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Coffee table books: not just for looks
We’ve compiled a wish list of gorgeous books that have something to say…
Photos That Changed the World, edited by Peter Stepan (Prestel Publishing, 2006) In the paperback classic, Stepan compiles iconic photographs of history-changing moments, including Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” delivery, the famously brutal pointblank execution of a Viet Cong officer, Mexican leaders of the Zapatista revolt in full color, and more. 190 pages
Art of the Japanese Postcard: Masterpieces from the Leonard Lauder Collection, edited by Anne Nishimura Morse (Lund Humphries Publishing, Ltd., 2004) 288 pages lovingly document the highly artistic Japanese postcard movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—often, the to-be-mailed mini-paintings were created by prominent Japanese artists. The graphics are extraordinary, and the art nouveau images speak volumes about changing definitions of East and West. Essays included.Henri Matisse: Figure Color Space, edited by Pia Muller-Tamm, text by Gottfried Bohm (Hatje Cantz, 2006) This marvelous 383-page book reproduces paintings from all periods, drawings, bronze sculptures, and paper cutouts, too, all focusing on Matisse’s female figures in rich interior settings. An illustrated biography and historical photos are included.
African American Writers: Portraits and Visions by Lynda Koolish (University Press of Mississippi, 2001) Koolish, a photographer and literature professor, snaps dramatic black-and-white portraits of some of the most important black writers of the 20th century. Her own essays accompany the photos. Sixty writers are featured, including August Wilson, Toni Morrison, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Edwidge Danticat. 122 pages
The BMA Shop, 10 Art Museum Drive, Wyman Park.
Steinberg at the New Yorker by Joel Smith (Harry N. Abrams, 2005) Celebrated curator Joel Smith surveys cartoonist Saul Steinberg’s thought-provoking, laugh-lurching black-ink drawings. He decides Steinberg’s socially conscious humor was “a wry, informal wit…attuned to the jittery optimism of the Atomic age.”Humorist Ian Frazier pens the introduction. 240 pages
Maryland History in Prints, 1752-1900 by Laura Rice (Maryland Historical Society, 2005) Laura Rice brings the beauty of Maryland printmaking to light and life—a thoughtful essay accompanies each of the 330 prints. Images reference the changing faces of Baltimore and Annapolis, the Civil War, industrialism, and the drama of time marching forward (locally).
Earth from Above by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 3rd edition, 2005) The French author and photographer, with funding from UNESCO, traveled the world to make photographs that capture the world’s complex workings. Farmers plow a field in northern India; totaled Iraqi tanks sleep like carcasses in Kuwait; the ruins of Madagascar underline the sadness of forests being plundered. Essays accompany the ecology-minded photo tour. 524 pages
The Store, Ltd., The Village of Cross Keys, 5100 Falls Road, Roland Park.
Book picks - gift giving 2007
The Ivy Bookshop staff gives their best book pics to put under the tree.
Fiction:
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
Claire Messud, who is known to be a “writer’s writer,” has achieved popular status with her newest book, a page-turning, language-rich coming of age story about young New Yorkers pre and post 9/11 which has been hailed as an exceptional work of “near-miraculous perfection” by the New York Times Book Review. (Alfred A. Knopf)
After This by Alice McDermott
We follow the 30 year saga of members of an Irish American family living on Long Island post World War II. In McDermott’s gifted hands their stories, so seemingly ordinary and humdrum, take on an almost epic quality as she creates brilliant characterizations with the most beautiful and lush descriptions. (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Truly a masterpiece, this somber and tender fable of a man and his beloved son on a journey seeking warmth and safety in a postapocaliptic unnamed country is a powerful and chilling foretelling of a world and its inhabitants left ravaged by nuclear destruction. The ending brings a final affirmation of hope. (Alfred A. Knopf)
Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
This is the most requested book of the fall season at the Ivy. Frazier, author of Cold Mountain, once again chooses an historical backdrop (North Carolina during Civil War era) to tell the life story of a frontiersman who becomes a prosperous merchant, lawyer and politician and whose life becomes intertwined with the destiny of the Cherokee Indians for whom he battles to preserve their homeland and culture. Add the romantic element of a quest for a woman and you have quite an entertaining story. (Random House)
Non-fiction:
Irene Nemirovsky Her Life and Works by Jonathan Weiss
There has been much interest lately in the life of author Irene Nemirovky as a result of her recent acclaimed posthumous novel Suite Francais which so poignantly captures the horrors of the Nazi invasion and occupation of France. Her life as a Russian émigré to France, her success as a novelist, her home and family life, and finally her arrest and tragic death at Auschwitz in 1942 just three weeks after finishing Suite Francais are all meticulously examined by Professor Weiss who worked closely with her family in writing about this courageous woman. (Stanford University Press)
Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Prepare to laugh out loud once again as Bill Bryson entertains us with his quick-witted and hilarious recollections of growing up in the fifties in Des Moines, Iowa. Not only humorous, this memoir is an affectionate portrait of his family and hometown and a nostalgic look back at the good old days of that postwar generation. (Broadway Books)
Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill
Knowing what Cahill has done for the Irish and the Greeks in terms of popularizing their histories, we look forward to the same entertaining and captivating account in his depiction of the late middle ages which saw the rise of feminism, rebirth of scholarship, art, literature and science. This book is sprinkled with lively portraits of the major figures such as Giotto, Francis of Assissi, Heloise and Abelard. (Doubleday & Co.)