Books
Matching the Smells of Musty Manuscripts with Chemical Compounds
Researchers at University College London studied the scents of old books to better understand how to identify and protect "heritage smells."
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A Designer’s 1977 Road Map to Better Visual Literacy Gets Rereleased
A new edition of George Nelson's How to See shows that his guide to the human-made landscape is as relevant as ever.
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A Painter Speaks, so that His Paintings Can Remain Silent
When René Magritte wrote “This is not a pipe,” he wasn’t negating the pipe so much as he was negating the language with which we attempt to grasp it.
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Marsden Hartley's Maine: His Own Private Germany
Besides examining in-depth both the early and late Maine periods, Marsden Hartley’s Maine includes a fine essay on materials and techniques, based on careful examination of a dozen works, which shows a surprising continuity in composition and methods across Hartley’s career.
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A Poem of Shame: In the Words of China’s Workers
Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Worker Poetry, edited by Qin Xiaoyu and translated by Eleanor Goodman, collects work by Xu Lizhi and 30 other worker poets.
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Photographing Thoreau's Walden Pond in Its Altered 21st-Century Landscape
From 2010 to 2014, photographer S.B. Walker explored the shores of Walden Pond, where Thoreau's bucolic environment now bustles with recreation and development.
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A Compendium of Shakespeare’s Plants, from Juliet’s Rose to Ophelia’s Bouquet
The book Botanical Shakespeare, by historian Gerit Quealy with illustrations by Sumié Hasegawa-Collins, compiles the roughly 175 mentions of plants in Shakespeare's plays.
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A Wordless Journey from Crappy Art to Actual Crap
Tara Booth's graphic memoir D.U.I.I is an exploration of shame and failed expectations
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101 Unflinching Portraits of Survivors of US Gun Violence
Kathy Shorr's photography book helps to de-normalize what has become painfully normal
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Hirato Renkichi: The Black Shadow-Man Illuminated
Already in the three short volumes which Hirato had hoped to publish, but for which he was unable to raise money, we see a growing tendency to break up the language and images, abstracting them into a pulse of pure energy that conveys the meaning rather than simply expressing it.
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Drenching Found Negatives in Washes of Vivid Color
After discovering a series of negatives in an abandoned skyscraper in St. Louis, Aaron Farley altered the degraded images with caustic colors.
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A Graphic Memoir About Learning to Cope with What's Left Behind
Kristen Radtke’s graphic memoir uses photos and the death of her uncle as touchstones to illustrate parallel forms of decay and loss.