New pop culture books: Garbo, Lego, Marvel, DC, Bond, Star Wars and more!

Click the links to order from Amazon. 

“Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s minds, hearts, and dreams.” Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in sixteen short years, to infiltrate the world’s subconscious; the end of her film career, when she was thirty-six, only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in just twenty-four Hollywood movies, yet her impact on the world―and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed―was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe’s. She was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged nineteen, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world’s most famous actress.
    In Garbo, the acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world―her desperate, futile striving to be “left alone.” He takes us through the films themselves, from M-G-M’s early presentation of her as a “vamp”―her overwhelming beauty drawing men to their doom, a formula she loathed―to the artistic heights of Camille and Ninotchka (“Garbo Laughs!”), by way of Anna Christie (“Garbo Talks!”), Mata Hari, and Grand Hotel. He examines her passive withdrawal from the movies, and the endless attempts to draw her back. And he sketches the life she led as a very wealthy woman in New York―“a hermit about town”―and the life she led in Europe among the Rothschilds and men like Onassis and Churchill. Her relationships with her famous co-star John Gilbert, with Cecil Beaton, with Leopold Stokowski, with Erich Maria Remarque, with George Schlee―were they consummated? Was she bisexual? Was she sexual at all? The whole world wanted to know―and still wants to know.
    In addition to offering his rich account of her life, Gottlieb, in what he calls “A Garbo Reader,” brings together a remarkable assembly of glimpses of Garbo from other people’s memoirs and interviews, ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Tallulah Bankhead to Roland Barthes; from literature (she turns up everywhere―in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the letters of Marianne Moore and Alice B. Toklas); from countless songs and cartoons and articles of merchandise. Most extraordinary of all are the pictures―250 or so ravishing movie stills, formal portraits, and revealing snapshots―all reproduced here in superb duotone. She had no personal vanity, no interest in clothes and make-up, yet the story of Garbo is essentially the story of a face and the camera. Forty years after her career ended, she was still being tormented by unrelenting paparazzi wherever she went.

The latest edition of this beloved title has been comprehensively updated to include new characters from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and both seasons of Star Wars: The Mandalorian.
    Want to learn more about the Knights of Ren? Curious as to where Padmé Amidala is from? Wonder how tall Grogu is? 
    To learn the answers to these questions and more, look no further than Star Wars: Character Encyclopedia Updated and Expanded Edition. Written by Star Wars experts, the book is full of fun facts and intriguing information that’s guaranteed to enthrall fans of all ages. 
    With plenty of lesser-known details, even die-hard fans will learn new facts about iconic characters.

This huge collection of action-packed projects will bring fresh life to your tubs of bricks and get LEGO® lovers of all levels inspired to build for days. Dive into your own LEGO world filled with new and amazing creations―from sleek, aerodynamic race cars to fairytale creatures, secret spy headquarters and everything in between.

You’ve Got Red on You details the previously untold story of 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, the hilarious, terrifying horror-comedy whose fan base continues to grow and grow. After consulting dozens of the people involved in the creation of the film, author Clark Collis reveals how a group of friends overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to make a movie that would take bites out of both the UK and the US box office before ascending to the status of bona fide comedy classic.
    Featuring in-depth interviews with director Edgar Wright, producer Nira Park, and cast members Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Bill Nighy, Lucy Davis, and Coldplay singer Chris Martin, the book also boasts a treasure trove of storyboards, rare behind-the-scenes photos, and commentary from famous fans of the movie, including filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth.

The James Bond Film Guide has it all: facts on the stories, characters, vehicles, gadgets, and locations of each 007 movie. This authorized guide takes fans through six decades of one of the entertainment industry’s greatest, most-enduring film franchises ever, and it boasts nearly 1,000 photographs, posters, and movie images from the filmmakers’ extensive archives.
    007 expert Will Lawrence, author of Blood, Sweat and Bond: Behind the Scenes of Spectre, delivers an indispensable guide to what happened in which film – and when – providing everything new and longtime fans alike could ever want to know about the world of James Bond. That phenomenal world has been at the center of EON Productions’ iconic film franchise, the long-running big screen series in history, since the release of Dr. No in 1962, and continuing later this year with No Time to Die.

As one of the most recognizable brands in the world, Marvel has spent the last 80-plus years inspiring generations of creatives through its approach to visual storytelling. Marvel’s comic books, in particular, established a distinct graphic language that has found its way into mainstream culture, including 1960s Pop Art, and present-day digital culture, gaming, advertising, and more. Marvel By Design will celebrate the company’s visual language with an in-depth exploration of the design process behind the brand’s most recognizable graphical elements including logos, covers, lettering, layout, and color palettes. Readers will learn how the renowned Marvel Method established a unique approach to the creative process and how that process can serve as a template for creatives working beyond comics. Throughout the book, Marvel by Design will connect the dots between comic culture and its undeniable influence in every creative field including the evolution of graphic design, editorial design, movies, and visual culture at large. 

For well over a century, those who create motion pictures have touched our hearts and souls; they have transported and transformed our minds, intoxicated and entranced our senses. One artist's vision is the single most prominent force behind the scenes: the director. The Essential Directors illuminates the unseen forces behind some of the most notable screen triumphs from the aesthetic peak of silent cinema through the New Hollywood of the 1970s. Considering each artist's influence on the medium, cultural impact, and degree of achievement, Turner Classic Movies presents a compendium of Hollywood's most influential filmmakers, with profiles offering history and insight on the filmmaker's narrative style, unique touches, contributions to the medium, key films, and distinctive movie moments to watch for. The work of these game-changing artists is illustrated throughout by more than 200 full-color and black-and-white photographs.
    In The Essential Directors you’ll read how Cecil B. DeMille revamped religion to define an era, and how Oscar Micheaux broke barriers to become the most influential Black filmmaker of the 1920s. You’ll marvel at the efficient artistry of “One-Take Woody” Van Dyke and fall in love again with the sophisticated studio-era classics of George Cukor. You’ll gain insight into how women like Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino built thriving careers in an industry ruled by men and discover what drove Mike Nichols to mix comedy with tragedy, becoming the highest-paid director of his day in the the process. The Essential Directors  presents the work of these game-changing artists and dozens more in this stunning volume.

For the completist, The Ultimate Binge Guide is a challenge: a bingeable bucket list of all the shows you need to see before you die (or just to be super-informed at your next dinner party). For all readers, it's a fascinating look at the evolution of TV.
    The guide is broken down into several sections that speak to each series' place in TV history, including:
    Classics That Made the Molds (And Those That Broke Them):​  The Jeffersons, All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Get Smart, Cheers, Golden Girls, Happy Days...
Tony, Walt, Don, and the Antiheroes We Loved and Hated​:  Oz, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Americans, Peaky Blinders, Ozark, The Shield, Boardwalk Empire, How To Get Away With Murder...
    Game-Changing Sitcoms and the Kings and Queens of Cringe:  Insecure, Community, 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fleabag, Black-ish, Party Down, Veep, Catastrophe, Fresh Off the Boat, Tim and Eric, Schitt's Creek, Better Things, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Pen15, Freaks and Geeks, Broad City, Black Lady Sketch Show...
    Grown-Up Genre:  Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Supernatural, The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, Star Trek, Watchmen, The Witcher, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, Westworld, Doctor Who...
    Mysteries and Mindf--ks:  Twin Peaks, Lost, Sense8, Mr. Robot, Broadchurch, The Leftovers, Fargo, Top of the Lake, Killing Eve, Wilfred, True Detective, Hannibal, Mindhunter...
    Reality TV and Docuseries That Captured the Zeitgeist: The Last Dance, Making A Murderer, Tiger King, Planet Earth, RuPaul's Drag Race, Wild Wild Country, Queer Eye, The Jinx, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown...
    In this punchy full-color guide, the editors of Rotten Tomatoes complement series write-ups with engaging infographics; fun sidebars (like a battle between the US and UK editions of The Office); and deep-dive essays on the streaming wars, superproducers to know, and the evolution of our collective viewing habits.

The fabulous life and times of one of our wittiest, most endearing and enduring caricaturists—in his own words and inimitable art. Sorel has given us "some of the best pictorial satire of our time ... [his] pen can slash as well as any sword” (The Washington Post).
    Alongside more than 172 of his drawings, cartoons, and caricatures—and in prose as spirited and wickedly pointed as his artwork—Edward Sorel gives us an unforgettable self-portrait: his poor Depression-era childhood in the Bronx (surrounded by loving Romanian immigrant grandparents and a clan of mostly left-leaning aunts and uncles); his first stabs at drawing when pneumonia kept him out of school at age eight; his time as a student at New York’s famed High School of Music and Art; the scrappy early days of Push Pin Studios, founded with fellow Cooper Union alums Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, which became the hottest design group of the 1960s; his two marriages and four children; and his many friends in New York’s art and literary circles.
    As the “young lefty” becomes an “old lefty,” Sorel charts the highlights of his remarkable life, by both telling us and showing us how in magazines and newspapers, books, murals, cartoons, and comic strips, he steadily lampooned—and celebrated—American cultural and political life. He sets his story in the parallel trajectory of American presidents, from FDR’s time to the present day—with the candor and depth of insight that could come only from someone who lived through it all.
    In Profusely Illustrated, Sorel reveals the kaleidoscopic ways in which the personal and political collide in art—a collision that is simultaneously brilliant in concept and uproarious and beautiful in its representation.

Chart a journey across Marvel Comics’ vast and vibrant universe, from its Earthbound mean streets and hidden lands, to its mythic realms and cosmic outer reaches. This Marvel-approved compendium of specially curated essays features stunning, newly commissioned cartography, illustrations, and diagrams to help readers navigate their way around iconic locales such as Asgard, Wakanda, Atlantis, Olympus, Hell’s Kitchen, Latveria, Knowhere, The Savage Land, Battleworld, and many more.
    Marvel Universe: Map by Map delineates the contours of the ever-expanding, complex, and interconnected Marvel Universe, illuminating the incredible locations, epic events, and extraordinary characters that have shaped it. Boasting dazzling new artwork, gorgeous comic book visuals, and insightful, authoritative text, this is a premium, indispensable way finder for any armchair explorer. 

One of the most formidable and powerful items in the Marvel Universe, the sacred Book of the Vishanti contains an infinite number of potent spells, incantations, and lore from fantastic realms. Created thousands of years ago in the ancient city of Babylon to combat demons and those who wield dark magic, this tome has been passed down by the greatest sorcerers of the ages, each adding their own discoveries into its ever-expanding pages. Now in the possession of Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme and Earth’s foremost protector against mystical threats, the Book of the Vishanti acts as his first line of defense.
    The greatest source of magical knowledge in our dimension, the Book of the Vishanti is the ultimate collection of spells, history, and personal accounts recorded by practitioners over centuries, including notes from Doctor Strange himself. Featuring detailed inscriptions, mind-bending illustrations, and everything you need to know about the heroes, villains, artifacts, creatures, and worlds that make up the mystical and supernatural side of the Multiverse, this book is a must-have for all Marvel fans.

Before Watchmen, Alan Moore made his debut in the U.S. comic book industry with the revitalization of the horror comic book The Swamp Thing. His deconstruction of the classic monster stretched the creative boundaries of the medium and became one of the most spectacular series in comic book history. With modern-day issues explored against a backdrop of horror, The Swamp Thing stories became commentaries on environmental, political, and social issues, unflinching in their relevance. 
    Created out of the Swamp by a freak accident, Swamp Thing is an elemental creature who uses the forces of nature and wisdom of the plant kingdom to fight the polluted world's self-destruction. Alan Moore took the Swamp Thing to new heights in the 1980s with his unique narrative approach. His provocative and groundbreaking writing, combined with masterly artwork by some of the medium's top artists, made Swamp Thing one of the great comics of the late twentieth century.

If you want to truly understand DC Comics, The DC Book is your one-stop guide to the DC Multiverse. It is a unique and insightful examination of this mind-boggling comics universe that takes readers on a compelling journey from the dawn of Super Heroes to the formation of the Dark Multiverse... and beyond.
    Meticulously researched and expertly written, The DC Book is packed with stunning, painstakingly selected artwork, illuminating infographics, and incisive, specially curated essays that shed new light on the ever-evolving DC Multiverse. From the world's finest Super Heroes such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, to iconic villains like the Joker, Lex Luthor, and Darkseid, to mythic realms like Apokolips and Themyscira, to cosmic energies like The Source and The Speed Force, The DC Book explores the key concepts, characters, and events that have defined and shaped DC Comics over the past 80 years.
    The book's content is divided into key subject areas--The Multiverse, Dark Multiverse, and Metaverse; Weird Science and Super Tech; Down to Earth; Mysteries from Space; Mystic Realms and Dream Worlds; and Time Warps and Other Earths--that form the foundations of DC Comics. The DC Book is an invaluable roadmap to DC Comics that no fan will want to miss!

Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man. Ahead of the December 2021 release of Spider-Man: No Way Home comes the ultimate guide to the teen superhero with radioactive blood, presented by the editors of Entertainment Weekly and featuring every actor who’s worn the mask. It includes an exclusive interview with the current Peter Parker, Marvel’s Tom Holland; a definitive timeline of every Spider-event, including that Broadway show; a ranking of all Parker’s foes on the big screen; an update on the animated Into the Spider-Verse sequel; and much more. Please note that this product is an authorized edition published by the Meredith Corporation and sold by Amazon. This edition is printed using a high quality matte interior paper and printed on demand for immediate fulfillment.

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