Art Czar: The Rise and Fall of Clement Greenberg~ISBN 0-87846-701-7 U.S. $35.00 / Clothbound, 5.5 x 8.25 in. / 336 pgs / 35 b&w. ~Item / June / Nonfiction and Criticism Ms. Marquis has done a superlative job of setting the bare facts of the man's monklike concentration and tireless industry against the glitz and screaming egos of collectors, dealers and artists. --The New York Times Book Review on Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern
CZARFACE'S ULTIMATE ORIGIN REVEALED! Hero to some, villain to others, Czarface's true origins have remained a mystery...UNTIL NOW! Who are the Zarta Ku? And why has their desperate mission brought them to Planet Earth? Meanwhile, Zach and his dog were just a washed up wrestling tag team making ends meet on the comicon circuit when they crossed paths with a woman who will change both their lives forever. Written by Czarface's own Esoteric (Merry X-Men Holiday Special) with art by veteran illustrator Ariel Olivetti (Cable; Punisher War Journal), this landmark original graphic novel is a must-have for Wednesday warriors, wrestling marks, and hip-hop heads--or fans of all three combined!
Why some individuals function well within society for the better part of their lives only to morph into a polar opposite without forewarning may forever remain a mystery. Arthur James Williams has been viewed as such a man. His path in life was predictable over four decades only to transform into one of Canada's most notorious drug lords. Highly regarded for his actions during the Second World War, he later handcrafted the Williams' Long Bow, a work of art sought after by the leaders in competitive archery; but something tweaked his psyche during this time causing his view of bureaucracy and its administrators to take a combative shift. Art Williams navigated for years beneath the judicial radar while hand selecting a crew that formed a criminal empire to take full advantage of synthetic drugs unrecognized within current legislation. The thirst for a chemical high along the North American west coast only wetted his appetite to meet the need. The thought of incarceration never daunted his aggressive approach as he considered himself superior to the best legal minds. This is the first time the story has been told in full with no supposition or literary liberty as each player from both sides of the law contributed their personal experience to expose a real life game of chess.
A lyrically told, exquisitely illustrated biography of influential Jewish artist and activist Ben Shahn “The first thing I can remember,” Ben said, “I drew.” As an observant child growing up in Lithuania, Ben Shahn yearns to draw everything he sees—and, after seeing his father banished by the Czar for demanding workers’ rights, he develops a keen sense of justice, too. So when Ben and the rest of his family make their way to America, Ben brings both his sharp artistic eye and his desire to fight for what’s right. As he grows, he speaks for justice through his art—by disarming classmates who bully him because he’s Jewish, by defying his teachers’ insistence that he paint beautiful landscapes rather than true stories, by urging the US government to pass Depression-era laws to help people find food and jobs. In this moving and timely portrait, award-winning author Cynthia Levinson and illustrator Evan Turk honor an artist, immigrant, and activist whose work still resonates today: a true painter for the people.
"An engrossing and impossibly wide-ranging project . . . In The Free World, every seat is a good one." —Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post "The Free World sparkles. Fully original, beautifully written . . . One hopes Menand has a sequel in mind. The bar is set very high." —David Oshinsky, The New York Times Book Review | Editors' Choice One of The New York Times's 100 best books of 2021 | One of The Washington Post's 50 best nonfiction books of 2021 | A Mother Jones best book of 2021 In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense—economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind. How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal of “freedom” applied to causes that ranged from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight familiar to readers of The Metaphysical Club and his New Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt’s Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s residencies at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, and the Memphis studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new music for the American teenager. He examines the post war vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop art, Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin’s transformation into a Civil Right spokesman, Susan Sontag’s challenges to the New York Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise of the New Hollywood. Stressing the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the end of the Second World War, but America’s once-despised culture had become respected and adored. With unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that happened.
