Ricky Jay
Extraordinary Exhibitions: The Wonderful Remains of an Enormous Head, The Whimsiphusicon & Death to the Savage Unitarians (Quantuck Lane Press, 2005)
This collection of broadsides captures the bizarre and extreme interests of Ricky Jay; they also contain wonderfully rich collages of typography and illustration. One of the best gift books of the year. [WD]
Marla Hamburg Kennedy and Ben Stiller
Looking at Los Angeles (Metropolis Books / D.A.P., 2005)
A rich visual compendium on archival and contemporary photographs of
the city that defies description. [LW]
Emily King
Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005)
Well-researched biographical account of the life of a great graphic auteur. The late English music critic Ian MacDonald had a theory that you could tell the worth of someone by whether they made a suitable subject for a biography. Not many graphic designers would pass MacDonald's test. Brownjohn does. [AS]
Brian Ladd
The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (University Of Chicago Press, 1998)
I spent my sleepless jet-lagged pre-dawn hours in Berlin recently devouring Ladd's fascinating survey of the contested landscape of this perpetually evolving city — more essential than any guidebook, architectural history as post-Cold War thriller. [TV]
Erik Larson
The Devil in the White City (Vintage, 2004)
An entertaining non-fiction account, now in paperback, of how architect Daniel Burnham created Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and of a deranged serial murderer who preyed on its visitors, told mostly in alternating chapters; unlike the general public, readers of Design Observer may find the story of the architect's travails more harrowing than that of the murderer's. [MB]
J. Robert Lennon
The Mailman: A Novel (W.W. Norton, 2003)
Picture an anti-hero from Celine transported to a small upstate New York City and put in the employ of the Postal Service. Biting, disturbing, scabrously funny. [TV]
Jennifer New
Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005)
A refreshing and inspiring art book, this volume chronicles the work of thirty-one artists through their notebooks and diaries. There is a lot of raw art — and methodology — revealed. [WD]
Graham Rawle
Woman's World: A Novel (Atlantic Books, 2005)
I owe this recommendation to Rick Poynor, who led me to order a copy from England. "Has anyone ever created a novel quite like collage artist Graham Rawle's new book, Woman's World? First he composed a conventional 40,000-word story. Then he spent five years reconstructing the narrative as closely as he could, using words, phrases, sentences and little images cut from women's magazines of the early 1960s. He stuck these down in narrow columns, divided into chapters, to make a collage text 437 pages long." Anyway, it's worth the order from Amazon UK. [WD]
David Remnick, Introduction
The Complete New Yorker : Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine (Random House, 2005)
That little old lady in Dubuque is going to need a faster laptop: here is very article, every cartoon, every illustration, every advertisement, exactly as it appeared on the printed page of America's most venerable magazine, in full color, on eight searchable DVDs. [MB]
Simon Reynolds
Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 (Penguin, 2006)
Reynolds is the sharpest voice in contemporary music criticism. His examination of the postpunk era is timely: many of the bands he writes about are currently lionised by a new generation of pop musicians. In retrospect, this era, distinguished by the rise of Thatcherreganism, is revealed as the last flowering of the concept of 'independence' in pop music. After 1984 pop music became corporatised, and the spirit of independence was reduced to the bat squeak it is today. [AS]
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
De Kooning: An American Master (Knopf, 2004)
As Amazon tells it, "Raised by a mom who beat him with wooden shoes, de Kooning escaped
Rotterdam as a stowaway on a freighter and found a second family in New York's rampageous art
bohemia. He subsisted on ketchup and booze, and broke through around 1950 with dazzling
abstract expressionist canvases inspired by what was in the air: cubism, surrealism, jazz, and
film noir." Read on! [JH]
Susan Stewart
The Open Studio : Essays on Art and Aesthetics (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
Susan Stewart is a keen observer of contemporary art, and her book speaks, in general, to the open minded nature of the creative process. I find her much more readable than, say, Barbara Stafford, and I appreciate her love of language and her great philosophical strides. (When not writing criticism, Stewart is a poet.) [JH]
William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, illustrated by Maira Kalman
The Elements of Style Illustrated (Penguin, 2005)
If there is anyone who already is attempting to work in the world of language and communication without their own copy of "Strunk and White," Maira Kalman's wonderful illustrations should provide reason alone to buy this indispensible book, elegantly designed by Peter Buchanan-Smith. [MB]
Deyan Sudjic
The Edifice Complex : How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World (Penguin, 2005)
One of the world's best design critics offers a timely analysis of how politics and economics shape architecture. [MB]
Jonny Trunk
The Music Library: Graphic Art and Sound (Fuel Publishing, 2005)
A compilation of record covers, mainly from the 60s and 70s, that housed library music. This was music produced by session musicians for use on TV and radio, and in movies and advertising. Intended for a purely professional audience, much of the music has an outsiderish glamour and is highly prized by a new generation of sample-hungry DJs and producers. The sleeves are wonderful specimens of outsider graphic art. The book is designed and published by Murray & Sorrell Fuel. [AS]
Comments [6]
12.03.05
05:30
12.03.05
09:38
12.05.05
01:12
Right now I'm reading Basbanes's Every Books Its Reader, and am enjoying the writing (the H&J's though . . .). Happy holidays/reading.
12.06.05
12:59
12.10.05
03:18
01.04.06
08:39