Tag Archives: Top New 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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New Books: “Brain Fables – The Hidden History of Neurodegenerative Diseases” (Cambridge, 2020)

An estimated 80 million people live with a neurodegenerative disease, with this number expected to double by 2050. Despite decades of research and billions in funding, there are no medications that can slow, much less stop, the progress of these diseases. The time to rethink degenerative brain disorders has come. With no biological boundaries between neurodegenerative diseases, illnesses such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s result from a large spectrum of biological abnormalities, hampering effective treatment.

Acclaimed neurologist Dr Alberto Espay and Parkinson’s advocate Benjamin Stecher present compelling evidence that these diseases should be targeted according to genetic and molecular signatures rather than clinical diagnoses. There is no Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, simply people with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. An incredibly important story never before told, Brain Fables is a wakeup call to the scientific community and society, explaining why we have no effective disease-modifying treatments, and how we can get back on track.

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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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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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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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New Photography Books: “Ciao” In Italy By Mario Testino (May 2020)

Ciao BookIn Ciao, Testino handpicks his favorite images of Italy, a country that has featured heavily in his life, from his friendships and breathtaking vistas to quintessentially Italian iconic fashion shoots and Italians’ ever-evolving allure to their effervescent lifestyle. Featuring three sections, IN GIRO (out and about), ALLA MODA (in fashion), and AL MARE (at sea), the result is a highly personal journey across the country through Testino’s lens paying homage to Italy, and it’s culture as well as a chronicle of 40 years of genre-defining photography.

Widely regarded as one of the most influential fashion and portrait photographers, Mario Testino is responsible for the creation of emblematic images, transmitting emotion and energy in an open and intimate way. Throughout his four-decade career, Testino has been on a journey beyond the world of fashion capturing Earth’s traditions and cultures with unparalleled access and an extraordinarily unique point of view.

Ciao

 

Peruvian by birth, Testino’s intimate connection to Italy found its roots in his Italian heritage, but blossomed when he experienced the country for himself. Discovering Italy was, for Testino, synonymous with discovering his passion for fashion. “Rome was all about the hottest, latest trends and fresh new styling, and I loved the way Italians could shed the latest look for an even newer thing without ever losing their own identity.”

The photographer and author

With a four decades career as a leader in the fields of fashion, culture and lifestyle, Peruvian-born Mario Testino OBE has many facets that take him beyond the surface of a photographer and artist placing him as a cultural visionary. Testino’s universe is broad, his impact is uniquely powerful and his lifestyle is completely authentic. Testino’s has seen his works published and exhibited in hundreds of cities around the world. Throughout his career he built unprecedent relationships with editorial and commercial partners such as Vogue, Burberry, and Gucci to name a few. His past and present muses include HRH Princess Diana, Madonna, Donatella Versace, Kendall Jenner and Mariacarla Boscono. His solo exhibitions have shown in museums and galleries worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery, London; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The contributing author

Alain Elkann is a New York–born author and journalist. Since 1989, he has maintained a weekly interview column for the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa. Elkann has lectured on art, Italian literature and Jewish studies at the Universities of Oxford, Columbia, Jerusalem, Pennsylvania and Milan’s IULM. He is President of The Foundation for Italian Art & Culture (FIAC) in New York and in 2009 was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by the French Republic.

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New Art & Nature Books: “What It’s Like To Be A Bird” – David Allen Sibley (2020)

While its focus is on familiar backyard birds–blue jays, nuthatches, chickadees–it also examines certain species that can be fairly easily observed, such as the What It's Like To Be A Bird David Allen Sibley Cover April 15 2020seashore-dwelling Atlantic puffin. David Sibley’s exacting artwork and wide-ranging expertise bring observed behaviors vividly to life. 

The bird book for birders and nonbirders alike that will excite and inspire by providing a new and deeper understanding of what common, mostly backyard, birds are doing–and why.

“Can birds smell?” “Is this the same cardinal that was at my feeder last year?” “Do robins ‘hear’ worms?” In What It’s Like to Be a Bird, David Sibley answers the most frequently asked questions about the birds we see most often. This special, large-format volume is geared as much to nonbirders as it is to the out-and-out obsessed, covering more than two hundred species and including more than 330 new illustrations by the author.

What It's Like To Be A Bird David Allen Sibley April 15 2020

And while the text is aimed at adults–including fascinating new scientific research on the myriad ways birds have adapted to environmental changes–it is nontechnical, making it the perfect occasion for parents and grandparents to share their love of birds with young children, who will delight in the big, full-color illustrations of birds in action. Unlike any other book he has written, What It’s Like to Be a Bird is poised to bring a whole new audience to David Sibley’s world of birds.

Author Website

DAVID ALLEN SIBLEY is the author and illustrator of the series of successful guides to nature that bear his name, including The Sibley Guide to Birds. He has contributed to Smithsonian, Science, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Birding, BirdWatching, North American Birds, and The New York Times. He is a recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Award for Promoting the Cause of Birding from the American Birding Association and the Linnaean Society of New York’s Eisenmann Medal. He lives and birds in Massachusetts.

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Art Books: “At First Light – Two Centuries Of Maine Artists, Their Homes And Studios” (Rizzoli, Mar 2020)

At First Light Two Centuries of Maine Artists Rizzoli March 2020At First Light chronicles twenty-six extraordinary artists of the last two hundred years who have lived and worked in Maine. Published to coincide with the state’s bicentennial in 2020, the volume considers the significant contributions artists have made to a deeper and more profound understanding of Maine’s history, its land and its peoples. Maine’s unique and breathtaking landscape–from its rugged coastline, quaint harbors, majestic mountains, and verdant forests–continues to have a powerful effect on the artists who are drawn to its shores.

Written and expertly researched by some of the foremost scholars and curators in the field, each chapter focuses on a different artist, featuring the artists’ artworks and anchored by breathtaking contemporary photography of their homes, studios, and surroundings. From picturesque bungalows to grander structures with beautiful vistas, the houses and studios featured are as diverse as the artists who have inhabited them. The artists featured include fan favorites to lesser known yet important figures from the eighteenth century to the present day, working in a range of media from painting to photography to sculpture, including: Jonathan Fisher, Winslow Homer, Frank Weston Benson, Charles Herbert Woodbury, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Rockwell Kent, N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth, Marguerite and William Zorach, Rockwell Kent, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Eliot Porter, Fairfield Porter, Rudy Burckhardt, Yvonne Jacquette, Ashley Bryan, Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, Bernard Langlais, Robert Indiana, David C. Driskell, Molly Neptune Parker, Richard Tuttle, and William Wegman.

About The Author

Anne Collins Goodyear is codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Frank H. Goodyear III is codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Michael K. Komanecky is chief curator at the Farnsworth Art Museum, in Rockland, Maine. Stuart Kestenbaum is the Poet Laureate of Maine. Walter Smalling is a photographer based in Washington, D.C.

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Best New Fiction Books: 57-Year Old Author Lily King’s “Writers & Lovers” – On The Road To Happiness

Writers & Lovers Lily King March 2020Writers & Lovers follows Casey―a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist―in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Euphoria Lily KingLily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller: an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

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Lily King is the author of five award-winning novels. Her most recent novel, Writers & Lovers, will be published on March 3rd, 2020. Her 2014 novel Euphoria won the Kirkus Award, The New England Book Award, The Maine Fiction Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Euphoria was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. It was included in TIME’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014, as well as on Amazon, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, and Salon’s Best Books of 2014.

Lily’s website