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NonfictionPhotographyNature

A window into the great beyond

Feature by Alice Cary

Five new books showcase the stunning natural beauty that surrounds us from below and above, whether it’s a delicate feather of a spotted owl or an ethereal vision of an ancient tree basking in the light of the Milky Way.

AMERICA'S MAJESTIC MONUMENTS
As the National Park Service celebrates 100 years, the time is right to enjoy the spectacular Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America’s National Parks. It’s a unique treat, as photographer Q.T. Luong—who is featured in Ken Burns’ recent documentary about the parks—is the only photographer to have taken large-format images in each of the 59 parks. 

Born in France to Vietnamese parents, this outdoor adventurer fell so in love with the national parks that he left his job as a computer scientist in order to pursue his 20-year quest to photograph each of them. After enduring flash floods, summit overnights without a sleeping bag and a nerve-wracking encounter with a bear in Alaska that forced him to abandon his equipment, the results compiled in this large volume are simply magnificent. Calling the parks our nation’s “greatest treasures,” Luong writes that each “represents a unique environment, yet collectively they are all interrelated, interconnected like a giant jigsaw puzzle.”

Because one of Luong’s goals is to inspire readers to see the parks themselves, he includes helpful travel tips and notes on his photographic techniques along with the images of each and every park. Whether it’s a Rocky Mountain sunrise or a glimpse of glowing lava dripping into the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Luong’s shots are so luminous that you’ll likely be booking a trip soon. 

EYES ON THE UNIVERSE
Otherworldly is the best word to describe Beth Moon’s latest offering, Ancient Skies, Ancient Trees. Previously, in her bestselling Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time, Moon spent 14 years photographing the tangled trunks of some of the world’s oldest trees. In this sequel, she continues her journey to even more remote corners of the world, still photographing her beloved trees, but this time under night skies. During what she terms “celestial safaris,” she uses long exposures to capture the night skies and highlight the age of the trees. Her first such journey, to southern Africa, left her speechless—“I don’t think I was prepared to see the enormity of the universe laid out so starkly above me, the Milky Way stretching from one end of the horizon to the other.”

Moon focuses on specific species in this collection, including baobabs, bristlecone pines, junipers, Joshua trees, oaks and more. Not only do the stars beckon, but these trees become pieces of sculpture in their own right as their gnarled trunks and branches reach upward. 

Her images of quiver trees in Namibia are simply breathtaking, while the massive trunk of a sequoia seems like a ladder climbing to heaven. Ancient Skies, Ancient Trees allows readers to see the world in a new light. 

FASCINATING FEATHERS
While birds and their feathers surround us, most people rarely give their plumage a thought. “That’s a shame, because there’s no better way to confront evolution’s riot of invention and beauty,” notes science writer Carl Zimmer in his preface to Feathers: Displays of Brilliant Plumage. National Geographic photographer Robert Clark’s gorgeous homage to these overlooked gems captures both their brilliance and texture in photos worthy of a gallery. Many—like the golden, brown and white tail feather of a superb lyrebird—resemble exquisitely crafted pieces of jewelry, while feathers of a Victoria Crown Pigeon are reminiscent of flowers from an ornamental garden. Another intriguing shot shows all of the feathers (so many!) of a Bohemian Waxwing, best known for getting drunk on rowan berries—sometimes fatally so. 

Bird lovers and art lovers alike will find Feathers, along with Clark’s brief explanatory notes, to be an illuminating, iridescent delight. 

FLIGHT AND FABLES
It’s easy to lose yourself in Birds: Myth, Lore and Legend, an attractive and hugely informative book. Here you’ll learn that people in 70 countries found ducks to be the world’s funniest animals, prompting psychologist Richard Wiseman to advise, “If you’re going to tell a joke involving an animal, make it a duck.”

Discussing a variety of species one by one, Marianne Taylor and Rachel Warren-Chadd’s text blends fact and fable surrounding each. In Babylon, for instance, ostriches were associated with the goddess Tiamat, while Harry Potter’s owl Hedwig is a Snowy Owl, widely considered in northern countries as an icon of bravery and a revealer of truths. And there isn’t actually a species called a seagull, although many (I’m guilty!) mistakenly call the entire family of birds by that name. 

The discussions are wide-ranging: The mockingbird entry discusses everything from Harper Lee and Charles Darwin to Hopi and Zuni traditions. Numerous illustrations and photographs add to the browsing fun. 

A SHEPHERD'S WORLD
“When English people dream of rural arcadia, they usually dream of our landscape,” writes James Rebanks. 

In 2015 Rebanks shared his life as a shepherd in the Lake District of Northern England in his glowingly reviewed The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape. Rebanks now offers a visual look into his world with The Shepherd’s View: Modern Photographs from an Ancient Landscape, which includes intriguing short chapters and 80 color photographs he took of the pasturelands, animals and people that surround him.

These images are a wonderful addition to his story, and the new book is filled with soulful observations as well as fun. “Truth be told, I don’t like shepherd’s pie,” he admits. “I know this is a bit like Kim Kardashian saying she doesn’t like shopping, but it’s true.”

Truth be told, Rebanks’ two books are an unusually satisfying treat. 

 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Five new books showcase the stunning natural beauty that surrounds us from below and above, whether it’s a delicate feather of a spotted owl or an ethereal vision of an ancient tree basking in the light of the Milky Way.
NonfictionPop CulturePhotographyFilmBiography

Tinseltown treats to put under the tree

Feature by Pat H. Broeske

For TV and film lovers, this year’s crop of books offer fun “best of” rankings, behind-the-scenes tours, photos from the vaults of Hollywood A-listers, touching tributes and more.

TOP PICKS IN TV
Is “The Simpsons” really the best TV show ever? Does “Deadwood” belong in the top 10? Is “The Larry Sanders Show” TV’s most influential series? Readers will be fighting for the remote and cruising Netflix to see how their picks compare with those of authors Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, who name the greatest American shows of all time in TV (The Book). In choosing the greatest scripted comedies and dramas, criteria included innovation, influence and storytelling. The bulk of the nods are for shows from the ’80s (when TV first hit its artistic stride, per the authors) through today. Still, “I Love Lucy” makes their top 10.

PIONEERING LEADING LADIES
For fans of Hollywood’s Golden Age, there are lavish, large-format celebrations of two indelible leading ladies. Audrey: The 50s tracks the early years of Audrey Hepburn’s career. Author David Wills utilizes his own photo archives to spotlight the actress and her movies, her relationships with colleagues (her Roman Holiday co-star Gregory Peck called her “a magical combination of high chic and high spirits”) and her undeniable impact on fashion, a Hepburn legacy that began with Sabrina. This carefully curated photographic retrospective contains restored shots of Hepburn from a decade of acting on sets like Funny Face and The Nun’s Story, with snippets from her interviews and charming candids of Hepburn at home. Audrey is a great gift for fashion and film lovers alike.


Hepburn on the set of Sabrina courtesy of Wills' collection.

Natalie Wood (Turner Classic Movies): Reflections on a Legendary Life is the first family-authorized book about the Oscar-nominated actress who starred in classics including Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story. Authored by Manoah Bowman with Natasha Gregson Wagner, Wood’s eldest daughter, this book has a straightforward agenda: to restore Wood’s legacy. As the opening chapter notes, her “accidental death” in 1981 has for too long overshadowed her life. Moving chronologically through her life and career, the chapters feature remembrances from various colleagues, friends and family. Fans will love the shots of Wood on the set of the iconic Rebel Without a Cause and other favorites like Splendor in the Grass, along with her magazine covers, wedding photos and never-before-seen images from her family’s private collection. An introduction penned by Robert Wagner, to whom she was famously twice married; her friend Robert Redford’s brief afterword; and a special chapter on the making of West Side Story make this a standout tribute.

FILMMAKING FINESSE
Let’s not forget the filmmakers. The Oliver Stone Experience is appropriately hefty, with 500 color photos and illustrations, including facsimiles of script pages and correspondence. This dramatically designed book looks at the life and work of one of Hollywood’s most audacious, controversial artists. Author Matt Zoller Seitz (co-author of the aforementioned TV) and Stone participate in a probing Q&A that provides an engaging through line in the book.

Stone doesn’t hold back about his privileged upbringing, his relationships with his parents and women, behind-closed-doors Hollywood dealings, how Vietnam changed his worldview and more. 

In the preface, Seitz states that this isn’t just a portrait of the director responsible for iconic films such as Scarface, Platoon, Wall Street, JFK and the loony Natural Born Killers, but a celebration of one of America’s film titans. The book wraps with Snowden, Stone’s latest eyebrow-raising and politically charged title. Love him or loathe him, his movies are never boring and neither is this book. For Stone’s followers, it’s a must-have.

IT'S "FRON-KEN-STEEN"
On the lighter side is Young Frankenstein, a collection of photos and ruminations about one of the funniest movies ever made. Written by beloved crazy man Mel Brooks, it’s got behind-the-scenes surprises plus never-before-seen art. Brooks’ voice comes through in his writing, and like the movie, it’s both distinctive and hilarious.

The 1974 film Young Frankenstein was the brainchild of the late Gene Wilder, who played Dr. Frederick Frankenstein. Their teamup, says Brooks, was “a fierce collaboration” marked by an especially big fight involving Wilder’s desire to have the movie’s monster perform the song and dance number, “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” If you’ve seen the film, you know who won that one.

In the book’s introduction, contemporary comedy king Judd Apatow calls the film “the comedy equivalent of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ or The Great Gatsby, or the ’86 New York Mets.” He won’t get any arguments.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

For TV and film lovers, this year’s crop of books offer fun “best of” rankings, behind-the-scenes tours, photos from the vaults of Hollywood A-listers, touching tributes and more.
NonfictionPhotographyLiteratureArts & CultureArt

Capturing the universal

Feature by Alice Cary

Past, present and future collide in glorious ways in these art and photography books, whether it’s a modern photographer witnessing history come alive on Civil War battlefields or a discussion of why the Yellow Brick Road was yellow in The Wizard of Oz.

LIFE LESSONS
When photographer Paul Mobley was working on his book American Farmer, he noticed that many of his subjects were age 100 or more, and was inspired to begin his next project: traveling to all 50 states and photographing at least one centenarian in each. After crisscrossing the country with his wife in an Airstream trailer, Mobley created a lively look at their lives in If I Live to Be 100: The Wisdom of Centenarians. 

His black-and-white portraits reveal plenty of spunk, personality and spirit, while Allison Milionis writes an accompanying profile of each subject. We meet Irving Olson of Tucson, Arizona, who was profiled in Smithsonian magazine at age 98 for his unbelievable photographs of colliding drops of water. Meet Margaret Wachs of Stratford, Connecticut, who swam 10 laps to raise money for her church on her 100th birthday. 

“Along the way,” Mobley notes, “I discovered a treasure trove of ideas and lessons on how we can all live gracefully and with meaning as we travel toward our final sunset.”

MODERN EYEWITNESS
A Civil War enthusiast since his childhood, photographer Michael Falco set out on a four-year, battlefield-to-battlefield odyssey coinciding with the war’s 150th anniversary. The result is the wonderfully haunting Echoes of the Civil War: Capturing Battlefields through a Pinhole Camera. “Soldiers’ journals and memoirs describe the battlefields as dreamlike,” Falco writes, “and that is how they appear through the patient eye of the pinhole camera.”

While exploring major battle sites from Bull Run to Appomattox, Falco became not just a chronicler but a re-enactor himself, dressing in period clothing as he set up his primitive wooden box camera, using modern film but no lens, viewfinder or shutter. Along with these evocative photos, Falco interweaves past and present through his narrative as he “tumbled down the rabbit hole of Civil War history.” Echoes of the Civil War will hold great appeal for history and photography buffs alike. 

DANCERS ON DISPLAY
One day, 12-year-old Sarah asked her photographer parents, Ken Browar and Deborah Ory, for pictures of her favorite dancers for her bedroom walls. They could find images of famous dancers of the past, but few, if any, of current stars. The couple rectified the situation through the NYC Dance Project, photographing a variety of dancers in the loft studio space of their Brooklyn home.

The Art of Movement is the spectacular result, a large book filled with arresting images of more than 70 dancers from companies that include the American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Royal Danish Ballet and London’s Royal Ballet.

As Ohry writes: “The images focus on capturing emotion through movement, which at the core is what I feel dance is about: it’s a language that is spoken through movement.” And what movements they are, as dancers soar through the air, draped in colorful costumes or couture clothing. Browar and Ory capture the rare blend of athleticism and grace in dancers like Misty Copeland, Bill T. Jones, Xin Ying and Robert Fairchild as they transform their bodies into art.

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
In A History of Pictures, renowned British artist David Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford explore a sweeping variety of pictures, including those on canvas, paper, cinema screens and even smartphones, showing how our ongoing artistic narrative “is still unfolding.” The result is a lively, dynamic conversation between Hockney and Gayford, written in alternating commentary. Pages juxtapose, for example, a Titian portrait of Mary Magdalene with a film still of Ingrid Berman in Casablanca, or Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe images with a Manet painting. In a chapter on “Movies and Stills,” they show how the Bates Motel in Psycho was based on Edward Hopper’s painting “House by the Railroad.” (As for the aforementioned Yellow Brick Road, it’s because early Technicolor was good with yellow.)

This book is an unexpected delight.

BRING ON THE BUNNIES
Brimming with over 200 photographs, paintings and sketches, The Art of Beatrix Potter provides an in-depth look at the creative process of one of the world’s enduringly beloved storytellers, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of her birth. Organized geographically by writer and image researcher Emily Zach, this volume explores how different places Potter lived affected not only her life but also her art, beginning with a London schoolroom filled with rabbits, mice, bats, guinea pigs and hedgehogs. A natural scientist at heart as well as a gifted observer, Potter became fascinated by a variety of things she encountered, such as fungi and their colors. Readers see examples of the “picture letters” that Potter wrote to friends that inspired The Tale of Peter Rabbit and the many books that followed. 

Lovers of art and children’s literature will get lost in this intriguing compilation of a lifetime of art.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Past, present and future collide in glorious ways in these art and photography books, whether it’s a modern photographer witnessing history come alive on Civil War battlefields or a discussion of why the Yellow Brick Road was yellow in The Wizard of Oz.
NonfictionPhotographyCrafts, Hobbies & HomeAnimals

Heavenly creatures

Feature by bookpagedev

Loving, entertaining, clever, confounding . . . our precious pets enrich our lives, and attentive pet owners are always looking for more: more ways to understand them, decode their behavior, have a closer relationship or pay tribute. These new books offer wonderful ways to do just that, via pet psychology, inspiring stories, poetry and creative DIY.

CAT CURIOSITY
With CatWise: America’s Favorite Cat Expert Answers Your Cat Behavior Questions, Pam Johnson-Bennett has created an informative, insightful go-to resource for current or aspiring cat owners. The author, a certified cat behaviorist for 30 years with eight bestsellers and a TV series under her belt, created the book to serve as an FAQ, but it’s also a work of advocacy. She writes, “[C]ats are often placed in a no-win situation. We . . . pick and choose what aspects of catness are acceptable, which usually means convenient—to us.” She urges readers to remember that, just like humans, cats are individuals. She also encourages readers to see cats’ more confounding behaviors as the problem-solving efforts they are, rather than attribute them to aloofness, spitefulness, etc. To wit, if your cat turns her back to you, she’s not being rude—it’s actually an expression of deep trust (i.e., she doesn’t have to keep a suspicious eye on you). Readers can choose sections of interest, specific questions (Why does my cat eat grass?), or read straight through from babyhood to the golden years. Whether readers are considering a new kitten or caring for a longtime feline companion, there’s much to learn from Johnson-Bennett’s patient, smart, encouraging expertise. 

It’s also important for dog owners to resist preconceived notions and pay attention to individual personalities, as Victoria Stilwell explains in The Secret Language of Dogs: Unlocking the Canine Mind for a Happier Pet. The author, an accomplished trainer and host of the TV series “It’s Me or the Dog,” writes, “Like humans, dogs communicate consciously and unconsciously, using body and vocal signals that reflect what they are thinking and feeling.” Recognizing and responding to them (while remembering that doggy intent may not be the same as human interpretation) encourages a strong, happy relationship. The book covers everything from tone of voice (high = playful, low = serious) to the reason bitter spray won’t stop inappropriate chomping (bitterness receptors are on the back of dogs’ tongues, so they won’t taste it on a shoe). Photos and illustrations are helpful for deciphering body language. Throughout, Stilwell shares her knowledge while advocating for a consistent, loving approach to training and caring for dogs.

OLDIES BUT GOODIES
An adorable, fuzzy-headed senior dog named Susie turned out to be the key to unlocking Erin Stanton’s passion for helping senior dogs find forever homes. After she began co-parenting the pooch with husband Brandon Stanton, of Humans of New York fame, “Improving their lonely, vulnerable lives became my purpose,” she writes in Susie’s Senior Dogs: Heartwarming, Tail-Wagging Stories from the Social Media Sensation. Stanton realized that, like her husband, she could use social media to spur change, and it’s working: The Susie’s Senior Dogs Facebook page has 585,000-plus followers, and the eponymous nonprofit organization has helped arrange 500 adoptions of senior dogs. This book is sure to inspire more. It’s a charming collection of adoption stories, plus profiles of inspiring dog-centric sorts like a longtime city shelter volunteer and a rescue dog photographer. Photos abound, and the book is dotted with tips from Susie, who says, “Don’t be scared of old age. Great things still do happen.” She sure would know.

QUOTH THE FELINE BARD
Jennifer McCartney is a writer and humorist who struck a chord with her bestseller The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place. Her new book, Poetry from Scratch: A Kitten’s Book of Verse, is a “collection of the best (and only) cat poetry in existence.” She discovered the collection in Milan, you see, where the owners of a century-old cat cafe had faithfully been transcribing the feline residents’ literary efforts. Now, everyone can enjoy poems like “The Rodent Not Taken” (“I took the one less fit and spry/And that has made all the difference.”) and “Ode to a Sunbeam.” There’s also beat poetry (“88 Lines About 44 Cats”), plus haiku and limericks. This is funny stuff for poets, cat lovers, poetic cats, catty poets and whoever else might appreciate a literarily inclined laugh.

ADORABLE CAT ABODES
DIY meets cat worship in Cat Castles: 20 Cardboard Habitats You Can Build Yourself, a how-to guide for creating fanciful and functional cat habitats. As Carin Oliver notes, although cats “are experts at relaxing,” they are “not great at arts and crafts. That’s where you come in.” Though it’s likely a curious cat will want to “help” when they see construction begin, that shouldn’t prove a hindrance, because Oliver’s instructions and diagrams are clear and easy to follow—and she devotes many pages to proper preparation via detailed materials lists, basic techniques and design tips. Projects include a castle, airplane, condo, nap tubes, couch and the especially hilarious and on-trend food truck. Lots of fun for budding builders—or those who just want to look at lots of photos of cats as they climb, hide, play and explore a variety of cardboard domiciles.

FEELING SQUIRRELLY
The cover of How to Keep a Pet Squirrel—a wide-eyed red squirrel on a trapeze—will inspire delight in those who see the furry tree-dwellers as cute . . . and stomach-clenching angst in those who consider them birdseed-stealing, wire-gnawing miscreants. More lively, witty illustrations from Axel Scheffler (The Gruffalo) accompany the text, which Scheffler discovered while paging through a circa-1910 children’s encyclopedia. While the book isn’t actually advocating squirrel adoption, peaceful coexistence might feel more achievable after reading it. This would be a delightful gift for an animal lover, or a funny way to tweak someone who talks perhaps a bit too much about their ongoing battles with these resourceful rodents.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Loving, entertaining, clever, confounding . . . our precious pets enrich our lives, and attentive pet owners are always looking for more: more ways to understand them, decode their behavior, have a closer relationship or pay tribute. These new books offer wonderful ways to do just that, via pet psychology, inspiring stories, poetry and creative DIY.
FictionPhotographyArt

Look not with the eye, but with the heart

Feature by Alice Cary

Feast your eyes on color, composition and personalities galore in these photography and art books, which include a landmark offering from Annie Leibovitz, a collection of artful fiction, never-before-published photos of Julia Child in France, as well as William Wegman’s charming, artsy dogs.

Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016 is both breathtaking and mind-blowing, a journey unlike any other. Gorgeous, mesmerizing, fascinating—words don’t fully encapsulate the vitality of Leibovitz’s photographs.

The sheer heft of this volume will ensure that you sit with it a while—as well you should—to appreciate the variety and versatility of Leibovitz’s subjects, which include celebrities, artists, writers, politicians and more. The book’s large scale renders the images nearly life-size, drawing you in to the many faces: Stephen Hawking gazes piercingly from his wheelchair, Johnny Depp drops a hint of a smile, a sun-drenched African mother fills a bedroom with her loving warmth as she works to prevent babies from being born HIV-positive. Time after time, Leibovitz captures hearts and souls, bringing viewers right there with her as she snaps her shutter.

(Lin-Manuel Miranda, New York City, 2015. From Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016. © Annie Leibovitz.)

In a short essay, Leibovitz writes, “I often wish that my pictures had more of an edge, but that’s not the kind of photographer I have come to be. There are all kinds of circumstances that determine the outcome of a single shoot. The edge in my work is probably in the accumulation of images. They bounce off one another and become elements in a bigger story.”

It’s a very big story indeed.

A MUSEUM OF FICTION
Alive in Shape and Color: 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired offers a unique armchair gallery tour, but one warning: You’ll probably never look at these paintings the same way again. Last year, Lawrence Block edited a surprise hit, In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper. This year’s follow-up is every bit as intriguing, with a slightly different spin, allowing writers to use any painting as a springboard for a short story. The paintings are wonderfully varied, including Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Norman Rockwell’s “First Trip to the Beauty Shop” and even a sculpture, Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. There are many blockbuster writers as well: Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child and Michael Connelly. The fun comes in seeing how each author makes use of his or her artistic inspiration. Alive in Shape and Color is a funfest of surprises.

WHO’S A GOOD DOG?
It’s ironic but fitting that a new book of more than 300 photo­graphs of Weimaraners is titled William Wegman: Being Human, but few would argue the choice after seeing Wegman’s soulful, evocative, always imaginative and often hilarious portraits.

Photography curator William A. Ewing showcases old favorites alongside new images from Wegman’s personal archives, spanning five decades and featuring a variety of his dogs, including, of course, Man Ray and Fay Ray. The book is divided into 16 categories, such as the delightful “Masquerade” and the artful “Nudes.” All are wonderful, but the “human” categories (“People Like Us,” “People We Like”) tug at readers in unforgettable ways, like in “Night Man,” as a Weimaraner wearing bib overalls and pushing a broom looks weary but resigned to his task. Don’t miss the brief essays at the end in which Wegman discusses his work and his dogs.

FOOD, FRANCE AND JULIA
France Is a Feast: The Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child lives up to its name, presenting a rich treasure-trove of photography, biography, history and culinary lore. Here’s your chance to page through the photo albums of Paul Child, narrated by his great-nephew Alex Prud’homme, who co-authored My Life in France with Julia and wrote The French Chef in America.

Paul was a gifted artist and photographer as well as a Foreign Service officer. Julia called him “the Mad Photographer”; his work is in the Museum of Modern Art, and he seriously considered becoming a professional artist or photojournalist. Prud’homme calls the book “a visual extension of Julia’s memoir, an extension that lets Paul’s imagery take the lead.” And while Paul’s arresting, artful images offer a fascinating glimpse of the couple’s life in France between 1948 and 1954, it’s the photos of Julia that are strikingly intimate: Julia kneeling near her cat in the couple’s apartment; her nude silhouette in front of a sunlit window in Florence; Julia talking on the phone, with only her long, outstretched legs visible, but her warm, hearty laugh so easy to imagine.

BIG, NATURAL ART
English artist Andy Goldsworthy has been making large-scale, environmental art exhibits around the world since the mid-1970s, and you’ll get to see how his work unfolds in Andy Goldsworthy: Projects. These large, beautiful photographs show Golds­worthy’s varied earth-moving processes in great detail, from beginning to end, which is as fascinating as the completed projects. A few of the many works discussed include clay houses in Maryland, Five Men, Seventeen Days, Fifteen Boulders, One Wall in New York state, a leaf house in Scotland and a cairn in Mallorca. You’ll just wish you could see them all in person.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Feast your eyes on color, composition and personalities galore in these photography and art books, which include a landmark offering from Annie Leibovitz, a collection of artful fiction, never-before-published photos of Julia Child in France, as well as William Wegman’s charming, artsy dogs.

NonfictionPhotographyLiterature

Gifts for feminists: Heroines of the world

Feature by Cat Acree

The perfect gifts for nasty women, persisters and resisters, these three books celebrate the power and magic of women.

HEROINES IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Open to any page of 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World and you’ll find a new role model. You’ve likely heard of many of the women included—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bobbi Brown—but many will be new faces, from humanitarian advocates to innovators and religious leaders. No woman falls into just one category, but they can all be labeled as brilliant.

For this series, 200 women from all over the world were asked the five same questions: What really matters to you? What brings you happiness? What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? What would you change if you could? And which single word do you most identify with? Their answers, if considered all at once, are nearly overwhelming for the vast inspiration they provide. But taken one at a time, they reveal each woman’s own story, in her own words—a precious thing indeed.

Margaret Atwood’s favorite word is “and” (“It means there is always something more.”), while Marama Fox, representative and co-leader of the Māori Party in New Zealand, identifies with the word “whanaungatanga”: “It is the idea that each of us needs each other and that there is none greater or lesser than another.” Author Isabel Allende shares the heartbreaking story of her daughter’s death and the harrowing process of transporting her from Madrid to the United States: “I learned the lesson that I am not in control. People have this idea that we come to the world to acquire things—love, fame, goods, whatever. In fact, we come to this world to lose everything. When we go, we have nothing and we can take nothing with us.” Actor Embeth Davidtz discusses showing her breast cancer scar on television: “I had never thought of myself as ugly after breast cancer, which is why it was so important to me to convey a confidant, well-put-together woman in a sexual light—to not have her scar dictate that she was less of a woman.”

Smart women, big dreamers and anyone who wants to make the world a better place will find countless new heroines here.

YOUR SISTER, YOUR NEIGHBOR
If 200 Women is about the minds of women—their wisdom, brilliance and resilience—then The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits is about their appearances. What is beauty, if women could define it for themselves? In these portraits of women from more than 50 countries, all captured by Mihaela Noroc, a photographer who has been traveling the globe since 2013, it becomes clear that beauty is in our differences. Page after page, we see women who are normal, real and utterly beautiful. The effect is kaleidoscopic—like holding a small piece of the world up to the light, and seeing all the races, nationalities, colors, sizes, styles and lives within.

Some portraits are paired with brief captions; some women are quoted; others might be noted only by the location. Portraits are often grouped by similarities, from poses to activities; activists in protests and rallies from New York, Greece and Turkey share a spread, as do women in traditional dress from Romania, Ecuador and North Korea.

If one thing unites all these different women, it is the lights in their eyes, and each page builds a sense of togetherness that needs no explanation.

THE POWER OF THE WITCH
Is there any greater magic than a good book? I think not, and if you agree (you should), you might love the idea that women writers are a lot like witches. “Witches and women writers alike dwell in creativity, mystery, and other worlds,” writes Taisia Kitaiskaia in Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers. “They aren’t afraid to be alone in the woods of their imaginations, or to live in huts of their own making. They’re not afraid of the dark.” Kitaiskaia has transformed 30 diverse writers into literary witches, from Emily Brontë to Zora Neale Hurston. Each woman has a two-page spread featuring a portrait (often styled as folk art or a religious icon) by Katy Horan and a list of recommended reading, a brief biography—and a fantastical description of the author as a witch.

Many are benevolent witches: Toni Morrison, “queen of miracles, generations, and memory,” can see a person’s ancestral pain in their skin and ferries ghosts across rivers. Audre Lorde, “warrior witch of otherness, bodies electric, and sisterhood,” is a goddess rising from a pond of lava, and women who approach are dipped in gold. Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad, “rebel of sensual love, green gardens, and perfume,” becomes an acacia tree whose naked spirit brings life to parched land. Others are full of rage and revenge: Sylvia Plath, “fury of motherhood, marriage, and the moon,” exists in three forms, one of which dismembers male mannequins.

There’s something intoxicating about imagining your favorite female writers as having spiritual powers. These women are magic—and so are you.

The perfect gifts for nasty women, persisters and resisters, these three books celebrate the power and magic of women.

NonfictionPhotography

Itty bitty gifts

Feature by Stephanie Koehler

To be the absolute perfect stocking stuffer, it helps to actually fit inside a stocking! These books may be small in size, but they are huge in laughs, sass, cuteness and joy.

A Charm of Goldfinches and Other Wild Gatherings: Quirky Collective Nouns of the Animal Kingdom

Best for:
Grammar nerds and animals lovers.

Why they’ll love it:
Through simple, colorful illustrations, they’ll pick up plenty of New Year’s Eve party trivia on collective nouns like “an ostentation of peacocks” and “a quiver of cobras.”

Favorite quote:
“There are many different kinds of buntings around the world and they are all as cute as a baby turtle’s birthday party.”

On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck

Best for:
Your punk cousin who used to skate in empty parking lots.

Why they’ll love it:
A professional skater offers in-your-face, nonsucky life advice, with tips on how to manage lame personalities such as the thunder-stealer, preference dictator, bores and fake-ass people.

Favorite quote:
“Being simply sucky is the basic case of suckiness: We encounter a social opening and fail to take it up.”

Daphne and Daisy: Pawtraits of Sausage Style

Best for:
Rabid dog-stagram fans; those who are known to sometimes wear a fancy hat.

Why they’ll love it:  
Two insanely cute dachshund sisters are caught on camera dressed up in huge sunglasses, assorted hats, pompoms, glittery heels and more.

Favorite quote:
“Favourite TV series, Sausage in the City, starring Carrie Bradpaw.”

Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living

Best for:
Your sister-in-law whose KonMari purge left the house sadly bereft of cozy wool throws.

Why they’ll love it:
This Swedish guide is like an Ikea catalog for your whole life. Nothing will ever be the same after you balance style and comfort by piling your hair in a Lykke Li bun, master the art of making Glögg and counter negative self-talk with oversize scarves.

Favorite quote:
“If you know what’s ‘just enough,’ why go overboard?”

To be the absolute perfect stocking stuffer, it helps to actually fit inside a stocking! These books may be small in size, but they are huge in laughs, sass, cuteness and joy.

NonfictionPhotographyLiteratureAnimals

For library dwellers and book hoarders

Feature by Julie Hale

The shelves are brimming with extra-special titles for bibliophiles. If there’s a discerning reader on your gift list, check out our must-have recommendations below. Here’s to a very literary holiday!

Poets and novelists can be solitary souls, but as Alison Nastasi reveals in Writers and Their Cats, they often have a rare appreciation for pets, especially of the feline variety. Featuring photos of 45 famous authors and their cat sidekicks, Nastasi’s purrrfectly charming book is filled with surprises, including a picture of a kitten-covered Stephen King. Sensational shots capture Alice Walker, Neil Gaiman, Gillian Flynn, Haruki Murakami and other beloved authors with cats at writing desks, in libraries and cozied up on sofas.

For the writer, what’s the allure of le chat? According to Nastasi, “The cat represents traits most appealing to the creative personality—qualities like mystery, cleverness, fearlessness, unpredictability, and sensuality.” Her book is catnip for literature lovers and an extraordinary celebration of kindred spirits.

© Underwood & Underwood / New York Times. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. From Writers and Their Cats by Alison Nastasi, published by Chronicle.

 

RA-RA-RUSSIAN LIT
Author Viv Groskop takes heart from the tales of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pushkin in The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature and looks at the morals and messages that can be gleaned from the masters’ works. With insight and humor, she examines 11 books and plays, revealing how her own experiences have been informed by timeless titles such as Dr. Zhivago, The Master and Margarita and War and Peace.

By chronicling the heartaches, dramas and hardships of daily existence, Russian literature can provide solace to the reader who seeks it. If you’re enmeshed in an ill-fated romance, Groskop prescribes A Month in the Country. Tormented by inner conflict? Pick up Crime and Punishment. Stories, Groskop says, “are as good at showing us how not to live as they are at showing us how to live.” Read and heed.

BOOK LOVER’S BOUNTY
An delightful compendium of literature-related history and trivia, Jane Mount’s Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany is one of the season’s standout gift selections. In this splendid treasury, Mount explores literary genres and shares the reading recommendations of librarians and booksellers from across the country. She also presents nifty lists of literature-based enterprises, like blockbuster book-into-movie projects (Emma, The Shining) and famous songs inspired by great books (Bowie’s “1984,” Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad”).

An avid reader since childhood, Mount has been painting what she calls Ideal Bookshelves, renderings of fellow bibliophiles’ favorite books, since 2008. Readers will enjoy perusing the colorfully illustrated, artfully assembled stacks that have become Mount’s trademark. Her artistic talents are on full display here in enchanting illustrations of meticulously detailed spines, book jackets, authors and notable libraries and bookstores.

Bibliophile is bliss for the book lover, from cover to cover.

LITERARY LIVING
Susan Harlan explores the estates, castles and cottages that appear in classic works of fiction in Decorating a Room of One’s Own: Conversations on Interior Design with Miss Havisham, Jane Eyre, Victor Frankenstein, Elizabeth Bennet, Ishmael, and Other Literary Notables. Harlan, who teaches English literature at Wake Forest University, brings scholarly expertise and epigrammatic wit to this guide to famous fictional figures’ digs.

Casting the literary hero as homeowner, the book features Apartment Therapy-style interviews with a wide cast of characters who expound upon design ideas and DIY projects. There’s plenty of decorating advice on offer: “If you own an abbey, don’t feel obligated to adopt an overly monastic style,” Emma’s Mr. Knightley counsels. “That would be badly done indeed!” From opulent (Pride and Prejudice’s Pemberley) to plainspoken (the March home in Little Women) to utterly inhospitable (Castle Dracula), the residences in this delightful volume run the gamut. Becca Stadtlander’s dainty illustrations make this a tour that readers will want to take again and again.

GALLERY OF GREATS
Growing up, photographer Beowulf Sheehan took refuge in books, and he pairs his twin passions to perfection in Author: The Portraits of Beowulf Sheehan, a gallery of 200 acclaimed contemporary writers, from Margaret Atwood to Colson Whitehead. Sheehan took his first author portraits in 2005 at the PEN World Voices Festival; by 2017, he’d photographed around 700 writers. His photos capture the idiosyncrasies and moods of each of his subjects, whether it’s a brooding Karl Ove Knausgaard or a radiant Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In the book’s introduction, he shares on-the-job anecdotes involving the likes of Donna Tartt, Chinua Achebe and Umberto Eco. With a foreword by Salman Rushdie, this revelatory volume will bring a sparkle to any bibliophile’s holiday.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The shelves are brimming with extra-special titles for bibliophiles. If there’s a discerning reader on your gift list, check out our must-have recommendations below. Here’s to a very literary holiday!

NonfictionPhotographyBlack History

Images of the past

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Photographs do more than commemorate a moment in time: They evoke emotion, capture our memories and offer new vantage points.

WE SHALL OVERCOME
Edited by Frist Art Museum curator Kathryn E. Delmez, We Shall Overcome: Press Photographs of Nashville During the Civil Rights Era captures an important period in civil rights history in Nashville. Some 100 images depict the first days of school integration, peaceful protests via sit-ins and renewed determination and sorrow after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Images of violent physical struggles stand in compelling contrast to snapshots of black children and their parents on the first day at a new school, their faces scared, resolute and perhaps hopeful. Congressman John Lewis, who appears in these photos as a young protester, writes in the foreword, “Our protests were love in action. We wanted to redeem not only our attackers, but the very soul of America.”

LETHAL BEAUTY
French photojournalist Yan Morvan has published images of serial killers, Hells Angels and war zones. With Battlefields, rather than documenting violent clashes, he’s turned his lens to what comes after. The seeming ordinariness of former battle sites makes this imposing yet illuminating book a thought-provoking read: A field dotted with shrubs, a crumbling stone wall and a mountain rising in the distance all invite consideration of what happened before, as seen from the perspective of a soldier on the front lines. The 430 photos of 250 war zones range from the Battle of Jericho (1315-1210 B.C.) to 2011’s Libyan Civil War. Readers may choose a specific historical era or embark on a then-to-now visual journey of contemplation.

COLOR AND CLARITY
In History as They Saw It: Iconic Moments from the Past in Color, Wolfgang Wild and Jordan Lloyd present 120 restored and colorized historical photos, from a well-known Dorothea Lange portrait to images of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge and Civil War veterans playing cards. Wild writes, “The past and the present were the same, are the same, and what has changed is not the nature of the present moment, but rather the technical recording capabilities of our cameras.” History as They Saw It succeeds in making its images (and the people and events they’ve captured) feel less remote. The age of the photos (which date from 1839 to 1949) recedes as the reader gazes upon portraits of Ellis Island immigrants, Jesse James and even the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. Well-researched and eminently interesting captions add context, and colorizer Lloyd describes his processes in a back-of-book section. Altogether, the collection offers an entertaining exploration of history, culture, art and photography.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Photographs do more than commemorate a moment in time: They evoke emotion, capture our memories and offer new vantage points.

NonfictionPhotographyNatureMemoirAnimals

For the animal aficionado

Feature by Julie Hale

Do you know someone who likes animals a lot more than they like people? We’ve rounded up a gaggle of delightful books that celebrate creatures great and small.

Award-winning naturalist and author Sy Montgomery has visited remote regions of the world to study some of nature’s most uncommon creatures. She looks back on what she’s learned from them about communication, sensitivity and kindness in How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals, beautifully illustrated by Rebecca Green. In this funny, moving book, Montgomery recounts transformative episodes with beasts both domesticated and exotic. “Being with any animal is edifying,” she writes, “for each has a knowing that surpasses human understanding.” From Clarabelle, a “pretty and elegant” tarantula, to the playful, 40-pound Pacific octopus Octavia, the animals in Montgomery’s book have unique dispositions that align them with humankind. Montgomery’s writing is rich and lyrical, her insights invaluable. And as all animal lovers know, “Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways.”

HONORING THE ANIMALS
A touching tribute to the creatures we let into our hearts and homes, Love Can Be: A Literary Collection About Our Animals brings together contributions from a remarkable lineup of authors. Susan Orlean, Lalita Tademy, Rick Bass, Joyce Carol Oates, Alexander McCall Smith and Juan Felipe Herrera are among the 30 writers spotlighted in this excellent anthology. Standout selections include a moving essay by Delia Ephron about the bond between pets and humans; Dean Koontz’s remembrance of his golden retriever, Trixie; and an ingenious cat-inspired poem by Ursula K. Le Guin. Literature fans will love the photos of authors and their animal companions that accompany each piece. In keeping with the spirit of the season, proceeds from sales of the book will go to animal charities. This is a heartwarming, hopeful anthology.

PAMPERED POOCHES
In Puppy Styled: Japanese Dog Grooming: Before & After, Grace Chon celebrates dog grooming the Japanese way, with hand-scissoring techniques to create cuts that play up the personalities of canine clients. For this irresistible volume, Chon—an acclaimed pet photographer—snapped nearly 50 pups as they transitioned from scruffy to smart. She writes that Japanese dog grooming “has one objective: to make the dog as cute as possible!” Cuteness undoubtedly abounds in the book, along with fresh ideas for turning your frowzy mutt into a chic chien. Check out Rocco, a Yorkshire terrier whose bangs get lopped into an asymmetrical ’do, or Bowie, a bichon frise whose wayward tangles are trimmed to form a fluffy nimbus. From start to finish, Puppy Styled is crammed with tail-wagging glamour.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Do you know someone who likes animals a lot more than they like people? We’ve rounded up a gaggle of delightful books that celebrate creatures great and small.

PhotographyArt

A feast for the eyes

Feature by Julie Hale

For the visual aesthete, a gorgeous book is always a great gift. If you’re shopping for a gallery-goer, an artist or someone who could use a creative boost, check out one of the bright selections below.

During a 23-year career that has taken her to 70 countries, Pulitzer- Prize winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario has documented the turmoil in hotspots like Libya, Pakistan and Iraq. Twice kidnapped in the line of duty, she delivers a spectacular retrospective of her work with Of Love & War, a majestic collection that captures the drama of everyday existence in war zones around the world. With chapters chronicling Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the refugee crisis and women in the military, the volume is a testament to the endurance of humanity. Excerpts from Addario’s diaries and personal correspondence, along with essays by war correspondent Dexter Filkins and others, provide context for the images. Addario explains that bearing witness to conflict is part of what drives her work. Photography is “proof,” she says. “There is no disputing an image.” And there is no disputing the impact of this revelatory collection.

SURVEY OF AESTHETICS
Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh formed the New York design firm Sagmeister & Walsh in 2012, and they’re quite a team. He’s from Austria; she’s a native New Yorker. He’s created album covers for David Byrne and the Rolling Stones; she’s a website-design whiz who’s worked with Barneys, Levi’s and Jay-Z. Together, they’ve produced an intriguing new volume, Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty, an in-depth exploration of a timeless topic. Drawing upon the work of philosophers and scientists, the authors evaluate the complex power of beauty and its effects on our emotions and actions. They also take stock of the cultural landscape, with a look at developments in advertising, fashion and architecture, and the ways in which aesthetics factor into their impact. With an elegant slipcase, innovative graphics and page after page of stunning imagery, this is a book you can judge by its cover. From start to finish, Beauty lives up to its title.

A CREATIVE SISTERHOOD
During her art-student days, Danielle Krysa noticed that her textbooks were decidedly slanted toward male artists. She turns the tables with A Big Important Art Book (Now with Women): Profiles of Unstoppable Female Artists—and Projects to Help You Become One. In this inspiring volume, Krysa—a painter, collagist and founder of the art website the Jealous Curator—spotlights an international roster of women working in a range of mediums. Polish crochet artist Olek uses yarn to cover everything from a life-size train to the bull that stands on Wall Street. Bunnie Reiss designs whimsical murals that reflect her Eastern European background. Along with breathtaking visuals, each chapter contains a thoughtful exercise that can help readers turn their creative aspirations into realities. “Every artist is a storyteller in some way,” Krysa writes. Whether you’re a dedicated maker or a part-time dabbler, this book can show you how to access and share your own special story.

From Oliver Jeffers. Copyright © 2018 by Oliver Jeffers. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Rizzoli.

 

MASTER OF MANY MEDIUMS
Words fail to do justice to the genius on display in Oliver Jeffers: The Working Mind and Drawing Hand. A native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Jeffers is an acclaimed artist and author. Now 41 and based in Brooklyn, he’s given TED talks, collaborated with U2 and produced an astonishing body of work, with drawings, collages, installations, paintings and picture books that range from surreal to playful to politically pointed. Jeffers’ new volume offers a wonderful sampling of this output. His singular vision shines forth in works that tweak cultural icons (Lady Liberty holds aloft a tiny match instead of a torch in the drawing “New Liberty”) and address social issues (guns grow on a tree in the collage “Land of Plenty”). Throughout, Jeffers provides input on his working methods and milestone projects. With an intro by Bono, this magnificent volume is a must for the art lover.

A VIEW OF HUMANKIND
In Civilization: The Way We Live Now, curators William A. Ewing and Holly Roussell have assembled a captivating visual chronicle of contemporary life across the globe that features images by today’s top photographers, including Thomas Struth, Larry Sultan, Lauren Greenfield and Cindy Sherman. The book was inspired, Ewing writes, by “an appreciation of the phenomenal complexity of civilization, and a curiosity to see how different photographers have dealt with it.” Indeed, Civilization presents a mosaic of moods, textures and techniques. The volume is organized into eight sections that address unique aspects of modern culture, from the cities we’ve constructed to the technological wonders we’ve conceived. Intimate portraits and teeming crowds bring home the diverse nature of humanity. Capturing the multiplicity of lived experience in an era of accelerated change, this provocative collection is a classic of its kind.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

For the visual aesthete, a gorgeous book is always a great gift. If you’re shopping for a gallery-goer, an artist or someone who could use a creative boost, check out one of the bright selections below.

NonfictionPhotographyCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: Become a ‘Gram master

Feature by Susannah Felts

If you have an Instagram account, it’s almost certain you’ve wondered about the ways of Instagram “influencers,” people who make a living by mastering this photo-sharing social media service. Tezza (née Tessa Barton) demystifies it all in Instastyle. Total newb to Instagram? Tezza is here with the absolute basics on setting up an account and photography 101 tips. But she also digs deep into concepts like weekly workflow, creating grid layouts, the art of the “flat lay,” writing captions, running contests, editing tools, styling food for photos and more. (Sample tip: Odd numbers appeal to the eye.) It might all seem, humorously, a little much to those of us who casually document our pets, babies and the occasional vacation. But I found this peek into the high-stakes influencer game fairly fascinating—and I can’t help but imagine that a few decades from now, after technology has marched on, this book will surely be a wonderful “how we lived then” relic. Right now, it’ll make a great holiday gift for the budding ’Grammer in your life.

THE ARTISTS’ WAY
In Artists’ Homes: Live/Work Spaces for Modern Makers, photographer and author Tom Harford Thompson lets the smallest details in the homes and workspaces of U.K.-based artists do the work of telling their stories. For this project, Thompson insisted on no styling, staging or “tidying up,” and the resulting images hum with quiet authenticity. “Some may dismiss these details as just so much clutter,” he writes, “but they often tell us more about the people who live there than their choice of sofa or new car.” The artists and makers include a potter, a sculptor, a classic-car dealer, a journalist and many more. Tidbits of backstory are tucked into thoughtful captions surrounding photos, so people, rather than places, are the real subjects here. This book feels less intended as design inspiration and more as an unfiltered peek into creative lives.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES
A similar approach can be found in famed stylist Wendy Goodman’s May I Come In?: Discovering the World in Other People’s Houses. Like Thompson, Goodman, driven by curiosity, makes a study of the interiors of artistic individuals. “[T]he most captivating rooms exist where decoration is a by-product of a person’s passions in life,” she writes. But Goodman’s quest is fueled by A-list access, and the spaces she explores belong to figures like Richard Avedon, Donatella and Gianni Versace and Todd Oldham. The homes on display here are sometimes quite posh and ornate, and other times more modest but rip-roaringly colorful, bursting with aesthetic whimsy. Goodman’s introductory essays are wonderful soupçons of observation; of Gloria Vanderbilt, she writes, “Nothing better illustrates her originality, or instinct for design, than the bedroom she created on East Sixty-Seventh Street, where she covered every inch of the room—walls, floor, and ceiling—with a collage of cut-up quilts.” Come, settle in for a look at the living quarters of the cultural elite.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Go on a behind-the-scenes tour of the homes of artists and tastemakers in this month's Lifestyles column.
NonfictionPhotographyNature

It’s home, and it’s the only one we’ve got

Feature by Alice Cary

The world never stops being amazing and mysterious, as these four books remind us. Each offers a unique perspective, challenging readers to observe their surroundings as never before.

Who wouldn’t want to see the photo album of astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the International Space Station? Infinite Wonder: An Astronaut’s Photographs from a Year in Space is a remarkably mesmerizing accomplishment, especially given the microgravity environment. Kelly not only had to brace himself and his camera to keep from floating around but also had to pan the camera quickly when focusing his lens on Earth, galloping by at 17,500 miles per hour.

Take a look inside the phone booth-size quarters where Kelly slept in a green sleeping bag attached to a wall. Check out his space-walk selfies and a shot of him watching his twin brother Mark’s appearance on “Celebrity Jeopardy.” Kelly took dazzling shots of sunsets, sunrises, auroras, New York City, Hurricane Patricia and Paris after the 2015 terrorist attack. Following in the footsteps of his artist mother, to whom this book is dedicated, he also created “Earth Art,” amazingly colorful photos that vary from realistic shots to the seemingly abstract, showing islands in the Bahamas, fiery Peruvian volcanoes and an opalescent Iran resembling shimmering gold filaments.

True to its title, Infinite Wonder offers an amazing array of jaw-dropping photographs unlike any you’ve ever seen before.

Lotus flower from Flora. © Dorling Kindersley: Gary Ombler/Kew Gardens, 2018.

 

PLANT PEERING
How about a botany primer on steroids? The subject bursts to life with a winning combination of stunning photographs and clear, concise scientific explanations in Flora: Inside the Secret World of Plants. Such lavishness comes naturally; the book is a joint venture between the Smithsonian and London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As Smithsonian Gardens Director Barbara W. Faust explains in her foreword: “The otherworldly beauty of the magnified subjects made me feel like I had landed on Lilliput and happened upon old friends who had been supersized!”

This weighty tome takes on the fundamentals with chapters on stems and branches, seeds and fruits, roots, leaves, flowers and plant families. Within each chapter are fabulous arrays of topics: nitrogen fixing, the strangler fir, fragrant traps, exploding seedpods and a variety of mini essays on plants in art. The photographs will lure you in like insects to a Venus flytrap. See the fine hairs that cover stinging nettles, the volcanic center of a corpse flower and the soft, springy tissues of a furled fern.

Spend some time with Flora, and you’re bound to look at the world differently.

FRESH, FANCIFUL TAKES
It’s easy to get lost in the pages of Seeing Science: An Illustrated Guide to the Wonders of the Universe, a marvelous mishmash of facts and illustrations by artist and lay scientist Iris Gottlieb. This unusual collection, perfect for browsing, is divided into sections covering life, Earth and the physical sciences. Readers of all ages and diverse scientific backgrounds will find factoids of interest: In 1970, two bullfrogs were sent into space to test motion sickness because their internal systems of balance are similar to humans’. Or how about this: Some ghost “encounters” can be explained by the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, which causes hallucinations.

Gottlieb’s illustrations are fun, funky and informative, and her quirky sense of humor and intellectual curiosity up the entertainment value of Seeing Science.

FOREST BATHING
If all the data about climate change has left you down in the dumps, revitalize yourself with The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition, an abridged edition of German forester Peter Wohlleben’s bestselling book about the many secrets of our deep-rooted forest friends. This seems like a book that’s meant to be illustrated, after all, and these luminous photographs from around the world underscore Wohlleben’s intriguing explanations and arguments.

Just as Temple Grandin has revolutionized the way people think about livestock, Wohlleben is changing the conversations people have about trees by revealing the ways they react and communicate in social networks. While this book is full of inspiring photographs, it’s also meant to be read, not simply perused. Happily, Wohlleben’s lively writing style makes that a snap, with passages that ask, “So why do trees live so long? After all, they could grow just like wild flowers: grow like gangbusters for the summer, bloom, set seed, and then be recycled into humus.”

Tackling everything from “Community Housing” (animals and insects that inhabit trees) to “Street Kids” (urban trees), The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition leads readers on a thought-provoking nature expedition.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The world never stops being amazing and mysterious, as these four books remind us. Each offers a unique perspective, challenging readers to observe their surroundings as never before.

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