Tag Archives: Books

New Photography Books: “The Coral Triangle” By Chris Leidy (May 2020)

The Coral Triangle by Chris Leidy Assouline May 25 2020Comprising the most biodiverse ecosystems on our planet, oceans are humanity’s life-support system, processing more carbon dioxide than rainforests. Featuring a passionate text by Fabien Cousteau, The Coral Triangle presents the underwater world as a complex realm filled with vibrant life, inviting readers to fall in love with its majesty, and inspiring deeper understanding of the fragility of coral reefs and the unparalleled importance of taking action to protect our oceans.

Take a breathtaking plunge into the colorful world of the Coral Triangle, the waters that cradle Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.

The Coral Triangle by Chris Leidy Assouline May 25 2020

One of the world’s most mature reef networks, home to 30 percent of all the world’s coral, this magnificent marine expanse boasts the highest diversity of coral and fish species on the planet. Underwater photographer Chris Leidy beautifully captures a vision of this wonderland through his lens and conveys the inherent complexities of each singular, fleeting scene, illustrating the vital magic of the Coral Triangle.

Christopher P. Leidy is the great-great-grandson of the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer and the grandson of fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau. Over his career, Leidy has established his own legacy as one of the world’s foremost underwater photographers, finding inspiration in the depths of the world’s oceans.

The eldest grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Fabien Cousteau is an aquanaut, ocean conservationist, and documentary filmmaker devoted to furthering our understanding of the underwater world. An active member of multiple cause-driven and charitable boards, Cousteau works with local communities and children worldwide to help restore local water ecosystems. He dedicates much of his time to the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center, a nonprofit founded in 2016.

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Interior Design Books: “Splendor Of Marble – Marvelous Spaces” By Karen Pearse (Rizolli)

Splendor of Marble Karen Pearse RizzoliThe first book to examine the many ways this beautiful stone can be incorporated into a home environment, describing the unique nature of marble and the leading role it plays in the best of interior design today.

For spectacular drama, fabulous luxury, or simply the warm glow of organic textures, colors, and patterns, marble is like no other natural material. Marble has been favored by architects and designers for millennia, and as this book attests, the love affair with marble continues today. Featured are rooms showcasing marble by many of the world’s most prominent decorators, including Kelly Wearstler, Vincente Wolf, Juan Pablo Molyneux, Bjarke Ingels, Ryan Korban, Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Robert Kime, the Haas Brothers, and Joseph Dirand, among many others.

Splendor of Marble Karen Pearse RizzoliThis is the first book that explores the many ways marble can bring color, pattern, and warmth to the home, as well as the vast array of beautiful types of marble that are available. It is a hugely popular material for home kitchens and bathrooms in particular, but it also is incorporated in outdoor patio spaces, hallways, and stairwells, even living rooms. All are featured here in gorgeous images, providing new inspiration for design lovers.

About The Author

Karen Pearse is a marble expert and founder of Karen Pearse Direct, the foremost international purveyor of stone and marble for private and commercial spaces. Massimo Ferragamo is chairman of Ferragamo USA.

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Top Photographers: 65-Year Old William Neill “Light On The Landscape”

Drawing from the tradition of behind-the-scenes books like Ansel Adams’ Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs and Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light: In Search of the Dynamic Landscape, Light on the Landscape covers in detail the core photographic fundamentals such as light, composition, camera angle, and exposure choices, but it also deftly considers those subjects that are less frequently examined: portfolio development, marketing, printmaking, nature stewardship, inspiration, preparation, self-improvement, and more. The result is a profound and wide-ranging exploration of that magical convergence of light, land, and camera.

Light On The Landscape - William Neill 2020

For more than two decades, William Neill has been offering his thoughts and insights about photography and the beauty of nature in essays that cover the techniques, business, and spirit of his photographic life. Curated and collected here for the first time, and accompanying 128 beautiful reproductions of Neill’s photographs, these essays are both pragmatic and profound, offering readers an intimate look behind the scenes at Neill’s creative process behind individual photographs as well as a discussion of the larger and more foundational topics that are key to his philosophy and approach to work.

Light On The Landscape - William Neill 2020

Website

Filled with beautiful and inspiring photographs, Light on the Landscape is also full of the kind of wisdom that only comes from a deeply thoughtful photographer who has spent a lifetime communicating with a camera. Incorporating the lessons within the book, you too can learn to achieve not only technically excellent and beautiful images, but photographs that truly rise above your best and reveal your deeply personal and creative perspective―your vision, your voice.

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Interviews: 86-Year Old British Author Michael Frayn – “Magic Mobile”

Monocle 24 'Meet The Writers' PodcastBritish author, playwright and translator Michael Frayn is best known for his farcical comedy ‘Noises Off’ and ‘Copenhagen’, which details a 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. 

He is also a translator of Russian and has written several English translations of Chekhov. He spoke to us about his prolific career and his latest book, ‘Magic Mobile’.

With the whole world at the touch of your finger – why ever leave the imaginary realm of your mobile phone? This book of short comedic vignettes might give you a reason ―Magic Mobile is the latest offering of comic genius from Michael Frayn, award-winning author of the plays Noises Off and Copenhagen and novels The Tin Men, Towards the End of the Morning, and Headlong.

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Top Design Books: “Studio Gang Architecture” (2020)

Jeanne Gang ArchitectThe most in-depth exploration of one of the most important, innovative, and creative architecture practices working today.

For the last twenty years Studio Gang, led by Jeanne Gang, has created bold, visionary architecture that engages the urgent social and environmental challenges of our time. This first comprehensive monograph brings together 25 signature projects-from the award-winning Aqua Tower and Writers Theatre to highly-anticipated upcoming buildings for the American Museum of Natural History and O’Hare International Airport-to reveal the resonant concepts and design approach that connect them. With a rich variety of visual materials and short essays by Jeanne Gang, the book elegantly captures the creative sensibility and trajectory of an architecture driven by pressing twenty-first-century questions.

Studio Gang - Architecture - Phaidon - May 11 2020

Studio Gang is an international architecture and urban design practice founded and led by Jeanne Gang. A recipient of the National Design Award in Architecture and numerous other honors, the Studio works as a collective to create projects that foster interaction and connection. Their research-based, interdisciplinary approach has produced award-winning buildings across scales and typologies as well as publications and exhibitions that push design’s ability to effect positive change.

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Top New Science Podcasts: Examining “Pions”, Cooled-Down Buildings, Galileo’s Relevancy (Nature)

nature-podcastsThis week, a new way to study elusive subatomic particles – pions, and the story of Galileo remains relevant in a time of modern science denialism.

In this episode:

00:46 Probing pions

Pions are incredibly unstable and difficult-to-study subatomic particles. Now researchers have come up with a clever way to examine them – by sticking them into helium atoms. Research Article: Hori et al.

08:28 Research Highlights

A colourful way to cool buildings, and the rapid expansion of cities. Research Highlight: A rainbow of layered paints could help buildings to keep their coolResearch Highlight: Urban sprawl overspreads Earth at an unprecedented speed

10:46 The life of Galileo

A new biography of Galileo Galilei examines some of the myths about his life and draws parallels with problems facing scientists today. Books and Arts: Galileo’s story is always relevant

16:42 Pick of the Briefing

We pick our highlights from the Nature Briefing, including botanical graffiti, and rock-eating bacteria. The Guardian: ‘Not just weeds’: how rebel botanists are using graffiti to name forgotten floraScientific American: Scientists Waited Two and a Half Years to See whether Bacteria Can Eat Rock

Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

New Books: “The Louvre – The Many Lives Of The World’s Most Famous Museum” (James Gardner)

The Louvre James GardnerThe fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world’s greatest art museum.

Some ten million people from all over the world flock to the Louvre each year to enjoy its incomparable art collection. Yet few of them are aware of the remarkable history of that place and of the buildings themselves―a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly chronicles in the first full-length history of the Louvre in English.

More than 7,000 years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown; a clay quarry and a vineyard supported a society there in the first centuries AD. A thousand years later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there in 1191, just outside the walls of a city far smaller than the Paris we know today. Intended to protect the capital against English soldiers stationed in Normandy, the fortress became a royal residence under Charles V two centuries later, and then the monarchy’s principal residence under the great Renaissance king François I in 1546.

It remained so until 1682, when Louis XIV moved his entire court to Versailles. Thereafter the fortunes of the Louvre languished until the tumultuous days of the French Revolution when, during the Reign of Terror in 1793, it first opened its doors to display the nation’s treasures. Ever since―through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to the present―the Louvre has been a witness to French history, and expanded to become home to a legendary collection, including such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, whose often-complicated and mysterious origins form a spectacular narrative that rivals the building’s grand stature.

James Gardner

James Gardner is an American art critic and literary critic based in New York and Buenos Aires. He is the author of six books, including Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, and the British Spectator. He was the art critic at the New York Post and wrote architecture criticism for the New York Observer, before serving as the architecture critic at the New York Sun. He is now a contributing editor at The Magazine Antiques.

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Podcast Interview: 56-Year Old British Author Humphrey Hawksley

Monocle 24 'Meet The Writers' PodcastHumphrey Hawksley is an author, commentator and broadcasters. His work as a BBC foreign correspondent took him all over the world, giving him a global perspective that informs his writing. 

His new book, ‘Man on Edge’, puts the reader at the centre of a geopolitical crisis in Moscow.

Episode Home

Humphrey Hawksley is an English journalist and author who has been a foreign correspondent for the BBC since the early 1980s.

Website

Interviews: “Shakespeare In A Divided America” Author James Shapiro

The Economist Asks PodcastIn a year of plagues, power struggles and star-crossed lovers divided by lockdown, Anne McElvoy asks James Shapiro, author of “Shakespeare in a Divided America”, what the bard would make of it all. Shakespeare is claimed by Americans of all political stripes.

But how can a lad from 16th-century Stratford-upon-Avon illuminate the past and future of the republic now? Plus, what the president might teach the professor about Shakespeare’s work. And, Shapiro prescribes a verse for the trials and tribulations of 2020.