Scenes in a Library by Carol Armstrong @ Art & Architecture book

Scenes in a Library by Carol Armstrong
Today we are so accustomed to seeing photographs wedded to text-whether in the family album or daily newspaper -- that the verbal framing of the photograph has become invisible. The text is internalized within the image, and the meaning of the photograph becomes clear and self-evident, as if by the evidence of the photograph itself. In Scenes in a Library Carol Armstrong explores the experimental moment, at the inception of the new medium, when the word came to haunt the photographic image, and the forty or so years -- roughly from the 1840s to the 1880s -- during which the photographic image alternately resisted and became assimilated to the printed page. Armstrong`s emphasis is on British books. Not only was it in an English book that the paper photograph was first described and published, but the range of subject matter of nineteenth-century British photographically illustrated books prior to the 1880s was as rich as it was peculiar and sometimes recalcitrant. Armstrong focuses on one book about photography (Talbot`s The Pencil of Nature); one scientific book (Anna Atkins`s Photographs of British Algae); two travel narratives, one factual and one fictional (Francis Frith`s Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Observed and his illustrated edition of Longfellow`s novel Hyperion: A Romance); and one book of poetry (Julia Margaret Cameron`s Illustrations to Alfred Lord Tennyson`s Idylls of the King); as well as some miscellaneous books from the 1870s. According to Armstrong, art history has tended to remove the historic photograph from its printed and published context. Moving back and forth between close looking and equally close reading, she reinserts the photograph into the bookfrom which it was taken.

AUTHOR: Carol Armstrong
PUBLISHER: MIT Press
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Art & Architecture

Stroheim by Arthur Lenning
In this riveting biography of silent film star Erich von Stroheim, author Arthur Lenning tracks the actor and director's amazing climb from New York City poverty to Hollywood fortune and fame. Lenning portrays Stroheim as a brilliant spirit who met a tragic fate in the corrupt film industry.

AUTHOR: Arthur Lenning
PUBLISHER: University Press of Kentucky
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Art & Architecture

MOBocracy
Robinson suggests that the poll-obsessed media and its army of left-leaning pollsters are ruinous to democracy.
CATEGORY: Art & Architecture

The Phantom Menace by George Lucas, Michael Cumpsty
The first of a trilogy of prequels to the much-loved Star Wars series, THE PHANTOM MENACE introduces the young Obi-Wan Kenobi and even-younger Anakin Skywalker as they become embroiled in an intergalactic conspiracy involving the trade embargo of Naboo, a planet ruled by young Queen Amidala--who will also loom large in the legend of Star Wars.

AUTHOR: George Lucas, Michael Cumpsty
PUBLISHER: Random House Audio Publishing Group
FORMAT: Audio
CATEGORY: Audio Books

Into the Wilderness by Bev Doolittle, Mark Mardon, Stephen Lyman
utiful paintings and extraordinary photos. Through Lyman`s art, and in the words of writer and former Sierra magazine editor Mark Mardon, the reader can experience the deep quiet of the woods, find serenity at the water`s edge, climb mountains, and be at home in the wilderness.

AUTHOR: Bev Doolittle, Mark Mardon, Stephen Lyman
PUBLISHER: Artisan
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Art & Architecture

California Crazy & Beyond by Jim Heimann
With nearly 400 illustrations, this entertaining collection of structures, from the offbeat (a dog-shaped hot-dog stand) to the truly bizarre (a house designed to look like an abandoned boat), celebrates the wacky architecture that began in Southern California.

AUTHOR: Jim Heimann
PUBLISHER: Chronicle Books LLC
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Art & Architecture