to musician David Gilmour, and has written the lyrics to many of Gilmour’s works, both as a solo artist and with the group Pink Floyd.

 

Top Photography Books: “Zanzibar” By Aline Coquelle (Assouline)

Zanzibar Travel & Photography Book - Assouline May 2020Off the coast of East Africa in the Indian Ocean sits an archipelago known as Zanzibar. It all started ten million years ago when the island of Pemba separated from mainland Africa and then ten thousand years ago, the island of Unguja followed suit. Thus, begins the legend of Zanzibar.

For centuries, Zanzibar has been the haven and gateway for explorers including Richard Burton and David Livingstone to penetrate the unknown African Continent. Forward to present day, and it is still possible to experience the unique wildlife whether that is by scuba diving off the coast of a private island, infinite lagoons, visiting mangroves or endemic wild forests; getting lost and immersing yourself into the historical labyrinthine streets of Stonetown.

Zanzibar Travel & Photography Book - Assouline May 2020

This cluster of islands is at a crossroads of cultures, featuring Omani architecture, Portuguese and British heritages as well as Swahili rituals.

Photographer Aline Coquelle shares an intimate portrait of a community bursting with life. With original photography, a disappearing, indigenous culture is preserved and celebrated. This volume invites the reader to experience the paradise that is Zanzibar.

With a degree in art history and anthropology, nomadic Parisian photographer Aline Coquelle has always traveled the world—she has lived and worked in Central and South America, Asia, and Africa and has been visiting Zanzibar for over twenty years. She contributes to prestigious international publications, and shoots marketing campaigns for luxury brands. Coquelle often works with silver film in order to keep alive the magic of old-time photography because she believes “transcending tradition is the new modernity” and her gelatin silver prints are sought by collectors worldwide. Her other books with Assouline are Palm Springs Style (2005); The Cartier Polo Games (2006); Polo: The Nomadic Tribe (2009); The Italian Dream: Wine, Heritage, Soul (2016); and Be Extraordinary, The Spirit of Bentley (2017).

Mirella Ricciardi is a renowned photographer and author. Her childhood in Kenya has inspired her work and she has published several volumes of photographs including Vanishing Africa (1971), African Saga (1981), and Vanishing Amazon (1991).

Read more or purchase

Interviews: Writers Marianne Julia Strauss And Patrick J. McGinnis

The StackMonocle 24’s “The Stack” speaks to Marianne Julia Strauss on her new book “Do You Read Me?” on the best bookshops around the globe. Then, author Patrick McGinnis on his new release “Fear Of Missing Out”.

 

New Art History Books: “Finding Dora Maar – An Artist, An Address Book, A Life” – Brigitte Benkemoun

Finding Doram MaarIn search of a replacement for his lost Hermès agenda, Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When it arrives, she opens it and finds inside private notes dating back to 1951—twenty pages of phone numbers and addresses for Balthus, Brassaï, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, and other artistic luminaries of the European avant-garde.

After realizing that the address book belonged to Dora Maar—Picasso’s famous “Weeping Woman” and a brilliant artist in her own right—Benkemoun embarks on a two-year voyage of discovery to learn more about this provocative, passionate, and enigmatic woman, and the role that each of these figures played in her life.

Longlisted for the prestigious literary award Prix Renaudot, Finding Dora Maar is a fascinating and breathtaking portrait of the artist.

Brigitte Benkemoun is a journalist and writer. She is the author of La petite fille sur la photo (2012) and Albert le Magnifique (2016). Jody Gladding is a poet and translator. She has translated some thirty books from French, including, most recently, Roland Barthes’s Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts (2018), Michel Pastoureau’s Yellow: The History of a Color (2019), and Jean Giono’s Occupation Journal (2020).

Read more or purchase

Travel & Wellness Books: “Be Well” By Kari Molvar

Be Well - Gestalten BookBe Well delves into one of life’s greatest pleasures; a day spent rejuvenating the body and nourishing the spirit. Humans have practiced self-care for centuries—in the sweat lodges of the American Southwest, Roman baths, the hammams of the Ottoman Empire, Japanese onsens, and Finnish saunas. Today, a new interest in self-care is redefining how we accomplish wellness, and there have never been more options.

 

In our increasingly switched-on lives, a growing industry of highly choreographed experiences is geared to help us switch off. Be Well is a journey around the world’s most extraordinary spaces for achieving this, looking at the innovative practices they offer and how to carry them into everyday life.

Be Well - Gestalten Book

Kari Molvar is a writer and editor focusing on wellness as seen through the lens of design, culture, and style. She is an online contributor to T: The New York Times Style Magazine and the founder of Rutine Matters. Her work appears in Vogue and The Wall Street Journal, among other titles.

Read more or purchase

New Art Books: “Titian – Love, Desire, Death” By Matthias Wivel (May 2020)

Titian Love Desire DeathTitian (active 1506–1576) produced a masterful group of paintings for Philip II of Spain, celebrating the loves of gods, goddesses, and mortals. Depicting scenes from Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses, Titian named them “poesie” and considered the works as visual equivalents of poetry.

This volume presents a detailed study of the complete series—Danaë, Venus and Adonis, Perseus and Andromeda, Diana and Actaeon, Diana and Callisto, and The Rape of Europa, as well as The Death of Actaeon—lavishly illustrated with details of these emotionally charged paintings. The book explores Titian’s creative process and technique, in addition to his use of literary and visual sources and his correspondence with Philip II.

The artistic legacy of the series for later European painting is also examined in the works of artists such as Rubens, Velázquez, and Rembrandt. Offering the most comprehensive overview of these remarkable works, Titian: Love, Desire, Death is an indispensable resource for scholars and admirers of Renaissance painting.

Read more or purchase