Showing posts with label New pop culture books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New pop culture books. Show all posts

New Pop Culture Books: Pulps! Beatles! Tiki! More!

Out now. Click the links to order from Amazon.

    A visual treasury of the iconic Street & Smith pulp novel covers of the 1930s and 1940s
Pulp Power: The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Art of the Street & Smith Universe gives fans a rare glimpse into the pre-war pulp novel decade of the 1930s, a period of bold action and adventure storytelling that ultimately led to the creation of the comic book and the superheroes we know and love today.
    This period, a pre-Batman, pre-Superman golden era of American creativity and artistic excellence, starred two main characters in leading roles: The Shadow and Doc Savage. In more than 500 novels written between 1930 and 1940, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Street & Smith universe of characters captivated a generation of Americans with their heroic exploits and inspired a new generation of writers to create a pantheon of comic book superheroes in their mold.
    Street & Smith, the renowned publisher of these novels, commissioned leading artists to provide bold and original cover artwork for their publications, and in Pulp Power, hundreds of these eye-catching covers are reproduced as a collection for the first time. Comics legend Dan DiDio provides context for the cover illustrations alongside a narrative discussion of the influence of the Street & Smith superhero universe on legendary creators such as Orson Welles, Truman Capote, Michael Chabon, George Lucas, Agnes Moorehead, James Patterson, Walter Mosley, Dwayne Johnson, Frank Miller, James Bama, Jim Steranko, Jim Lee, Gail Simone, and many more.
    The book also includes original line art illustrations from the volumes along with unique reproductions of Shadow ephemera. Pulp Power is the ultimate coffee table collectible book for all who love the world of superheroes.

It’s Supergirl like you’ve never seen her before, in a character-defining sci-fi/fantasy masterpiece from Mister Miracle writer Tom King and Wonder Woman artist Bilquis Evely!
    Kara Zor-El has seen some epic adventures over the years, but she now finds her life without meaning or purpose. Here she is, a young woman who saw her planet destroyed and was sent to Earth to protect a baby cousin who ended up not needing her. What was it all for? Wherever she goes, people only see her through the lens of Superman’s fame.
    Just when Supergirl thinks she’s had enough, everything changes. An alien girl seeks her out for a vicious mission. Her world has been destroyed, and the bad guys responsible are still out there. She wants revenge, and if Supergirl doesn’t help her, she’ll do it herself, whatever the cost. Now a Kryptonian, a dog, and an angry, heartbroken child head out into space on a journey that will shake them to their very core. 
     This volume collects Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #1-8.

Artist Butch Guice returns to The Winter Soldier as The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide returns for its 52nd annual edition. From the Yellow Kid and some of the earliest days of comics to latest developments in the market, the Guide has been the Bible of serious comic book collectors, dealers and historians for more than five decades! This edition also includes a look at the history of James Buchanan Barnes – alias Bucky, a.k.a. The Winter Soldier, the latest inductees for The Overstreet Hall of Fame, and more. Lists comics from the developmental days more than 150 years ago to the present.

Bow before the majesty of Doctor Doom! The greatest villain of all is celebrated in a tome of tyranny six decades in the making! Featuring the Latverian ruler's first battle with the accursed Reed Richards and his Fantastic Four — and their most epic clashes since! Plus, Doom's unforgettable encounters with Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men and the Avengers! A trip to hell with Doctor Strange! The power of the Beyonder! Victor von Doom's incredible life story contained in the Books of Doom! And more tales of the Lord of Latveria!

From T. J. English, the New York Times bestselling author of Havana Nocturne, comes the epic, scintillating narrative of the interconnected worlds of jazz and organized crime in 20th century America.
    Dangerous Rhythms tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th century America’s most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob, including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed.
    Even so, at the heart of this relationship was a festering racial inequity. The musicians were mostly African American, and the clubs and means of production were owned by white men. It was a glorified plantation system that, over time, would find itself out of tune with an emerging Civil Rights movement. Some artists, including Louis Armstrong, believed they were safer and more likely to be paid fairly if they worked in “protected” joints. Others believed that playing in venues outside mob rule would make it easier to have control over their careers.
    Through English’s voluminous research and keen narrative skills, Dangerous Rhythms reveals this deeply fascinating slice of American history in all its sordid glory.

Harry Benson began photographing Paul McCartney in 1964, when the Beatles took America by storm, toured the world, and made their movie debut with A Hard Day’s Night. The legendary photojournalist was on hand to document it all. When the Fab Four came to an end, it was Benson who had intimate access to Paul and his wife Linda, as Paul forged a new path, creatively and personally.
    Featuring more than 100 color and black-and-white images, this collection is a window into the life of one of the world’s best-known recording artists, one who has remained enigmatic despite a lifetime in the limelight.
    Through Benson’s lens, Paul traces the evolution of its namesake from performer to icon, father and husband. We see the young musician at the height of his fame with the Beatles, in the recording studio with Linda and their band Wings, with the family, behind the scenes and on stage during the 1975–76 “Wings Over America” tour, partying with the stars, and at the couple’s quiet farm in the UK in the early 1990s.
    On the occasion of Sir Paul's 80th birthday, Paul gives an all-access look at a life spent making the world’s most popular music. A must for any music fan.

The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, and The Voyage Home – the Genesis Trilogy of Star Trek movies has a firm place in the hearts of Trek fans of all ages. Taking us from a deadly villain, a tragedy on the Enterprise, and to a heart-warming reunion, this special book explores the making of the classic saga. Featuring classic interviews, in-depth features and amazing imagery.

On a sweltering Sunday evening in August 1965, 56,000 people traveled by plane, car, bus, ferry, and subway train to pack New York’s Shea Stadium. They were there not for a ballgame, but a rock and roll concert—the audacious dream of promoter Sid Bernstein. No band had ever played a baseball stadium, and few believed it could be pulled off, but on that glorious night, The Beatles sold out Shea Stadium, shattering all existing box office and attendance records in show business history.
    Against a backdrop of mounting political and cultural tumult, Top of the Mountain delivers the details and excitement of Shea and the spirited, curious new generation who would soon claim the decade for its own. Packed with hundreds of color photographs, it gives a one-of-a-kind account of this monumental event, gathering first-person interviews and quotes from dozens of those who experienced a piece of pop-culture history—celebrities, writers, agents, producers, photographers, opening act performers, security guards, radio personalities, cameramen, and fans of all kinds. Among them were young Caryn Johnson (Whoopi Goldberg), Mary Louise Streep (Meryl Streep), and Steven Lento (Steven Van Zandt); future Beatle wives Linda Eastman and Barbara Bach; established stars like Bobby Vinton and Ed Sullivan; and artists such as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Felix Cavaliere and The Rascals, Marvin Gaye, and more. Together, they paint an unforgettable picture of a night like no other.

Gil Kane’s The Amazing Spider-Man Artisan Edition presents each page in what appears to be black and white, but has actually been scanned in color. Readers view the art in its most natural form—blue pencils, ink gradients, and editorial notations all clearly visible—so they can (ahem) marvel at all the little nuances that make original art unique.
     This volume contains the infamous three-part drug story that was not approved by the Comics Code Authority (Amazing Spider-Man #96–98). The second three-part story features the legendary six-armed Spider-Man saga (Amazing Spider-Man #100–102). Additionally, one of the most famous—and most shocking—Spidey tales is included: the death of Gwen Stacey! (Amazing Spider-Man #121). You can’t get a better line-up of Spider-Man stories than this!
     Gil Kane is regarded as one of the finest comic artists in the history of the medium. His dynamic sequential storytelling abilities, coupled with impeccable draftsmanship, make him a true artist’s artist—as this book will attest!

Tiki Culture arose as the defining expression of American pop culture during World War II and its influence continued through the 1960s. The essence of Tiki featured heavily in films of the era, depicting palm-tree and cocktail-laden escapes that captivated audiences nationwide. Films like South Pacific and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit were a hodgepodge of jungle imagery and World War II Pacific theater memories. A fascination with the new State of Hawaii was reflected in Elvis's Blue Hawaii, while balmy youth flicks like Beach Blanket Bingo and Gidget showcased surf, sun and fun.
    Join authors Jason Henderson and Adam Foshko as they explore films about the experiences of war filtered through the tropical splendor that defined an era.

The United States has been shaped by mobility like no other nation on Earth. The automobile made possible almost limitless development, but there was a dark side: ghost towns and deserted regions emerged due to economic crises, cultural shifts, and catastrophic weather. Heribert Niehues's award-winning photographs trace these lonely places, which elicit strange fascination mixed with melancholy for a bygone era. His Hopperesque images of gas stations, diners, motels, houses, and cars document the rise and former glory of a legendary America. Over the decades, only nature has changed their visage, and the old pioneering spirit is still tangible. Hauntingly beautiful, the photos portray the poetry of transience: from east to west, America as it is rarely seen.

It's 1974, and Jerry Stieglitz is a grad student in marine biology at UCLA with a side gig selling short stories to science fiction magazines, just weeks away from marrying his longtime fiancée. Then his life is upended by grim-faced men from three-letter agencies who want him to join a top-secret "Project Azorian" in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean―and they really don't take "no" for an answer. Further, they're offering enough money to solve all of his immediate problems.
    Joining up and swearing to secrecy, what he first learns is that Project Azorian is secretly trying to raise a sunken Russian submarine, while pretending to be harvesting undersea manganese nodules. But the dead Russian sub, while real, turns out to be a cover story as well. What's down on the ocean floor next to it is the thing that killed the sub: an alien spacecraft.
    Jerry's a scientist, a longhair, a storyteller, a dreamer. He stands out like a sore thumb on the Glomar Explorer, a ship full of CIA operatives, RAND Corporation eggheads, and roustabout divers. But it turns out that he's the one person in the North Pacific who's truly thought out all the ways that human-alien first contact might go.
    And meanwhile, it's still 1974 back on the mainland. Richard Nixon is drinking heavily and talking to the paintings on the White House walls. The USA is changing fast―and who knows what will happen when this story gets out? Three Miles Down is both a fresh and original take on First Contact, and a hugely enjoyable romp through the pop culture, political tumult, and conspiracies-within-conspiracies atmosphere that was 1974.

New Pop Culture Books: Superman '78! D&D History! Tarzan! Doc Savage! More!

Click the links to order from Amazon. 

In the late 1970s moviegoers were thrilled by the words "You'll believe a man can fly!," which introduced actor Christopher Reeve as the silver screen's charming new Man of Steel. These adventures are set in a world where superheroes are strange, thrilling, and romantic.
    These stories, written by comics veteran Robert Venditti (Hawkman, Green Lantern, Justice League) with crisply drawn art by Wilfredo Torres, feature colorful villains like Brainiac and Lex Luthor, as well as the heroism of Superman and the determined grit of reporter Lois Lane.
    Collects the first 12 chapters of the Superman '78 digital comics series.


Role-playing game historian Ben Riggs unveils the secret history of TSR― the company that unleashed imaginations with Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, and then saved by their bitterest rival.
    Co-created by wargame enthusiasts Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the original Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game released by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1974 created a radical new medium: the role-playing game. For the next two decades, TSR rocketed to success, producing multiple editions of D&D, numerous settings for the game, magazines, video games, New York Times bestselling novels by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and R. A. Salvatore, and even a TV show! 
    But by 1997, a series of ruinous choices and failed projects brought TSR to the edge of doom―only to be saved by their fiercest competitor, Wizards of the Coast, the company behind the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering.
    Unearthed from Ben Riggs’s own adventurous campaign of in-depth research, interviews with major players, and acquisitions of secret documents, Slaying the Dragon reveals the true story of the rise and fall of TSR. 
    Go behind the scenes of their Lake Geneva headquarters where innovative artists and writers redefined the sword and sorcery genre, managers and executives sabotaged their own success by alienating their top talent, ignoring their customer fanbase, accruing a mountain of debt, and agreeing to deals which, by the end, made them into a publishing company unable to publish so much as a postcard.
    As epic and fantastic as the adventures TSR published, Slaying the Dragon is the legendary tale of the rise and fall of the company that created the role-playing game world.

Stranger Things: The Official Coloring Book
From Hawkins to the Upside Down, explore the strange and spooky world of Stranger Things with this first-ever, official Netflix coloring book. Color in the Creel House, Steve and Robin serving up ice cream at Scoops Ahoy, or the terrifying Demogorgon in full attack mode.
    Featuring 76 original illustrations and thick paper, this coloring book is the perfect way to relive the greatest moments from this hugely popular show.

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy
Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy.
    In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers—a cover for her spying work—Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served—the US, France, and Britain.
    Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, explaining why she fully deserves her unique place in the French Panthéon.

Elvis - The Legend: The Authorized Book from the Official Graceland Archive
This book tells the personal story of Elvis and his relationships with those near and dear to him and contains more than 150 colour and black and white photographs from the Graceland archives, accompanied by insightful text from an author with a proven Elvis track record.
    To take you closer than ever before to the King, 30 items of rare memorabilia are carefully reproduced on the page, including personal letters, receipts, telegrams, publicity material and other fascinating items which provide new insight into the life of a legend.
    There are photographs of Elvis himself, Elvis with friends and family, and all manner of personal artifacts, including guitars, jewelry, clothing, vehicles and more.

Don Bluth never felt like a Donald. So people have always called him Don. A matinee of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs awakened something within him. Despite growing up in rural Texas and Utah, he practiced and worked hard to become an Hollywood animator. And after working alongside his idol Walt Disney, and on films including Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood, Winne the Pooh, The Rescuers, and Pete’s Dragon, he realized that the company had changed into something he didn’t necessarily believe in. So made the industry-shocking decision to start his own animation studio.
    It was from that studio—Don’s studio—that came such award-winning, generation-defining films as The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Anastasia, and the video game Dragon’s Lair.
    Now, after more than half a century in the movie business, Don is ready to tell the story of his life. How his passions for artistry, integrity, and his Mormon faith shaped him into the beloved icon whose creativity, entrepreneurship, and deeply-held beliefs entertained, enthralled, and inspired millions across the globe.
    Exclusive original art makes this book perfect for fans, cineasts, and anyone looking “somewhere out there” for inspiration and motivation.

Soon after the birth of Mickey Mouse, one animator raised the Disney Studio far beyond Walt’s expectations. That animator also led a union war that almost destroyed it. Art Babbitt animated for the Disney studio throughout the 1930s and through 1941, years in which he and Walt were jointly driven to elevate animation as an art form, up through Snow White, Pinocchio, and Fantasia.
    But as America prepared for World War II, labor unions spread across Hollywood. Disney fought the unions while Babbitt embraced them. Soon, angry Disney cartoon characters graced picket signs as hundreds of animation artists went out on strike. Adding fuel to the fire was Willie Bioff, one of Al Capone’s wiseguys who was seizing control of Hollywood workers and vied for the animators’ union.
    Using never-before-seen research from previously lost records, including conversation transcriptions from within the studio walls, author and historian Jake S. Friedman reveals the details behind the labor dispute that changed animation and Hollywood forever.

The stories of King Arthur and Merlin, Lancelot and Guinevere, Galahad, Gawain, Tristan and the rest of the Knights of the Roundtable, and the search for the Holy Grail have been beloved for centuries and are the inspiration of many modern fantasy novels, films, and shows. These legends began when an obscure Celtic hero named Arthur stepped on to the stage of history sometime in the sixth century, generating a host of oral tales that would be inscribed some 900 years later by Thomas Malory in his classic Morte D’Arthur (The Death of Arthur).
    The Great Book of King Arthur brings these legends into the modern age, using accessible prose for contemporary readers for the first time. In addition to the stories in Morte D’Arthur, John Matthews includes many tales of Arthur and his knights either unknown to Malory or written in other languages, such as the story of Avenable, the girl brought up as a boy who becomes a famous knight; Morien, whose adventures are as fantastic and exciting as any found in Malory’s work; and a retelling of the life of Round Table favorite Gawain, from his strange birth to his upbringing among the poor to his ascension to the highest position—Emperor of Rome.
    In addition, there are some of the earliest tales of Arthur, deriving from the tradition of Celtic storytelling. The epic hero is represented in such powerful stories as “The Adventures of Eagle-boy” and “The Coming of Merlin,” which is based on the early medieval text Vita Merlini and tells a completely new version of the great enchanter’s story. 
    The Great Book of King Arthur includes 15 full-color paintings and 25 pencil drawings.

Founded in 1960 by surfer, artist, and filmmaker John Severson, Surfer was the longest continuously published surf magazine, referred to as “the bible of the sport.” Surfer was firmly established as the sport’s leading voice, serving as a template for a small but growing number of surf magazines around the world. Featuring a mix of travel articles, contest reporting, surf spot profiles, big wave pictorials, and surfer interviews, Surfer worked with the world’s best photographers, writers, and graphic designers. This voluminous anthology features the most time-less, inspirational, and historically significant covers and interior pages from the magazine’s extensive archive and depicts the chronological progression of the sport, the gear, the style, and the world’s top surfers throughout the decades, from Mickey Dora to Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton.
    This is the perfect book for those who surf or spend time in the ocean and for anyone interested in a historical reference guide to modern day surfing and its highly influential style and subculture.

With the consumerist euphoria of the fifties still going strong and the race to the moon at its height, the mood of advertising in the sixties was cheerful, optimistic, and at times, revolutionary. The decade’s ads touted perceived progress―such as tang and instant omelets - "just add water"―while striving to reinforce good old American values.
    Stars like Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Salvador Dalí, and Sammy Davis Jr. endorsed everything from bourbon to handmade suits in an attempt by Madison Avenue to urge Americans to open their wallets and participate in one giant consumer binge. Social change at the end of the era brought psychedelic swirls and liberated women and minorities to a newly conscious public. Keep an eye out for some of the more surprising and controversial ads―such as Tupperware billing its storage container as a "wifesaver."
    From forgotten cars, to cigarettes to food and much more, this colorful collection of print ads explores the wide, wonderful world of 60s Americana.

This incarnation of the Jungle Lord is presented in Sunday newspaper landscape format, with all-new stories penned by comics legend Roy Thomas (Conan the Barbarian, Avengers, X-Men) with stunning illustration by Thomas Grindberg, whose work stands alongside classic Tarzan illustrators such as Hal Foster, J. Allen St. John, and Frank Frazetta. No Tarzan comics collection is complete without Tarzan: The New Adventures.

USA, the Great Depression. Lester Dent and Walter Gibson are the most-prolific, widely published storytellers on earth, authors of Doc Savage and The Shadow magazines—ground-breaking pulp heroes inspiring Superman and Batman, and launching the comic book age.
    Tasked with writing two Shadow novels each month, Gibson uses a battery of typewriters, resting bloodied fingertips between books as he pounds out 1,680,000 words a year. Attempting a similar impossible schedule, Dent suffers an apparent nervous breakdown—beginning to see and actually interact with his Doc Savage characters, come-to-life.
    In 1949, Dent pens his oddest and last-published Doc Savage novel, one in which he sends his strapping bronze adventurer into the very heart of Hell. Ten years later, Dent is dead.
    Jump decades: The nearly forgotten Doc Savage and Shadow pulp novels are enjoying new life in paperback, selling millions of copies. Yet, simultaneously, people report seeing a strange, black-clad figure with coal-fire eyes around an old brownstone on Gay Street in Greenwich Village. The building in question? The very one in which Gibson penned the last of his Shadow novels in 1949. A dabbler in the occult, Gibson insists to interviewers the specter is that of The Shadow, and is a tulpa, or “living mind-projection,” spawned by his unrivaled literary output. But another, far more sinister “mind creature” is actively threatening the world, a tulpa hatched by an adolescent Lester Dent and left to lash out from earth’s fiery center.
    In the tradition of Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and Paul Malmont’s The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, Edgar Award-finalist Craig McDonald offers a haunting mix of history and meta-fiction centered on the very act of literary creation, but served up as 21st Century, pulp-lit adventure in which pulp fiction characters literally come to life.

New Pop Culture Books: Stones! Sedaris! Star Trek! More!

Our monthly roundup of interesting titles. Click the links to order from Amazon.

The year 1972 brought together two legends of rock 'n' roll at the peaks of their careers: Jim Marshall and the Rolling Stones. Selected by LIFE magazine to photograph the Stones' EXILE ON MAIN ST. tour, Marshall had a week of unlimited access. The results are his now-iconic images of the band, onstage in their full glory and backstage in moments of unguarded camaraderie. Marshall's ability to capture the essential spirit of an artist and the transformative power of music is matched only by the Stones' larger-than-life energy. Fifty years after these photographs were taken, they retain the power to thrill and inspire.
    This definitive edition presents the images as they were meant to be seen: at a larger size and in the rich, high-contrast tones Marshall favored. The original content is enhanced with never-before-seen proof sheets and two new essays by photographer and film director Anton Corbijn and Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe. This is the ultimate, immersive experience of one of the greatest moments in music history.

For over five decades, the heart of Star Trek’s pro-science, anti-racist, and inclusive messaging has been its willingness to take big risks. Across thirteen feature films, and twelve TV series—including five shows currently airing or in production—the brilliance of Star Trek is in its endless ability to be rethought, rebooted, and remade.
    Author and Star Trek expert Ryan Britt charts an approachable and entertaining course through Star Trek history; from its groundbreaking origins amid the tumultuous 1960s, to its influence on diversifying the space program, to its contemporary history-making turns with LGBTQ+ representation, this book illuminates not just the behind-the-scenes stories that shaped the franchise but the larger meaning of the Final Frontier.
    Featuring over 100 exclusive interviews with actors and writers across all the generations, including Walter Koenig, LeVar Burton, Dorothy Fontana, Brent Spiner, Ronald D. Moore, Jeri Ryan, and many more, Britt gets the inside story on all things Trek, like Spock’s evolution from red devil to the personification of logical empathy, the near failure to launch of The Next Generation in 1987, and how Trekkie outrage has threatened to destroy the franchise more than once. The book also dives deep with creators like Michael Chabon (co-creator of Star Trek: Picard) and Nicholas Meyer (director, The Wrath of Khan). These interviews extend to the bleeding edge of contemporary Star Trek, from Discovery to Picard to Lower Decks, and even the upcoming highly anticipated 2022 series, Strange New Worlds.
    For fans who know every detail of each Enterprise bridge, to a reader who has never seen a single minute of any Star Trek, this book aims to entertain, inform, and energize. Through humor, insight, archival research, and unique access, this journey through the Star Trek universe isn’t just about its past but a definitive look at its future.

This international literary sensation turns the spotlight on one of the most influential and controversial figures in American culture. Filled with shocking observations about the lives, loves, and careers of the rich, famous, and fabulous, Warhol's journal is endlessly fun and fascinating.
    Spanning the mid-1970s until just a few days before his death in 1987, THE ANDY WARHOL DIARIES is a compendium of the more than twenty thousand pages of the artist's diary that he dictated daily to Pat Hackett. In it, Warhol gives us the ultimate backstage pass to practically everything that went on in the world-both high and low. He hangs out with "everybody": Jackie O ("thinks she's so grand she doesn't even owe it to the public to have another great marriage to somebody big"), Yoko Ono ("We dialed F-U-C-K-Y-O-U and L-O-V-E-Y-O-U to see what happened, we had so much fun"), and "Princess Marina of, I guess, Greece," along with art-world rock stars Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Salvador Dali, and Keith Haring.
    Warhol had something to say about everyone who crossed his path, whether it was Lou Reed or Liberace, Patti Smith or Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra or Michael Jackson. A true cultural artifact, THE ANDY WARHOL DIARIES amounts to a portrait of an artist-and an era-unlike any other.


By early 1963 the foundations of the Marvel Age had been laid. Following the introduction of the Fantastic Four in 1961 came the amazing (Spider-Man), the astonishing (Ant-Man), the strange (Doctor, that is), the incredible (Hulk), the invincible (Iron Man) and the mighty (Thor). Still, Marvel editor in chief Stan Lee realized something was missing. “I was writing these characters and I thought it would fun to put them together in a team,” he recalled. So Lee and artist Jack Kirby assembled Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Thor, and the Hulk to create the Avengers.
    Right away it was clear this team was different. If the Fantastic Four were family, then the Avengers were the co-workers you didn’t choose. Not everyone got along―the Hulk fought with everyone―but working together they could defeat the baddest of Marvel’s bad guys, like Loki, Kang the Conqueror, the Masters of Evil, and Immortus. The lineup was ever changing: The Hulk departed, Captain America joined, and Ant-Man grew up to become Giant-Man. Then, remarkably, villains Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch became heroes―and Avengers―and the group’s founding members shockingly departed, leaving Captain America to lead the newly-minted heroes.
    Re-live the classic early adventures of Avengers Nos. 1–20 in an XXL-sized edition that’s bigger than the Hulk’s fist, weightier than Thor’s hammer, and with more extras than Iron Man’s armor. TASCHEN has attempted to create an ideal representation of these books as they were produced at the time of publication. The most pristine pedigreed comics have been cracked open and photographed for reproduction in close collaboration with Marvel and the Certified Guaranty Company. Each page has been photographed as printed more than half a century ago, then digitally remastered using modern retouching techniques to correct problems with the era’s inexpensive, imperfect printing―as if hot off of a world-class 1960s printing press.
    Accompanying the stories are an original foreword by Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige and an in-depth history by the Eisner Award-winning writer Kurt Busiek that’s illustrated with original art, little-seen photographs, and rare documents. This mighty collection about Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is worthy of Tony Stark’s library―or yours.

Hero Collector’s popular Star Trek Shipyards series continues with detailed looks at ships from the Alpha and Beta Quadrants as seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Original Series, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. First up? Ships of the Breen, Cardassians, and those pesky Ferengi. Each featured ship is profiled with technical details, in-universe operational history, and illustrated with plan-view CG renders, wherever possible utilizing the original VFX models created for the Star Trek shows and features from across the franchise’s remarkable 55 years.
    This volume includes more than 40 ships, including the Anaxar cargo vessel, the Breen Warship, the Cardassian Bok'Nor, Cardassian military freighter, the Ferengi shuttle, the Gorn warship, the Husnok warship and the Jem’Hadar battlecruiser.

In his new book, English Garden Eccentrics, renowned landscape architect and historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan reveals a series of obscure and eccentric English garden-makers who, between the early seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries, created intensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens. They include such fascinating characters as the superstitious antiquary William Stukeley and the animal- and bird-loving Lady Read, as well as the celebrated master of Vauxhall Gardens, Jonathan Tyers, who created at his home at Denbies one of the gloomiest and most perverse anti-pleasure gardens in Georgian England. Others built miniature mountains, shaped topiaries, displayed exotic animals, excavated caves and assembled architectural fragments and fossils to realise their gardens in a way that was often thought to be excessive.
    With quirky and compelling illustrations and chapters including ‘Lady Broughton’s “Miniature copy of the Swiss Glaciers”’, ‘Topiary on a Gargantuan Scale: The Clipped “Yew-trees” at Four Ancient London Churchyards’ and ‘The Burrowing Duke at Harcourt House’, English Garden Eccentricsbrings together garden and landscape history with cultural history and biography. The book engagingly reveals what it is about the gardener and his or her creation that can be seen as eccentric and focusses on an area of garden history that has scarcely been previously explored: gardens seen as expressions of the singular character of their makers, and therefore functioning, in effect, as a form of autobiography. 
    This lively and accessible book calls on gardeners today to learn from example and dare to be eccentric. 

The LEGO minifigure is one of the most recognizable and collectible toys on the planet. Over the span of 40 years it has evolved from a simple yellow figurine to a global pop culture icon. This landmark volume celebrates the colorful history, evolving design, and lasting impact of the one and only LEGO minifigure. Driven by compelling interviews and essays, lush photography, infographics, and never-before-seen visuals from inside the LEGO archives and beyond, this book is a wide-reaching visual exploration of why the minifigure matters—as a beloved toy and as a singular cultural icon.

Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall's appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era's defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?
    In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds. She now turns her sharp eye to another subject we only think we know. She chronicles postwar architects' and merchants' invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. In Lange's perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction: Malls are environments of both freedom and exclusion--of consumerism, but also of community. Meet Me by the Fountain is a highly entertaining and evocative promenade through the mall's story of rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention, for readers of any generation.

Apple Valley, California, in the late eighties, a thirsty, miserable desert.
    Teenage James Spooner hates that he and his mom are back in town after years away. The one silver lining—new school, new you, right? But the few Black kids at school seem to be gangbanging, and the other kids fall on a spectrum of micro-aggressors to future Neo-Nazis. Mixed race, acutely aware of his Blackness, James doesn't know where he fits until he meets Ty, a young Black punk who introduces him to the school outsiders—skaters, unhappy young rebels, caught up in the punk groundswell sweeping the country.
    A haircut, a few Sex Pistols, Misfits and Black Flag records later: suddenly, James has friends, romantic prospects, and knows the difference between a bass and a guitar. But this desolate landscape hides brutal, building undercurrents: a classmate overdoses, a friend must prove himself to his white supremacist brother and the local Aryan brotherhood through a show of violence. Everything and everyone are set to collide at one of the year's biggest shows in town...
    Weaving in the Black roots of punk rock and a vivid interlude in the thriving eighties DIY scene in New York's East Village, this is the memoir of a budding punk, artist, and activist.

Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.
    But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.
    As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.
    In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

Chris Blackwell, like the paradigm-shifting artists he came to support over his sixty-plus years in the music business, never took the conventional route. He grew up between Jamaica and London, crossing paths with Ian Fleming, Noel Coward, and Errol Flynn. After being expelled from an elite British school for rebellious behavior in 1954 at age seventeen, he moved back to Jamaica, and within five years, founded Island Records—the company that would make an indelible mark on music, shifting with the times, but always keeping its core identity intact.
    The Islander is the story of Blackwell and his cohorts at Island Records, who time and again, identified, nurtured, and broke out musicians who had been overlooked by bigger record labels, including Steve Winwood, Nick Drake, John Martyn, and Cat Stevens. After an impromptu meeting with Bob Marley and his bandmates in 1972, Blackwell decided to fund and produce their groundbreaking album Catch a Fire. He’d go on to work with Marley over the rest of his career, remain his close friend, and continually champion Jamaican culture and reggae music.
    In the ensuing years, Blackwell worked with U2, Grace Jones, the B-52s, Tom Waits, Robert Palmer, Tom Tom Club, and many other groundbreaking artists. He also opened the first Jamaican boutique hotel, on the property of Ian Fleming’s former home, Goldeneye, where all the James Bond books were written.
    Blackwell is a legendary as well as deeply humble raconteur, and reading The Islander is like spending a day with the most interesting man in the world.

Legendary sitcom director James Burrows has spent five decades making America laugh. Here readers will find never-revealed stories behind the casting of the dozens of great sitcoms he directed, as well as details as to how these memorable shows were created, how they got on the air, and how the cast and crew continued to develop and grow. Burrows also examines his own challenges, career victories, and defeats, and provides advice for aspiring directors, writers, and actors. All this from the man who helped launch the careers of Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer, Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Aniston, Debra Messing, and Melissa McCarthy, to name a few. 
    Burrows talks fondly about the inspiration he found during his childhood and young adult years, including his father, legendary playwright and Broadway director Abe Burrows. From there he goes on to explain his rigorous work ethic, forged in his early years in theater, where he did everything from stage managing to building sets to, finally, directing. Transitioning to television, Burrows locked into a coveted job with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where he first observed and then started to apply his craft. Directing most of the episodes of Taxi came next, where he worked closely with writers/producers Glen and Les Charles. The three formed a remarkable creative partnership that helped Burrows achieve his much sought-after goal of ownership and agency over a project, which came with the creating and directing of the seminal and beloved hit Cheers. Burrows has directed more than seventy-five pilots that have gone to series and over a thousand episodes, more than any other director in history.

In 1926, 23-year-old cub newspaper reporter Leslie McFarlane responded to an ad: “Experienced Fiction Writer Wanted to Work from Publisher’s Outlines.” The ad was signed by Edward Stratemeyer, whose syndicate effectively invented mass-market children’s book publishing in America. McFarlane, who had a few published adventure stories to his name, was hired and his first job was to write Dave Fearless Under the Ocean as Roy Rockwood—for a flat fee of $100, no royalties. His pay increased to $125 when Stratemeyer proposed a new series of detective stories for kids involving two high school aged brothers who would solve mysteries. The title of the series was The Hardy Boys. McFarlane’s pseudonym would be Franklin W. Dixon.
    McFarlane went on to write twenty-one Hardy Boys adventures. From The Tower Treasure in 1927 to The Phantom Freighter in 1947, into full-fledged classics filled with perilous scrapes, loyal chums, and breakneck races to solve the mystery. McFarlane kept his ghostwriting gig secret until late in life when his son urged him to share the story of being the real Franklin W. Dixon. By the time McFarlane died in 1977, unofficial sales estimates of The Hardy Boys series already topped 50 million copies.
    Ghost of the Hardy Boys is a fascinating, funny, and always charming look back at a vanished era of journalism, writing, and book publishing. It is for anyone who loves a great story and who’s curious about solving the mystery of the fascinating man behind one of the most widely read and enduring children’s book series in history.

Coming Up: "Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius"


Out Nov. 15. Order now from Amazon.

Details:

Every so often, a pairing comes along that seems completely unlikely—until it’s not. Peanut butter and jelly, Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un, ducks and puppies, and now: Dickens and Prince.

Equipped with a fan’s admiration and his trademark humor and wit, Nick Hornby invites us into his latest obsession: the cosmic link between two unlikely artists, geniuses in their own rights, spanning race, class, and centuries—each of whom electrified their different disciplines and whose legacy resounded far beyond their own time.

When Prince’s 1987 record Sign o’ the Times was rereleased in 2020, the iconic album now came with dozens of songs that weren’t on the original— Prince was endlessly prolific, recording 102 songs in 1986 alone. In awe, Hornby began to wonder, Who else ever produced this much? Who else ever worked that way? He soon found his answer in Victorian novelist and social critic Charles Dickens, who died more than a hundred years before Prince began making music.

Examining the two artists’ personal tragedies, social statuses, boundless productivity, and other parallels, both humorous and haunting, Hornby shows how these two unlikely men from different centuries “lit up the world.” In the process, he creates a lively, stimulating rumination on the creativity, flamboyance, discipline, and soul it takes to produce great art.


Coming Up: "Britmania: The British Invasion of the Sixties in Pop Culture"


Out Oct. 18. Order now from Amazon.

Details:

Remember when long-haired British rock ’n’ rollers made teenage girls swoon ― and their parents go crazy? Britmania plunges into the period when suddenly, America went wild for All Things British. This profusely illustrated full-color hardback, subtitled “The British Invasion of the Sixties in Pop Culture,” explores the movies (A Hard Day’s Night, Having a Wild Weekend), TV (The Ed Sullivan Show, Magical Mystery Tour), collectibles (toys, games, trading cards, lunch boxes), comics (real-life Brits in the DC and Marvel Universes) and, of course, the music! Written and designed by Mark Voger (Monster Mash, Groovy, Holly Jolly), Britmania features interviews with members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, the Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, the Yardbirds, the Animals, the Hollies and more. It’s a gas, gas, gas!

Coming Up: "Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography by Dave Gibbons"


Out Nov. 29. Order now from Amazon.

Details:

This comprehensive, in-depth, and personal journey through the eyes of one of the world’s most famous comics creators, Dave Gibbons, spans his earliest years copying Superman and Batman comics as a kid, to co-creating the bestselling graphic novel of all-time, Watchmen, and beyond.

Presented alphabetically, with informally written anecdotes that can be read from cover-to-cover or simply dipped into, Gibbons reveals unseen comics’ pitches, life as the first Comics Laureate, and going from being a fanzine artist to infiltrating DC Comics in the 1970s. The book covers everything from working on Doctor Who and meeting Tom Baker to being inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame. Gibbons also discusses, for the first time anywhere, the reasons why he and fellow Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore no longer speak. Packed with over 300 iconic, rarely seen, and unpublished art pieces and photographs, Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography not only entertains, but peels back the layers of a fascinating career in comics.