Published: Farrar Straus Giroux - October 11th, 2011
A fascinating memoir from one of the best connected women in history Some of My Lives explores Bernier’s rich and legendary life as a cultural gadfly. On every page, one encounters another famous name from literature, art, music, or fashion. A spirited highbrow voyage through the 20th century art world.
Availability: Out of Print - Not Available for Order
Published: Grand Central Publishing - November 22nd, 2011
Love her or hate her, Gaga has reintroduced avant-garde fashion and art to a pop music scene recently bereft of substance and ambition. Her collaboration with photographer Terry Richardson is the perfect gift for all the Little Monsters on your list, but it also provides a fascinating glimpse into the life of an eccentric superstar that has broad artistic appeal.
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Published: W. W. Norton & Company - September 12th, 2011
Caravaggio’s passionate masterpieces and you know: he was the ultimate Renaissance bad boy. Graham-Dixon examines original Italian texts to uncover new and fascinating information about Caravaggio’s prodigious criminal history, his sexual picadillos, and his premature death, as well as his development into one of the most vital and important artists in European history.
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Published: Four Corners Books - August 31st, 2011
Occupy Wall Street has us in mind of earlier, more poetic revolutions, which makes this new catalogue of the poster art of May 1968 timely and vital. The Atelier Populaire was a collective of French print shops dedicated to encouraging revolutionaries to keep up the fight. Their work is collected comprehensively here.
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Published: Reaktion Books - October 1st, 2011
A thoughtful and remarkably complete examination of de Kooning’s oeuvre that focuses primarily on his technique and on his complicated reception in the art world.
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Published: Thames & Hudson - October 24th, 2011
These long conversations between critic Martin Gayford and celebrated artist David Hockney explore the magic of art, both for the artist and for the enthusiast.
The art of Robert Rauchenberg is examined in an international context here, charting his travels in four cities: Paris, Venice, Stockholm, and Tokyo. Ikegami explores Rauchenberg’s hand in the rise of American art as global art, and thus places him in a wider conversation.
Availability: Out of Print - Not Available for Order
Published: Hirmer Verlag GmbH - August 15th, 2011
This gorgeous book presents nearly 100 J.M.W. Turner masterworks from the Tate Gallery in London, examined through the lens of Turner’s interest in and exploration of the natural sciences.
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Published: Berkley - June 7th, 2005
Brier’s book is one of the best and most exciting accounts of the life and death of King Tut. A perfect historical and archaeological companion to the King Tut exhibit now showing at the MFAH.
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Published: Art Institute of Chicago - July 26th, 2011
This fascinating catalogue looks at six artists of the modernist movement who brought the sensibilities and aesthetics of avant-garde art into the public sphere for ordinary people to enjoy and ponder. A beguiling look at an age when it seemed possible that high art could change the world as we know it.
This brilliant Booker Prize winning novel follows a man who is uninterested in his own past - until it comes back to haunt him. Harrowing and suspenseful, this novel can be read in just one sitting or savored over and over again.
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Published: Knopf - November 1st, 2011
This hilarious sequel to Birnbauch’s iconic The Official Preppy Handbook examines how prep culture has adapted to our contemporary world. Sure to illicit a knowing giggle from a blue-blood you know and love.
From the author of the smash hit 1491 comes this fascinating, paradigm-shifting examination of the Columbian Exchange - an unprecedented movement of biological species, power, and wealth between the New World and the Old that Mann posits was the most important biological event since the extinction of the dinosaurs.
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Published: Oxford University Press, USA - November 1st, 2011
Likely the most beautiful and complete world atlas you will ever see. What the Oxford English Dictionary is for words, this unbelievable atlas is for places. A must-have for any serious scholar or lover of maps.
By far the most comprehensive study available of Wright’s unparalleled drawings, plans, designs and sketches,. Beautiful and engaging enough for the casual enthusiast and detailed enough for the most serious scholar of architecture and design.
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Published: Ecco - April 1st, 2011
A fascinating and eclectic collection of Schama’s essays, with topics ranging from personal history to cultural history, from pop culture to high culture.
Availability: Not On Our Shelves. Usually arrives in 1-5 Days
Published: Library of America - September 29th, 2011
Roth should be required reading for all Americans, especially for all American academics. Urbane, keenly observant, and beautifully written, these three novels present Roth at the height of his powers.
Published: Library of America - October 27th, 2011
This long-awaited compilation of Kael’s most memorable film reviews is an idiosyncratic and fascinating peek into the cinema of the 1970s and 1980s - a must-have for any serious film enthusiast.
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Published: Hudson Hills Press - September 1st, 2011
Jack Parson’s landscape photography presents New Mexico as you’ve never seen it before: epic in scope and dazzling in execution. Here are scenes that seem lifted from the imaginations of Cormac McCarthy, which is apt when you consider that Parson’s son Alex is a McCarthy scholar and member of the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston.
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Published: Dutton Adult - June 30th, 2011
This fascinating travelogue with a twist examines the famed discovery of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham III in 1911. Adams retraces Bingham’s journey step-for-step across Peru in hopes of discovering whether Bingham smuggled artifacts from the ancient site or lied about the particulars of his discovery of it.
Published: Simon & Schuster - September 13th, 2011
From the author of A Beautiful Mind comes the story of modern economics, told with an eye toward its most celebrated and brilliant minds. Examining characters as diverse as Dickens and Sen, Marx and Keynes, Nasar transforms a subject sometimes considered dry into a vivid, vital romp through history.
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - August 30th, 2011
This perfect gem of a book by debut author Torres examines the rough-and-tumble childhoods of three brothers growing up in a tumultuous mixed-race family in Brooklyn. Written with incredible skill and grace.
The ultimate gift for an aspiring graphic novelist or comics aficianado, this book and DVD set explores the making of Maus, one of the most influential graphic novels of all time.
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Published: University of Texas Press - July 15th, 2011
Evan’s magnificent, iconic, full color pictures of the Big Bend region of Texas are accompanied by a forward from Rebecca Solnit, one of the country’s most engaging essayists.
This stunning and wildly ambitious book is the culmination of Kish’s two-year quest to illustrate every single page of Moby Dick. Kish, a self-taught tour-de-force of an artist, uses a variety of techniques to bring the classic to life.
Probably the hippest, most experimental and inventive book written about the Great War. Dyer presents his thoughts on the war in a unique and seductive hybrid of meditation, travelogue, history and memoir.
One of the finest memoirs of our new century, but certainly not for the faint of heart. A harrowing adventure through sex, violence, death, motherhood, perversion, and redemption, all written in visceral, haunting prose.
Availability: Not On Our Shelves. Usually arrives in 1-5 Days
Published: New Directions - October 5th, 2011
This beautiful bilingual version of Rimbaud’s most famous work is graced with its original New Directions cover art and an insightful, reverent introduction by Patti Smith.
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Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - October 11th, 2011
The New York Times Bestseller by the author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex examines the post-college lives of three Brown undergraduates in the 1980s.
Jeopardy guru Ken Jennings guides us through his long-time love affair with maps. Jennings interviews other obsessive map devotees and explores the cultural history of maps and mapmaking, and the ways in which they have changed the course of history, over and over again.
This stunning and brilliant graphic biography highlights the lives of Pierre and Marie Curie and examines how their love story led to a wide variety of contemporary issues surrounding nuclear power, weaponry, and medicine.
Noted Houston neuroscientist and Rice graduate Eagleman explores the subconscious mind - everything your brain is doing without your conscious knowledge.
Availability: Not On Our Shelves. Usually arrives in 1-5 Days
Published: Bloomsbury USA - October 5th, 2009
A graphic novel for the intellectual heavyweight, Logicomix explores the life and philosophy of Bertrand Russell, who sought to find a logical underpinning for all of mathematics.
Availability: Not On Our Shelves. Usually arrives in 1-5 Days
Published: Dalkey Archive Press - November 8th, 2011
This yearly sampling of the best fiction from each country in Europe provides a fascinating introduction to contemporary literature in translation as well as to the varied cultures that give each story life.
Eight Great Reasons to Shop at Locally-Owned Businesses
Significantly more money re-circulates in your community when purchases are made at locally owned, rather than nationally owned businesses. Locally owned businesses help keep more money in your community because local business owners spend more of the profits of their business where they live and locally owned businesses purchase from other local businesses.
Most new jobs are provided by locally owned businesses: Small, local businesses are the largest employer nationally.
Local business owners invest in community: Local businesses are owned by people who live locally and are more invested in your community's future.
Customer service is better: Local businesses often hire people with more specific expertise for better customer service.
Reduced environmental impact: Shopping at locally owned businesses is more energy efficient. Locally owned businesses make more local purchases, thus reducing their transportation costs (and environmental impact).
Public benefits far outweigh public costs: Local businesses require comparatively little infrastructure investment and make more efficient use of public services as compared to nationally owned stores entering the community.
Encourages investment in your community: A growing body of economic research shows that entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to settle in communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character.
Non-profits receive greater support: Non-profit organizations receive an average of 350% greater support from local business owners than they do from non-locally owned businesses.
Brazos LOVES this article about "Keeping It Local"
