Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard
Accompanying his exhibition at the Met—also filled with his collections of bottle caps, beer tabs, driftwood, and road signs—comes a volume of Walker Evans’s most cherished postcards, a serious art form to him.
Robert Birnbaum
Waltz With Bashir
Ari Folman’s Golden Globe-winning animated film “Waltz With Bashir” lends itself naturally to graphic novelization, and, to some, the book is even more accessible than the movie.
Chewing Up the Small Screen
In the vast wasteland known as television, the gap between the Olympian heights of shows such as The Wire and the subterranean depths of reality TV and that ode to puerility, 24, is occasionally filled by brief flashes of inspiration (usually accidental): The Practice, Grey’s Anatomy, The Closer, and
Through Black Spruce
Based on both the work of Gil Adamson and Joseph Boyden’s new novel, “Through Black Spruce,” one may come to the realization that all Canadian writers are pleasing to read. Given these examples, one wouldn’t be incorrect.
Musing on Muses
A new book concerned with William Faulkner’s love life and its affect on his work joins a growing multitude of similar volumes; some recent highlights focus on the love lives of Raymond Chandler and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Becoming Manny
Although a case against the evolution of his fans could be made, the life and career of Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez makes for great reading in a new biography by Boston scholar Jean Rhodes and award-winning journalist Shawn Boburg.
Oxford Atlas of the World
For those still interested in a tangible, offline personal library, some volumes—such as the regularly revised “Oxford Atlas of the World,” now in its 15th edition—are fundamental.
Ghosts of Chicago
Writers’ Workshop graduate John McNally’s new book of short stories is filled with both the celebrity and the minutiae of life in Chicago. Just don’t call him a “writer to watch!”
Poster Art
If your coffee table has been missing something, luckily there have been two new volumes of poster art produced, one featuring posters developed by the WPA, the other an international collection of movie poster art.
Our Life in Gardens
While books on specific topics can have broader applications, they don’t necessarily need to. Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd’s new book on gardening, their third, doesn’t claim to be anything more.