Art & Culture: Streisand: In the Camera Eye

Almost from the moment she appeared on the scene in the early 1960s, Barbra Streisand had been a icon.

At first, she was a curiosity. How could a skinny girl from Brooklyn with a stubborn nose and slightly crossed eyes ever make it in show business? Well, we started with that voice of hers. And with a voice like that, who cares what she looks like?

Except people did care. And by the end of her first public performance, she began to take on the sheen and luster of a star, as well as all the trappings. People began to see her beauty. Magazines began to flaunt her fashion sense. She wasn’t just a singer, not just an actress. She was a force.

Streisand: In the Camera Eye (Harry N. Abrams), the new book by frequent Streisand biographer James Spada, examines her life in a series of 170 photographs, many never before published. Instead of recounting her life in words, he recounts it in images accompanied by short contextual essays. But it’s the photos here that amaze.

Here’s Barbra very early on, looking more than a little like a Modigliani painting. Here she is on stage in “Funny Girl,” and then later in the movie. Here are images from her 60s TV specials, as well as Hello Dolly; What’s Up, Doc?; The Way We Were; A Star is Born; Yentl; and all the rest. There are also photos from album cover shoots, some photos from magazines, concerts, and more -- a true chronicle of the woman and her work. Both career overview (50 years and counting) and photo essay galore, Streisand: In the Camera Eye is a collection of images that, taken together, form the portrait of a woman who is always the same yet constantly changing. Where early shots show us her shy vulnerability and her less-than-assured presence in front the camera, others reveal her increasing comfort, and later her embrace of it. ◊

Art & Culture: Star Wars Art: Posters

Yes, I know: Who needs another book about Star Wars? Well, it turns out I did, and maybe you do too. Because Star Wars Art: Posters (Harry N. Abrams) is a different kind of Star Wars book.

We all know that George Lucas’ space saga has inspired countless novels, toys, musical interpretations, other movies and TV shows, and more. The reach of the film seems endless. But one area that needed a bit more exploration is posters.

Like all movies, each film has had its lobby posters, and this book features all of them. But even better are the other posters that the films inspired along the way. Some were done by heavy-hitter artists like Drew Struzan and Roger Kastel, some by very talented fans, and many by people in-between.

While many artists were paid, some did their work because it was fun and because Star Wars moved them. And moved is what you will be when you get an up-close-and-personal look at the 120 posters in this book. You’ll find the classics, as I mentioned, but you’ll also find some of the sketches that came first, the little explorations that became the posters we know so well. The errors, too, and the first drafts. You’ll find art from all over the world, as well as versions of posters you may already know, concept drawings and paintings that helped shape the Star Wars universe, and much more.

These are posters used to advertise movies, radio programs, TV shows, gallery exhibitions, video games, and on and on. What they posters all have in common is that they bring the drama to life: the characters, the action, and sometimes the larger questions about life in that galaxy far, far away. 

Rather than a collection of posters, which always feature creative blocks at the bottom (the credits), Star Wars Art: Posters does away with that distraction, treating these works of art as what they are: art. I was surprised at how much difference that made when looking at these images. They come alive truly alive, and tell a story that we all know and in a way that’s fresh. ◊

Review: The Art of Deception

Seeing is believing, so they say. But I’m betting “they” never saw The Art of Deception: Illusions to Challenge the Eye and the Mind  (Imagine).

More than a collection of optical illusions (though it surely is that), The Art of Deception features painting, photography and graphic design that’s made to make you look twice. Or three times. These are works that scream out to you: “Hold on a sec, all is not what it seems.”

Take Liu Bolin’s photograph of a small wooded area near Beijing. Looks innocent enough, until you notice the sly presence of a man standing right in front of you. Is he painted to blend in? Is he transparent? Or Ben Heine’s photograph of a drawing that offers a bird’s eye perspective of a nest of what could be skyscrapers. A young man is holding the drawing in such a way that he seems to be floating above them, looking down into them. Or how about Nikita Prokhorov’s tessellation art, in which figures are intertwined in what could be endless patterns? Or Oscar Reutersvard’s impossible figure designs?

 There’s really almost too much here to marvel at, and your eyes will widen to amazed orbs as you take it all in. From Punya Mishra’s ambigram of the word “good” with the word “evil” embedded inside it, to Guido Daniele’s paintings of animals on hands, The Art of Deception is a brilliant study of how artists from across the globe see and bend the world around them. It’s not so much a game, though it can be, as it is an interpretation of the world as they see it. Their juxtapositions surprise, then illuminate, and finally provide “a-ha!” moments that leave you smiling.

This wonderful book features a foreword by John Langdon, king of the ambigram, and bite-sized essays about each work of art. They don’t give the secret of the work away, but each one offers a glimpse into the mind of the artist and a peek at what he or she is trying to accomplish within each piece. ◊

Govier Dissects Nursery Rhymes

In her new book, Half For You and Half For Me (Whitecap), Katherine Govier, one of Canada’s best loved novelists, takes a close look at a very different form: the nursery rhyme.

In Half For You and Half For Me: Best-Loved Nursery Rhymes and the Stories Behind Them, Govier takes a whimsical look at the meaning behind popular nursery rhymes.

Who was Wee Willie Winkie? 
Did live blackbirds really fly out of a pie? 
Was Humpty Dumpty a person -- or clumsy cannon?
What is the magic and what is the meaning of these rhymes that stay in our heads for a lifetime?

According to Govier, the answers are as fascinating as the rhymes themselves. In Half For You and Half For Me she breaks the codes of those well-loved rhymes to bring context to what can seem like outdated thoughts and actions.

For Govier, it’s all part of a deeply personal journey. “Ninety-five years ago,” she writes, “when my mother was born, her parents bought a beautiful book: The Jessie Willcox Smith Mother Goose. They read it to her while she sat on their knees. When she was old enough for crayons and scissors, she expressed her affection all over the pages. She kept it until she grew up and became a mother. Thirty years passed and I had two children of my own. When we visited their grandparents, the Mother Goose came out, and we read together. Now my kids are grown up. Soon I may have grandchildren. This year she gave me her vintage Mother Goose. Antiquarians say the Jessie Willcox Smith collection is the best ever published, with its beautiful colour plates and lovely thick paper. A good condition copy sells for $750. But ours is falling apart, its spine like shredded wheat, its pages floating, cut up and crayoned upon.”

Whimsically illustrated by Sarah Clement, Half For You and Half For Me will be equally enjoyed by adults and children.

January Magazine’s 2000 interview with Govier is here.

Art & Culture: The Rude Story of English by Tom Howell

In author Tom Howell’s opinion, before he got to it, there were two main problems with the officially stated story of the English language. First, because of a development time that stretches over hundreds of years and many countries, there is no central hero. Two, previous histories had been too busy being polite to get down to the nitty gritty essential to doing the story justice.

In The Rude Story of English (McClelland & Stewart) Howell fixes both errors. And judging from the sparkling result, he was just the right guy for the job because it is, in many ways, a flawless book. Taking what in other hands has often been tedious, uninteresting and even (by way of omission) inaccurate, Howell creates a book not only dead interesting, it’s also Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy funny. Howell knows how to tell a story. For one thing, he begins at the beginning:

The story of the English language is actually quite cool. It contains some sad parts, but these are well dispersed among moments of beauty, hilarity, pauses for thought, lessons for us all, and ambiguous moral themes. It is, as the saying goes, all over the place.

Howell takes care of the lack of a central hero for his story in the style of the very best storytellers: he makes one up. We meet Hengest in 449 AD, a fearsome Germanic warrior who trips onto English soil… and swears. We meet Hengest throughout history, a familiar character in the always changing landscape of language.

Even if you think you know something about the history of the English language, you’ll learn a lot from Howell’s book. More: you’ll learn it with enjoyment and even laughter. ◊


David Middleton is the art and culture editor of January Magazine.

Holiday Gift Guide: Painters and the American West: Volume II edited by Joan Carpenter Troccoli

Art books make terrific gifts. Though they can be a little heavy for mailing, it’s easy to tailor your choice to the person you’re gifting, though finding the right art book for the right art lover is a big part of getting it right.

It seems to me you’d have a tough time going wrong with Painters and the American West: Volume II (American Museum of Western Art). It’s an impressive -- almost epic -- book, beautifully produced and lovingly annotated. It’s just a splendid art book, from any angle.

In a foreword, scholar and curator John Wildmerding offers literary and cultural context for the collection on view here. What started as the Anschutz Collection became Denver’s American Museum of Western Art in 2010, a stroke creating it as one of the foremost institutions to house a collection of the art of American West. And though that’s a compelling picture, Wildmerding insists it isn’t the complete one:

Through the collection’s concentration on the western story of the nation, we come to see what is distinctive as well as derivative about the region’s art, how it possessed its own vision while belonging to a larger American culture.

Because it is both a massive and luxurious book, the editors have been able to push the idea of “art book” to its widest edge. Examples of art by virtually every important western artist have been included, as well as many, many of the less important ones.

Each image reproduced gives context to a larger picture still as various important time periods in the shaping of the American west are explored, both historically and visually, through the art of that region and/or time. The result is… well, fantastic. Painters and the American West succeeds on virtually every level: art book, visual history and unthinkably heavy calling card for a museum that is one of the best of its kind in the world. ◊


Jones Atwater is a January Magazine contributing editor.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Secret Museum by Molly Oldfield

The title goes quite beyond explaining the book. The Secret Museum: Some Treasures Are Too Precious to Display (Firefly). But the book is about the museum you never see. The objects that are, for various reasons, tucked out of sight, hidden in secret locations and kept from public view.

Author Molly Oldfield tells us that all museums have these things: items too precious, or secret or controversial to be viewed by the steaming masses. “Usually there is more hidden than there is on display,” she writes in The Secret Museum. “There are all sorts of reasons why.”

Items that might be too fragile or too precious or simply too large, as is the case of a blue whale in the National Museum of Scotland at Edinburgh.

At the Royal Geographical Society in London, one will not see Livingstone and Stanley’s hats.

If you go to the Nobel Museum in Stockholm you also won’t see Alfred Nobel’s will (the museum is just too small for the atmospherically controlled display case that would be required to make it possible).

At the Royal Opera House in Kent, England you won’t see Dame Margot Fonteyn’s tutu from when she danced  the role of Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty in 1946. (A madly big deal at the time.)

At the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo you won’t see the logbook of the Kon-Tiki Expedition and at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London you won’t see the flag from the battle of Trafalgar.

In total, Oldfield looks closely at 60 items museums are keeping mum about, while mentioning many more. Those who love secrets, museums or just a twisty tale of the entirely true variety will enjoy The Secret Museum. ◊


Aaron Blanton is a contributing editor to January Magazine. He’s currently working on a book based on his experiences as an American living abroad.

Art & Culture: What W.H. Auden Can Do For You by Alexander McCall Smith

For some people The Art of War is a touchstone. A guide to living and to life. For others it is Tao Te Ching or even The Tao of Pooh. In his latest book, number one detective Alexander McCall Smith has an admission to make: his own personal touchstone is Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden.

“I believe  that reading the work of W.H. Auden may make a difference to one’s life,” Smith writes early in What W.H. Auden Can Do For You (Princeton), then spends the balance of the book convincing us. (In case we should need convincing.) But he does it gently, persuasively and even conversationally. “This is what Auden has meant to me,” he seems to be saying. “See what he, also, can mean to you.”

If you are a fan of Auden’s work, this is a must-read. If you have interest in it -- because of Four Weddings and a Funeral or for any other reason -- you would be well-advised to pick up this slender volume.

What W.H. Auden Can Do For You is the latest in a series from Princeton University Press. Others have been C.K. Williams On Whitman, Michael Dirda on Conan Doyle and Phillip Lopate on Sontag. According to the Princeton web site, the series is intended to be comprised of “brief, personal, and creative books in which leading contemporary writers take the measure of other important writers (past or present) who have inspired, influenced, fascinated, or troubled them in significant ways. These books illuminate the complex and sometimes fraught relationships between writers, while also revealing the close ties between creative and critical writing.”

In What W.H. Auden Can Do For You, historian, mystery writer and philosopher McCall Smith nails it on every count. ◊

Jones Atwater is a regular contributor to January Magazine.

New in Paperback: Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars by Camille Paglia

“Modern life is a sea of images,” intellectual provocateur Camille Paglia points out in her introduction to Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars, new in paperback this month from Vintage.

This flood of images, Paglia says, creates some new challenges. “The brain, overstimulated, must rapidly adapt to process this swirling barrage of disconnected data.” Mass media and “slavishly monitored personal electronic devices” have “liberated individual voices but paradoxically threatened to overwhelm individuality itself.”

Those, in a way, are some of the questions Paglia addresses. Her answer? “We must relearn to see.” At the same time, she maintains, attention to fine art has waned while sports, animated movies and video games command an ever larger chunk of viewer’s attentions. And she sounds an alarm that resonates through its truth: “The arts are fighting a rearguard action, their very survival at stake.”

Although it’s the beginning, this might not be the best place to start telling you about Glittering Images. Though it sounds like it from the introduction, Glittering Images isn’t a philosophical discussion about art. Or rather, it isn’t just that. It’s also a wonderful, thoughtful contemplation on art as well as a guide through specific styles and movements. The result is… well, pure Paglia. The book is one part introduction to western art, one part art history and one part pure commentary.

Glittering Images wraps Paglia’s passionate, energetic prose around well-reproduced illustrations. The book is thoughtful and, at times, even provocative. Anyone who has wanted to know more about western art or wondered where it’s heading will find Glittering Images rewarding and even eye-opening. It’s a terrific book. ◊


Linda L. Richards is the editor of January Magazine and the author of several books.

Art & Culture: Sign Painters by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon

I’m a graphic designer, so it’s easy for me to create a sign. With a computer and the right program, I can reproduce images and letters, over and over, with no loss of fidelity and no mistakes. Perfect every time. But in the old days (though really not that long ago) signs were actually painted by hand and though each letter may not have been computer perfect, the sign’s distinct personality was revealed in those imperfections.

We’ve seen these hand-painted signs. We’ve photographed and Instagramed them. We’ve bought reproductions of them and hung them on our walls. We love their weathered patina. The pealing and chipping of the paint. The faded colors and rough, indistinct edges. We’ve made an industry of reproducing these signs of yesteryear to hang and admire in our homes or to upload to various social networking sites, yet on most storefronts we see nothing but clean lines and bland, clinical order. For the most part there is nothing wrong with that, but there is something beautifully ornamental about a handlettered and painted sign. It’s the imperfections that bring personality, that draw you in for study. Perhaps even make you go into the store being advertised (which is the sign’s primary function).

In short: A hand-painted sign has character.

I have a friend who is in the sign business, as was his father. He shows me old books and examples of the sign painter’s trade. Gets a bit misty eyed about the past and frustrated when he talks of clients wanting nothing but styleless black lettering on white backgrounds.

As I read Sign Painters (Princeton Architectural Press) by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, I began to understand what my friend has been going on about.

Sign Painters talks to more than two dozen first class tradespeople who practice the art of the hand-painted sign and they all have something in common: passion. A passion for something done by hand and a love of what they do. Each one of them undeterred by the advent of modern technology and proliferation of computer perfect, vinyl cut lettering. Each of them embracing time honored methods and appreciation of quality and craftsmanship.

Sign Painters is about a once vibrant industry that has been sublimated by the sterility of the computer, but it also of a resurgence of this once highly valued art form. How the men and women who do it, do it for the enjoyment of taking time to create and craft something that’s genuine and beautiful and at the same time functional. 

Filled with examples of their work, some simple some highly detailed and complex and all of them real art, Sign Painters is an ode to a bygone era that still has some teeth and to the men and women who are helping to keep the art form from being completely forgotten. ◊


David Middleton is the art director of January Magazine as well as a highly acclaimed photographer and graphic designer.

Art & Culture: The Art of Bob Peak by Thomas Peak

I’ve always believed the experience of moviegoing starts with the poster. A movie’s one-sheet -- the poster that hangs in the lobby -- features the film’s key art, sometimes a photo collage, sometimes a painting that represents the actors or the action. Whatever the image, the idea is the intrigue. After all, the one-sheet is really just an ad designed to inspire ticket sales.

For me, this experience was never more exciting than when the one-sheet featured the art of a man named Bob Peak. An artist with movie-star looks, Peak worked in advertising and magazines as an illustrator in the 1950s, then began designing movie posters in the early 1960s, most notably for West Side Story and My Fair Lady.

For both, he brought something new to movies: a thrilling, highly artistic style that didn’t just create a collage of key moments, but a collage that became its own key moment -- a moment that, for me, actually began the film.

Over the years, Peak brought this magic to Camelot, Our Man Flint, Funny Girl, Superman The Movie, Apocalypse Now, Excalibur, and the Star Trek movie series, to name a tiny sliver of the movies his work graced.

Now Peak’s work has been collected in a gorgeous book, The Art of Bob Peak (Peak Books). The book covers his entire career, moving from advertising and magazines to movies and beyond, to his covers for TV Guide and Time and fine art.

Using different styles and taking into account the medium he was using -- a movie poster can hold more than, say, a TV Guide cover -- there is something about a piece of Peak art. His magic is as clear in a smaller image, of, say, Elizabeth Montgomery in “Bewitched” or Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize in “Fantasy Island” as it is for a movie. Peak simply knew what to do.

At a time when the idea of a collage was simply a collection of moments in a film, he did something new: he wove images together. He found a base image and then layered in other ones, literally weaving moments together to create intrigue and excitement in what would become a single, iconic image. He provoked emotion -- and ticket sales.

He didn’t just illustrate movies; he suggested them. And it was this suggestion, created with such high art, that kickstarted the feeling of the film.

Peak set out to change how Hollywood sold its work. He started like many illustrators, doing advertising and magazine work. Movies came later, but his influence was immediate -- on moviegoers, the industry, and on key-art illustrators for decades to come.

The book is filled with an exhaustive and inspiring collection of images, as well as essays and quotes by people who worked with or were influenced by Peak, such as directors Steven Spielberg, Frank Darabont, and Leonard Nimoy and artist Drew Struzan, who created key art for the Star Wars films, among scores of others. I think the most notable of these comes from Spielberg. Peak didn’t create the poster for Jaws, but Time magazine used the artist to create an issue in which the film was the cover story. The director said he wished he’d seen Peak’s painting of a shark before making the film, implying that the film would have been more frightening.

This is a tribute to a man who knew how to tap into the emotion of a film using its art. The quote -- and the book itself. ◊

Art & Culture: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

Okay, so who didn't love The Mary Tyler Moore Show? Just as I thought: no one. The iconic 1970s TV program was must-see TV back in the day, and for good reason. It starred Mary Tyler Moore in a role that would redefine her (after her first defining role, that of Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show).

The featured the likes of Ed Asner and Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman, and it stood on the shoulders of creators James L. Brooks and Allan Burns. The show started out as a way to showcase Mary Tyler Moore's talent, then quickly became a showcase for many issues of the day (as well as a springboard for other shows produced by the fledging MTM studio, including Newhart and the Rhoda spin-off). And though the show’s voice was never as sharp or in-your-face as that of Normal Lear’s All in the Family, it held its own for five years and became one of the greatest achievements in TV history.

Now the program’s creation has been captured in a book by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: All the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic  (Simon & Schuster). I pretty much tore into this book, hungry for all the juicy secrets, and I suppose they’re all here. Read it and you’ll learn about how the show was born, how it developed, some of the tensions that threatened the show and then helped to shape it, and much more. You’ll read about casting. You’ll read about certain episodes in depth, notably the pilot, the last episode, and the one about the death of Chuckles the Clown, in which Mary can’t stop herself from laughing at the funeral. You’ll read about the show's number one fan -- and how its creators embraced him.

To gather all this material, Armstrong spoke with Asner, Harper, Gavin MacLeod, Leachman, Brooks, Burns, and many others, including script writer Treva Silverman. The one person she did not speak with is Mary Tyler Moore. Now, biographies are written every season without any direct interview material from the subjects themselves, but somehow the missing voice and perspective of Mary is a pretty obvious hole in this narrative, and it left me hanging and frustrated.

While fascinating, I found the book only an okay read. Armstrong, a well-known entertainment journalist, obviously put this book together with all kinds of care, but she should have paid closer attention to her writing. I mean, how many times do we need to be told that Valerie Harper was married to Dick Shawn? (You’ll read that many times in this book.) Beyond what comes across as just sloppy writing, the tone is much more reportage than insight. I wanted more of the latter, not just a bullet list of facts. I wanted more sizzle, more punch, more passion. It’s clear that the author loves this subject, but her love doesn’t come across in her treatment of it. Unfortunately, her style here is a lot of “this happened, then this happened, and finally that happened.”

Nevertheless, the story behind The Mary Tyler Moore Show is worth telling and worth reading. The show itself was groundbreaking, and it held the attention of a nation at a time when virtually everything in the culture was changing. While All in the Family covered the issues of the day with anger and controversy and by stepping out of the accepted bounds much of the time, Mary Tyler Moore covered them through the eyes of an almost innocent character, a young woman simply trying to find her place in a world. It stayed within the accepted bounds, yet found ingenious ways of nudging beyond them before anyone thought to notice.

Art & Culture: Vintage Tomorrows: A Historian and a Futurist Journey Through Steampunk into the Future of Technology by James H. Carrott and Brian David Johnson

“A futurist and a cultural historian walk into a bar.”

The name of the first chapter is like a lead in to a joke, but is instead the set-up for a deeply interesting book deeply enmeshed in the culture of “what if?” Early on in Vintage Tomorrows (Make) the authors explain their journey in a way that sets the whole book up:

It begins, like so many great ideas, over a beer. A futurist and a cultural historian have a pint in Seattle and start talking about the future and the past. They’re both technologists, so it’s hardly surprising when the conversation drifts into the topic of steampunk, a modern day mashup of the future and the past, technology and culture….

So over a beer historian James H. Carrott and futurist Brian David Johnson ask themselves: What can steampunk teach us about the future? What happens when we look backward in order to look forward?

Over the next couple of years the pair traveled the world asking that question. And, face it, if it should be anyone asking this stuff, it’s these two. Johnson is a futurist at Intel where he does “future casting” to “provide Intel with a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing.” Carrott, meanwhile, has brought humor and theater into his work as a historian and he was for a time global product manager for Xbox 360 hardware. They are geek princes, clearly. Exactly the correct duo to set upon this journey. And they did it up right.

Is Vintage Tomorrows sometimes a little uneven? It is. And certainly parts of the book seem more gripping and convincing than others. For instance, when they are interviewing “experts” like William Gibson, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling, James Gleick and Margaret Atwood, they are at their best. Later, when they talk about their documentary-in-progress, they are less engaging. (But perhaps, by then, there was less to say?) For the most part, though, this is a worthwhile, if challenging, journey and definitely a book with something to say. ◊

Lincoln Cho is a freelance writer and editor. He lives in the Chicago area, where he works in the high-tech industry. He is currently working on a his first novel, a science-fiction thriller set in the world of telecommunications.

Best Books of 2012: Non-Fiction

This is the Best Non-Fiction segment of January Magazine’s Best Books of 2012 feature. Also available are our picks for best SF/F, best books for children and young adults,  best crime, mystery and thriller fiction of 2012, in two parts: one and two. As well, here are the best cookbooks of 2012. Still to come: our contributors’ selections of the Best Fiction of 2012. 

Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown)
With the verve and bite of 2007’s seminal Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace’s Both Flesh and Not brings together 15 of the author’s finest essays, never before published in book form. For me this collection was bittersweet. This is, after all, the voice of the man A.O. Scott called the “best mind of his generation.” His writing was always sharp and his curiosity seemingly endless. Seemingly because, of course, it was not: Foster Wallace died by his own hand in 2008. And therein lies what, for me, can’t help but be bittersweet: pure brilliance damped by the knowledge that the star has dimmed. It should be noted that, since Both Flesh and Not collects essays from throughout Foster Wallace’s writing life, the book will most likely appeal to readers of a certain age. Here the author comments on the best book of 1994, the best film of 1990 and tennis matches that are mostly not recalled at all. He writes about the conspicuously young crop of writers of 1987 (of which he would have been one) and the sexual armageddon unleashed by heterosexual AIDs. Though the topics will have limited appeal after so much time has passed, the author’s insights and gorgeous prose will not. Also included is a selection from Wallace’s personal vocabulary list. An assemblage of unusual words by a man who loved them. Swanskin, tarn, swage, purlieus, rachis. All of them interesting. All of them reminders of why we miss him so much. -- Linda L. Richards

Darwin’s Devices by John Long (Basic Books)
Robotics viewed through a biologist’s lens, that’s a bit of what Darwin’s Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Tell Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology boils down to. But with scientific precision from a professor/author with a poet’s soul. It’s all intensely exciting. When you surf along with the author’s engaged and engaging voice, it becomes very obvious that his topic is not rocket science. That is, it’s a new and evolving field, one that he’s championing and one that has been powerful in his own work. What Long does is create an environment where his models and robots can evolve. Not nearly as odd as it sounds. The robots compete against each other for food and other basic survival needs and their responses provide important clues to the evolution of extinct species. Long shares his disappointments as well as his triumphs and he does so in a lucid and sometimes even humorous way. We come away from Darwin’s Devices with the idea that, whatever work Long is doing here, it’s deeply interesting and even important. I suspect that this will not be the final work on this topic, but Long lays the groundwork for a future filled with discovery and adventure. -- Jones Atwater

Falling for Eli by Nancy Shulins (Da Capo Lifelong)
Nancy Shulins’ fantastic personal journey is made all the more powerful by her fierce talent. The twice Pulitzer Prize-contending journalist knows how to tell a story; knows how to bring us along. “Letting go of a dream is a process,” she tells us early in Falling for Eli , “a series of openings and closings of the hand, as you watch the magic dust you’ve been cradling so carefully trickle away in thin streams.” The word “cradle” in this context is, no doubt, a conscious one. In Falling for Eli, we watch Shulins come to terms with the fact that she’ll never have the baby she always longed for. What surprises her, as well as all of those around her, is when the heartbreak she feels at the loss of something she never even had is eased from an unexpected place: when she decides to fulfill a life-long dream by learning to ride a horse. The riding leads her to her own horse, a chestnut gelding named Eli, and we participate in the complex relationship that builds between the two. Like the very best memoirs, Falling for Eli is a wonderful story, but it is also so much more. We are made, in a way, to think about motherhood and how the definitions around it have changed and continue to change. In other ways, it is a story of redemption and even triumph of spirit, as Shulins moves from depression at the realization that she will never give birth to a child, through her transformation as she works through a difficult period of relationship building with her new horse, to triumph as she enjoys a satisfying -- if complicated -- relationship with her 1200 pound “baby.” -- India Wilson

From the Forest: A Search for the Hidden Roots in Our Fairytales by Sara Maitland (Counterpoint)
Published in the UK by Granta as Gossip from the Forest, Sara Maitland’s book is a charming and thought-provoking look at the history and development of our folk stories. Each chapter looks at a different story and how the forest it sprung from shaped the tale we know. This is lyrical, fanciful stuff. As Maitland tells us, “forests are places where a person can get lost and hide -- losing and hiding, of things and people, are central to European fairy stories in ways that are not true of similar stories in different georgraphies.” Regardless of whether you buy what Maitland is positing here, her foray straight to the heart of some of the stories we love best is unforgettable. -- Monica Stark

Gifts of the Crow by John Marzluff and Tony Angell (FreePress)
Few creatures are as misunderstood as the crow. Their black plumage and watchful demeanor can evoke fear and even shadows of future evil. But in reality, contend authors John Marzluff and Tony Angell, in many ways crows are much more like us than most people would care to admit. “The gifts of the crow are physical, metaphorical, and far-reaching,” they write in Gifts of the Crow, setting us up for a journey of stories that demonstrate the almost magical intellect of the crow. This isn’t this authorial duo’s first visit in the corvid world. In the Company of Crows and Ravens (2007) gives a first intimate look at the birds. Gifts of the Crow extends the lessons shared in that work but does not depend on readers having read the first one. Gifts of the Crow is a deeply astonishing book. At the same time, it is also oddly satisfying. Somehow seeing the similarities between humans and crows makes us feel less alone. -- Jones Atwater

Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic’s First-Class Passengers and Their World by Hugh Brewster (Crown)
As the title of this book suggests, the focus here is on those fortunate folk able to book the most luxurious accommodations on the Titanic’s ill-fated, April 1912 maiden crossing from Southampton, England, to New York City. Lily May Futrelle, the wife of American mystery writer Jacques Futrelle (who perished in the sinking), described her first-class shipmates as “a rare gathering of beautiful women and splendid men.” Included in their number were real-estate magnate John Jacob Astor IV and his pregnant 18-year-old wife; tennis player and future Olympic gold medalist R. Norris Williams; Denver socialite and women’s rights champion Margaret Brown; Major Archibald Butt, the military aide to U.S. President William Howard Taft; and silent-film actress Dorothy Gibson. (Financier J.P. Morgan had planned to sail on the Titanic as well, but instead stayed behind with his mistress in France.) Although Gilded Lives relies often on speculation about the shipboard activities of the Edwardian celebrities lost in that maritime calamity, Brewster balances that with his splendid use of first-hand accounts from the survivors -- a much greater percentage of whom were cabin-class passengers than poorer, steerage travelers. Although Walter Lord’s 1955 book, A Night to Remember, remains the standard for Titanic histories, Brewster’s Gilded Lives contributes greatly to our understanding of that tragedy’s human dimension. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Hello Goodbye Hello by Craig Brown (Simon & Schuster)
Of course you know about six degrees of separation. Not the amazing John Guare play of that name, but the idea of it, that we’re separated from everyone on the planet by only six people. One line in the play mentions how wonderful that is, yet also how maddening -- since the trick is knowing which six people. Hello Goodbye Hello takes this idea into an unexpected but fun area: meetings. Craig Brown’s book chronicles 101 meetings between celebrities. He sets the scenes, draws the personalities and shares what the two said to each other. Best of all, each conversation really happened -- and each one is linked to the next (though not always chronologically). This is one string of meetings: Helen Keller and Martha Graham, Graham and Madonna, Madonna and Michael Jackson, Jackson and Nancy Reagan, Reagan and Andy Warhol, and so on. The book begins and ends with meetings involving Hitler, opening with a meeting with John Scott-Ellis and ending with a meeting with the Duchess of Windsor. This amazing book will turn you into the proverbial fly on the wall -- and leave you wanting more, more, more. -- Tony Buchsbaum

I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons (Ecco)
There were so many singer-songwriters breaking on the scene of the 1960s and ’70s, we took them all for granted -- every Tim, Richie and Harry -- for as long as we wished. Leonard Cohen proved to be a keeper: a Canadian poet and novelist who sang in a somber, spellbinding near-monotone (was this the voice of the common Garden-of-Eden snake?). Cohen is singing still, half a century later; and his 2012 CD, Old Ideas, is (for some of us) the record of the year. Veteran author Sylvie Simmons tells the beguiling saga of L. Cohen at suitable length and with admirable style in I’m Your Man, which follows her poetic pilgrim’s progress from before his 1934 birth and privileged Montreal upbringing up to the present. Versifier, novelist, recording artist, city dweller, island exile, world traveler, ladies’ man, husband, father, monk -- Cohen has played many roles. One virtue of this grand biography is how it finds unifying elements among such a diverse life’s seeming disarray. “Did he tell you about the writing on the wall?” Cohen’s ex-flame Marianne (“So Long, Marianne”) asked his biographer of one of LC’s LSD visions: “It was in gold paint and it said, ‘I change, I am the same, I change, I am the same ...’ I think it was beautiful.” Also fine to behold is the way in which I’m Your Man’s writer arranges the parts of her scrupulously gathered material in a mosaic at once pleasing and recognizable, yet still appropriately ambiguous. Sylvie Simmons proves to be something of a poet herself. -- Tom Nolan

John Quincy Adams by Harlow Giles Unger (daCapo)
No one writes biography quite like Harlow Giles Unger. His last half dozen or so books have brought as many long dead presidents back to something like literary life. I loved 2010’s Lion of Liberty, an action-packed portrait of Patrick “liberty or death” Henry. James Monroe, Lafayette, Noah Webster, John Hancock, George Washington and others all have been breathed to life for us with skill and vigor and Harlow Giles Unger’s well seasoned pen. The first few words of John Quincy Adams illustrate Unger’s skill: in a very few words he tells us everything we really need to know about his subject, introduces the idea of why we should care and teases us to go on. It’s a great ride. -- Aaron Blanton

The Life of Super-Earths by Dimitar Saddelov (Basic Books)
It doesn’t take long for Harvard professor of astronomy Dimitar Saddelov to get down to business in The Life of Super-Earths. The second line in the book: “What is life and how did it come to be?" In a conversational tone, Saddelov sets out to answer that, as well as anyone can. As he points out, “The actual origin of Earth remains as elusive as ever and may well stay that way. After all, it is a historical question that requires knowing environments that are not preserved in the Earth’s geological record.” Even so, Saddelov points out, there are things we can look at -- and other branches of knowledge and science -- that can perhaps bring us closer to understanding. From life here on Earth, it’s a short journey to looking for life in other places. As an astronomer, this isn’t a new thought for Saddelov and, as he points out, “it seems likely that on some of these Earth-like planets, we will find signs of life.” Beyond anything, it seems to me that The Life of Super-Earths is an exploration, both of discoveries and possibilities. As the the sub-title promises: “How the hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet.” Considering the nature of the beast -- Saddelov is a scientist, after all -- this subtitle might be a bit of oversell. He is here exploring what is real and what may well be real, after all. Still, this is exciting, thought-provoking stuff. These are the latest and most cutting edge thoughts on that age old question: are we alone in the universe? And perhaps a new wrinkle: If we are alone, will it be for very long? -- Aaron Blanton

Mickey Cohen: The Life and Crimes of L.A.’s Notorious Mobster by Tere Tereba (ECW Press)
Hollywood, from the roaring 1920s to the current day, has always loved making gangster movies. And in the 1940s and ’50s, it had its own real-life hoodlum to scrutinize and lionize: Mickey Cohen, “the King of the Sunset Strip,” a dapper, diminutive mobster who could have been played on the screen by Edward G. Robinson or John Garfield. The newsboy-turned-boxer-turned-crook oversaw criminal activities from his base in an unincorporated stretch of Los Angeles following the 1947 assassination of his former mentor, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Cohen -- who also owned such legitimate businesses as an ice-cream parlor and a haberdashery -- cut a wide swath through L.A.; and the publicity he received from appearances with such diverse types as Billy Graham and Mike Wallace helped make him a national figure. It was Cohen’s associate Johnny Stompanato who was stabbed to death at Lana Turner’s Beverly Hills home in 1958. When Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev visited Hollywood in 1959 and twitted L.A. police chief William Parker about its “gangster” problem, he was referring to Parker’s nemesis, Cohen. Crime-fiction writers from Ross Macdonald to James Ellroy (who, as a youngster, met this mobster) found inspiration for stories in Mickey Cohen. Singer-songwriter Warren Zevon’s gambler father, “Stumpy” Zevon, once worked for Mickey. First-time author Tere Tereba does a notable job telling Cohen’s story -- warts, wounds, sleaze and all. Her well-researched chronicle should put to rest forever the notion that organized crime is somehow glamorous, while allowing readers (to quote another Sunset Strip figure, Jim Morrison) one last “wallow in the mire.” -- Tom Nolan

Modern Furniture: 150 Years of Design edited by Fremdkoerper (H.F. Ullmann)
In 2012 more than any other year it was easy for me to select the book that had the most impact on me and that I could not do without in my collection.  Even though Modern Furniture: 150 Years of Design is an update of a well known (in design circles) classic, to me it remains one of the most important design books every time it is reissued. And for good reason. In essays and photos it looks back over the 150 years of the modern design era. The essays are far-reaching and published in French, German and English (not as confusing as it sounds!) and cover every aspect of modern furniture design. But what makes this an impossibly great resource are the photos. They are chairs, almost one per design year, beginning with  the 1867 Demonstration Chair probably designed by August Thonet. What will most startle those unfamiliar with Modern furniture is how contemporary the real classics still appear. If you’ve never seen Josef Hoffman’s Kubus from 1910, for example, nothing will prepare you for what will likely strike you as classic 1970s lines. And everyone is familiar with Ludwig Mies van deer Rohe’s Barcelona Armchair -- by sight if not by name. However many people are startled when they realize it was designed for exhibition in the German Pavilion at the 1929 World’s Fair, held in Barcelona. It’s also interesting to page through the really terrific and well-documented photos and observe which designers and firms have had the most influence over the years. Again: Modern Furniture: 150 Years of Design is an important and well-excuted book. My bookshelf will never be without it. -- David Middleton

Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Paul Elie’s memorable first book, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003), was a group-portrait of four people linked by a common creed (Catholicism). In a way, the author follows that same pattern in Reinventing Bach, a hefty, ever-readable study of how a musical oeuvre composed nearly 300 years ago survived into the present, shaping and being shaped by genius interpreters. The organist-humanist Albert Schweitzer, cellist Pablo Casals, conductor Leopold Stokowski, pianist Glenn Gould, cellist Yo-Yo Mama: all receive pocket-biographies chronicling their personal and professional devotion to Johann Sebastian Bach. Arching over all is the figure of the composer himself, whose story is parceled out according to this book’s structural needs. But many other performing artists, writers, commentators, producers, technicians, theorists -- the author, too -- appear on the pages of this engrossing study, which shows Bach’s seemingly eternal power to inspire, instruct, console. Like one of Bach’s own works, Elie’s text unfurls, repeats, works variations and returns to the root -- all in sentences often as graceful as his main subject’s musical lines. “Certainly, Bach envisioned that his music would be made by musicians other than [those of his own time],” Elie writes near the end of this work. “Surely he envisioned that his music would be taken up for other instruments, some known to him and others freshly invented ... But did he envision that his music, in time, would be ‘played’ by people who could not sing or play a musical instrument, would be ripped and remixed and mashed up, and would withstand the process, even thrive through it? Could he have envisioned the digital present? He could, and he did.” -- Tom Nolan

The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax: Words, Photographs and Music by Tom Piazza (Norton)
The year 1959 was a sort of annus mirabilis in American music. Advances in recording technology helped produce an abundance of noteworthy jazz LPs (from Dave Brubeck’s Time Out to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue). German jazz-scholar Joachim Berendt and Los Angeles photographer William Claxton made a historic road-trip throughout America, documenting jazz music at its sources. And the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax, fresh from a multi-year European sojourn, returned for two months to the American South, photographing and recording white and black rural musicians with new, high-quality stereophonic equipment. Lomax had been a groundbreaking cultural historian for decades, first with his father, John, and then on his own. Together or separately, the Lomaxes advanced the reputations of such seminal figures as Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Jelly Roll Morton and Muddy Waters. Alan Lomax’s importance to the course of American and world vernacular music can hardly be overestimated. Songs he gathered in the 1930s fueled an American folk-music movement -- as well as showing up in such concert-music as Aaron Copland’s Rodeo. Programs he produced for the BBC launched the 1950s skiffle craze in England, out of which grew the British rock scene of the 1960s. His recordings of Spanish music more than influenced Gil Evans’ and Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain LP. And his New York City apartment in the early ’60s was an open-house graduate-seminar for such budding artists as Bob Dylan. Lomax’s 1959 Southern hegira was perhaps his last great adventure. Tom Piazza (and, in an introduction, William Ferris) provides the text and context for Lomax’s simple, powerful photographs; a 12-track CD gives highlights from the trip’s 80 hours of field recordings. “Most civilizations have to wait to be buried before being dug up,” Piazza writes. “Lomax did the spade work in real time ... looking for music that hadn’t been commodified ... [H]e had good luck and great instincts, and he was able ... to record some of the last of a breed ...” -- Tom Nolan

Steven Spielberg: A Retrospective by Richard Schickel (Sterling)
This was bound to happen sooner or later, and I’m just happy it’s happened now. Someone has seen fit to write an in-depth look at the films of Steven Spielberg. Richard Schickel, onetime film critic at TIME magazine, has taken an exhaustive look at the director’s career, from his childhood and the little 8mm films he made, all the way through last year’s War Horse and a peek at this year’s Lincoln. I said exhaustive -- not exhausting. Spielberg: A Retrospective is a magnificent volume, stuffed with photos and insightful essays about the films and how they were made. Included, of course, is a great wealth of interview material, all of it original with the author, much of it created for this book (the rest of based on past conversations between the two). I found myself lost in these pages for a good while, and that was, I know, just the beginning. As I find with the man’s films every time I see one (and then see it again), I know I’ll find much more to discover every time I open this wonderful look at one of the best filmmakers Hollywood has produced. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Working the Dead Beat by Sandra Martin (Anansi)
Award-winning journalist Sandra Martin has been working the dead beat at the Globe and Mail for many years. It’s a beat Martin has loved, despite less than enthusiastic reactions from those she encounters. As she writes in the very moving Working the Dead Beat, “I’ve grown accustomed to the arched brow, the flash of revulsion, the involuntary step backwards, and the exclamation, ‘But that’s so morbid’ when I tell people what I do for a living.” In her book, Martin shares the obituaries of 50 prominent Canadians who died between 2000 and 2010. In her introduction, Martin remarks that obituary writing has been transformed in the period covered in the book. “Once the preserve of the rich, the noble, and the worthy, obituaries now encompass scoundrels as well as saints, eccentrics as well as celebrities.” As well, Martin writes, “There is a new frankness, an unwillingness to camouflage warts under layers of unctuous hyperbole.” Martin has written hundreds of obituaries for the Globe. More. So choosing 50 for inclusion in the book was a challenge. She writes that she “tried to cover a range of occupations, achievements, locations, and aspirations. Most of all, I wanted to write about individuals whose stories moved me and whose lives said something larger about the country and our collective history.” Included are Martin’s portraits of Pierre Trudeau, Jane Jacobs, Pierre Berton, Maurice “the Rocket” Richard, Oscar Peterson, Jane Rule and Mordecai Richler. For a book that at first seems entirely focused on death, Martin gifts her subjects with a real and lasting life. Working the Dead Beat is a beautiful book. -- Linda L. Richards

Holiday Gift Guide: A Shtinky Little Christmas by Patrick McDonnell

Those who love Patrick McDonnell’s “Mutts” comic strip featuring Earl the Dog and Mooch the cat will get a kick out of A Shtinky Little Christmas (Andrews McMeel).

Earl and Mooch find a lost kitten in a garbage can, name it Shtinky Pudding and try to give it shelter. Comic-style hijinx ensues, but there’s a happy ending and, on the way there, we are given one of the best take away lines in a book I’ve seen in a while: “One can purchase ‘unconditional’ love at any animal shelter for a small fee!”

This is a sweet, small, stocking-sized book. If you enjoy the aberrant style of the Mutts strip, make sure you add this one to your list. ◊

Monica Stark is a contributing editor to January Magazine. She currently makes her home on a liveaboard boat somewhere in the North Pacific.

Holiday Gift Guide: Reel Terror: The Scary, Bloody, Gory, Hundred-Year History of Classic Horror Films by David Konow

It should not be surprising that the author of the definitive guide to heavy metal music should come back with another, similar guide, this time devoted to what some would say is the film world’s heavy metal equivalent.

Reel Terror: The Scary, Bloody, Gory, Hundred-Year History of Classic Horror Films (St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne) takes a long, loving look behind the scenes at the century long history of movies of the macabre.

Though contemporary works are given more space and love than the classics, Reel Terror still manages to infuse this ever-popular genre in the sort of lovelight that can only be generated by a true fanboy. In the introduction, author David Konow writes:

This book is not just a love letter to a great and underappreciated genre, but it also tries to show what makes a great horror film effective, even decades after it’s been made …. There’s a reason why the best horror films in the genre have lasted, and why many are still scary today.

Part handbook to the great films of the genre, part “love letter” to a part of film history that hasn’t had a great many of those, both fans of horror and classic film will enjoy many aspects of Konow’s well-researched and written book. ◊

Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Holiday Gift Guide: A Year of Writing Dangerously by Barbara Abercrombie

The idea behind A Year of Writing Dangerously (New World Library) is to provide, as the subtitle says, “365 Days of Inspiration & Encouragement.” And it does.

Every day, seasoned author Barbara Abercrombie offers a single page that contains a relevant quote plus an essay, anecdote or even a question or thoughts, all about writing and all intended to get your juices flowing. As Abercrombie writes in her introduction:

Why a year?

Because if you want to write a novel or a memoir or an autobiography, you’ll need at least a year of focused work to get from the idea in your head to the reality of a first draft …. This is a book about writing your way through 365 days.

And it’s a lovely way. Abercrombie’s stories are rich and sharply detailed and well told. They are mostly intensely brief -- the better to get you going writing your own stuff, I suppose -- but they lift and inflate the reader. Sometimes in unexpected ways.

Some of the chapter headings tell the story. Why Writers Get Scared. Our Baggage. Imaginations Going Nuts.

A Year of Writing Dangerously would be a rich gift, indeed. And it is almost dangerously inspiration, with some witty and wise thrown in for good measure. It’s a very good book. ◊

Monica Stark is a contributing editor to January Magazine. She currently makes her home on a liveaboard boat somewhere in the North Pacific.

Holiday Gift Guide: Books to Die For edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke

As much as readers may enjoy selecting their own literary diversions, they’re also curious to know what novels authors themselves have enjoyed. Which makes Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels (Atria/Emily Bestler), a 560-page compilation of tributes to more than 120 memorable works of crime, mystery and thriller fiction, so delightful.

Edited by Hibernian wordsmiths John Connolly (The Burning Soul) and Declan Burke (who also compiled last year’s study of Irish crime fiction, Down These Green Streets), Books to Die For isn’t fully representative of what’s been published in this field over the last 171 years; notable omissions include Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Peter Lovesey, Thomas B. Dewey, Peter Robinson and Stanley Ellin. However, it serves as both a primer on the evolution of the genre and a welcome escort into its less-familiar corners.

Some of the essays included here were fairly predictable -- Max Allan Collins writing about Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury, for instance, or Linwood Barclay extolling the virtues of Ross Macdonald’s The Goodbye Look. However, there are also unexpected pairings of contributor and subject matter. I particularly relished Mark Billingham’s remarks on The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett; Laura Lippman’s recommendation of Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, by James M. Cain; Eddie Muller’s piece about The Big Heat, by William P. McGivern; Megan Abbott’s praise for In a Lonely Place, by Dorothy B. Hughes; James W. Hall’s encomium to LaBrava, by Elmore Leonard; Gary Phillips’ ovation for The Scene, by Clarence Cooper Jr.; Val McDermid’s study of On Beulah Height, by Reginald Hill; and ... well, the real problem here is that there are so many intriguing choices, it’s hard to know where in the book to begin.

Take my advice: Just flip open this volume at random. Chances are, you’ll learn something interesting from whatever you read first. ◊

J. Kingston Pierce is the senior editor of January Magazine, editor of The Rap Sheet and the lead crime-fiction blogger for Kirkus Reviews.

Holiday Gift Guide: Florence: Art and Architecture and Venice: The Golden Centuries

If various reports are to be believed, the recession is drawing to a close. Even so, money is tight, gifts are precious and travel is dear. That might mean a lot of the things, but to me it means that gorgeous, elegant and rich books about wonderful places are going to be among the top holiday time gifts this year. How could they not be? Even an expensive book is a tiny fraction of the cost of a trip… and it can last ever so much longer.

Two great gift giving candidates come to us this season from H.F. Ullman. Florence: Art and Architecture and Venice: The Golden Centuries are both massive, impressive, filled with wonderful information and both books are relative bargains: pound for pound, these two might just be the best book bargains out there!

Neither of these books are contemporary travel guides which, in many ways, make them much better gifts. The information contained herein is not time sensitive or dependent. These are art books and, considering the topic at hand, both deal with the artistic history of the city under discussion. Noted scholars and historians contribute chapters to do with their own areas of expertise, while hundreds of images in each book complete the full illustration of two of the most artistically important cities in history. ◊

David Middleton is art director and art and culture editor of January Magazine.

Billionaire Art Collector Buys Phaidon

It just can’t seem anything but good that high-end art press, Phaidon, has a new boss. The new owner is Leon D. Black and his family, and Black is the same billionaire art collector who was rumored to have purchased Munch’s Scream for $120 million last year. It would seem to follow that anyone willing to drop an extreme fortune for some paint and canvas will do the right thing by a respected publishing outfit. Not everyone would.

Richard Schlagman, who has owned Phaidon since 1990, seems to agree.

“The decision for me to part with Phaidon was not an easy one,” Schlagman said in a statement. “Once taken, however, the profile of the ideal buyer in my mind was exceeded in reality by Leon Black and his family.” 

According to GalleristNY, Black is “the founder of the New York–based Apollo Global Management private equity firm and is worth around $3.5 billion, according to Forbes. That makes him the 330th richest person in the world, by the magazine’s calculations.”

Black has said he anticipates future growth for Phaidon, “including through the ongoing development of its publishing program, further geographic expansion, and the launch of digital products.”