Books: Hokusai Manga by Katsushika Hokusai

The legendary masterpieces of Hokusai-fifteen volumes in a single chunky book. Hokusai Manga is one of the masterpieces by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), a master of Ukiyo-e art, depicting ordinary people’s lives, animals, plants, landscapes and human figures, historical and supernatural, even demons and monsters, as if it were a visual encyclopedia, amounting to fifteen volumes. Hokusai Manga turned out to be very popular among every class of people, from feudal lords to the general public, and became a long time best-seller in the Edo period. This book selects pieces from each volume and compiles them into one charming book.
The original masterpiece spread throughout Japan and flowed into Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, where it had a striking impact on artists, including Impressionists Manet, Monet, Degas, and others. The artistic movement ‘Japonisme’ began in part due to its influence.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was a Japanese artist and ukiyo-e painter of the Edo period, and best-known as the author of the woodblock print series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”.

Hokusai Manga, by Katsushika Hokusai, Designed by Kazuya Takaoka, via: Cool Hunting
Buy it here: Amazon

Books: London Unfurled by Matteo Pericoli

London is divided and united by its river; one of few cities in the world to find its essence in two profoundly different, yet nearly touching, urban characters. So the Thames provides the perfect vantage point for telling the most comprehensive story of this complex city.

Arriving with little previous knowledge of London, Matteo Pericoli made an intensive 20-mile journey along the river, from Hammersmith Bridge to the Millennium Dome and back again. Over two years later, he leaves behind the most astonishing document of his journey: two 37-foot-long pen-and-ink drawings depicting the city’s north and south banks. Each drawing presented on one side of this beautiful single-sheet accordion-style book — is rendered with loving and essay-like detail, revealing a distinct profile of London in all of its diversity: a dozen boroughs, nineteen bridges and hundreds of buildings, including the Houses of Parliament, Tate Modern, Battersea Power Station and Millennium Wheel.

London Unfurled: Matteo Pericoli, with essays by Will Self and Iain Sinclair, Published by Picador, iPad Version, Buy it here: Amazon

Books: The Geometry of Pasta

If you like design and you like to cook, then The Geometry of Pasta will help in pairing the right pasta shape with the perfect sauce. There are said to be over 300 shapes of pasta, each of which has a history, a story to tell, and an affinity with particular foods. These shapes have evolved alongside the flavours of local ingredients, and the perfect combination can turn an ordinary dish into something sublime.

Published by Boxtree, The Geometry of Pasta pairs over 100 authentic recipes from leading chef, Jacob Kenedy (co-founder of Soho restaurant Bocca di Lupo), with graphic designer Caz Hildebrand’s striking black-and-white designs to reveal the science, history and philosophy behind spectacular pasta dishes from all over Italy.

The Geometry of Pasta, by Jacob Kenedy and Caz Hildebrand, Publisher: Pan Macmillan, Hardback 288 pages, ISBN: 9780752227375
Buy it here: Amazon

Books: Creative Characters: The MyFonts Interviews vol.1

If you enjoy the long-running Creative Characters series of interviews from the MyFonts newsletter, look forward to a new release of Creative Characters: The MyFonts Interviews vol.1, A collection of in-depth interviews with the most influential type designers in the business as well as up-and-coming young guns about the motives and methods behind the typefaces. The list of designers include Jim Parkinson, Underware, David Berlow, Alejandro Paul, Veronika Burian, Rian Hughes, Cristian Schwartz and many more. Focusing more on people and personalities, the book approaches the arcane world of the type designer through a series of interviews that reveal their passion and gives a real insight into the business. The book is fully illustrated with type samples and showings of graphic designs, sketches and sources.

Creative Characters: The MyFonts Interviews vol.1, Edited by Jan Middendor, Paperback, 28 x 21.5 cm, Pages: 192, ISBN: 9789063692247, Published by BIS Publishers,
Buy it here: Amazon

Books: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

Modernist Cuisine is a five-volume, set that is destined to reinvent cooking. The lavishly illustrated books use thousands of original images to make the science and technology clear and engaging.

A revolution is underway in the art of cooking. Just as French Impressionists upended centuries of tradition, Modernist cuisine has in recent years blown through the boundaries of the culinary arts. Borrowing techniques from the laboratory, pioneering chefs at world-renowned restaurants such as elBulli, The Fat Duck, Alinea, and wd~50 have incorporated a deeper understanding of science and advances in cooking technology into their culinary art.

In Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet—scientists, inventors, and accomplished cooks in their own right—have created a massive, five-volume 2,400-page set that reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food that ranges from the otherworldly to the sublime. The authors—and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab—have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes. It is a work destined to reinvent cooking.

“This book will change the way we understand the kitchen.”
— Ferran Adrià

“A fascinating overview of the techniques of modern gastronomy.”
— Heston Blumenthal

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet, Hardcover, 2,400 Pages, Published by The Cooking Lab,
ISBN 9780982761007

Buy it here: Amazon

Books: Berliner Luft by Benjamin Tafel & Dennis Orel

A slightly different kind of traveler’s guide to the German capital.
Cult-style images of Berlin icons and objects worthy of becoming icons. Including Cavalry captain and riding games, Coziness Colony, Mariendorf trotting professionals, Zehlendorf glazes, boarding in Eden House, Erich Mielke’s house plant, hurdy-gurdy man and curry sausages on Alex, Neverland in Plänterwald, prêt-à-porter in Wedding, Dad’s old basement party room, Clärchen’s Knallhaus, massages with happy end, Kreuzberg bunker beans, Leydicke’s bitter orange schnaps, fetish in Spandau, Paradox Ball at Cafe Keese, Kreuzberg nights, KaDeWe and caviar. All of these new and unusual motifs–and more–in the idiosyncratic language of photographers Benjamin Tafel and Dennis Orel, with authentic commentary and observations on location all around the capital of Germany.

Berliner Luft By Benjamin Tafel, Dennis Orel, Published by Hatje Cantz, German, English, 256 pp., 168 color ills., 21 x 14 cm, softcover, ISBN 9783775726160
Buy it here: Amazon

Books: John Margolies, Roadside America

Before the advent of corporate communications and architectural uniformity, America’s built environment was a free-form landscape of individual expression. Signs, artifacts, and even buildings ranged from playful to eccentric, from deliciously cartoonish to quasipsychedelic. Photographer John Margolies spent over three decades and drove more than 100,000 miles documenting these fascinating and endearingly artisanal examples of roadside advertising and fantasy structures, a fast-fading aspect of Americana.

This book brings together approximately 400 color photographs of Main Street signs, movie theaters, gas stations, fast food restaurants, motels, roadside attractions, miniature golf courses, dinosaurs, giant figures and animals, and fantasy coastal resorts. In an age when online shopping and mega-malls have reconfigured American consumerism, stripping away idiosyncracy in favor of a bland homogeneity, Margolies’s elegiac 30-year survey reminds us of a more innocent unpredictable and colorful past.

John Margolies, Roadside America, Edited by Jim Heimann,
Hardcover, 31 x 25.7 cm (12.2 x 10.1 in.), 256 pages, Published by Taschen,
ISBN: 9783836511735
Buy it here: Amazon

Books: Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model

This year the Bauhaus School celebrates 90 years since its founding, and Berlin is hosting an exhibition of around 1,000 artifacts, objects and artworks, the exhibition takes place in the Martin Gropius-Bau building before traveling to MoMA in New York.

Founded in Weimar in 1919, located in Dessau beginning in 1925, and closed in Berlin in 1933 the Bauhaus continues to be the most effective and successful export article of twentieth-century German culture. Even more than seventy years after it was closed, this interdisciplinary school for art, architecture, design, and theater has not lost any of its currentness.

A book will accompany the exhibition, documenting some of the most important works, including the newly re-discovered Marcel Breuer and Gunta Stölzl’s early Bauhaus African Chair and Laszlo Moholy Nagy’s Light Space modulator – a kinetic sculpture from the 1930′s; paintings and sculpture by Kandinksy, Albers and Klee as wells as works by Walter Gropius, Hannes Mayer and Mies van der Rohe.

This profusely illustrated, comprehensive publication with around four hundred color illustrations re-examines and re-evaluates the art school’s history and influence. In this collaborative project by the three leading institutes at the former sites of the Bauhaus’s activities–the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and the Bauhaus-Museum der Klassik Stiftung Weimar–the historic Bauhaus and the trail of its reception are closely examined and analyzed based on sixty-eight selected highlights, including the hitherto neglected aspects of the Bauhaus during the period of National Socialism as well as its international propagation and commercialization.

Exhibition schedule: Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, July 22–October 4, 2009 – Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 3, 2009–January 18, 2010

Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model, Edited by Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, introduction by Annemarie Jaeggi, texts by Barry Bergdoll, Klaus von Beyme, Regina Bittner, Gerda Breuer, Magdalena Droste, Peter Hahn, Christine Hopfengart, Christoph Ingenhoven, Michael Siebenbrodt, Klaus Weber u.a.,
English, 376 pages, 302 Illustrations, 236 in color, 29.9 x 26.6 cm, Hardcover, ISBN 9783775724159, Publisher: Hatje Cantz
Buy it here: Amazon

Books: Papercraft: Design and Art with Paper

Papercraft is an extensive and timely survey of innovative art and design work crafted from paper. It explores the astounding possibilities of paper craft in all shapes and sizes – some are playful, whimsical and quick to produce while others are far more intricate and created in painstaking detail. From the most basic techniques including cutting, folding, gluing and collage to the use of cutting-edge technology like embossing and laser cutting, paper and cardboard-crafted works are reaching new artistic heights.

The book gathers the most extraordinary creations from small objects and figures to large-scale art installations and urban interventions as well as three-dimensional graphic sculptures from a vast spectrum of artistic disciplines ranging from character design, urban art, fine art, graphic design, illustration, fashion, animation and film. Adding even more value, this illustrated book also includes a DVD with printable templates for creating your own paper characters and toys as well as a curated selection of the best stop-motion animations.

Papercraft: Design and Art with Paper, Editors: R. Klanten, S. Ehmann, B. Meyer,
24cm x 30cm, 256 pages, full colour, hardcover, including DVD, ISBN: 9783899552515
Buy it here: Amazon

Books: Norman Mailer, MoonFire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, TASCHEN has paired Norman Mailer’s seminal text with spectacular photography–from the archives of NASA and LIFE magazine and many other sources-to create a unique tribute to the defining scientific mission of our era.

It has been called the single most historic event of the 20th century: On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins met John F. Kennedy’s call for a manned Moon landing by the end of the 1960s. A decade of tests and training, a staff of 400,000 engineers and scientists, and a $24 billion budget climaxed with the launch of the most powerful rocket ever built, and an unprecedented event watched by millions the world over. And nobody captured the men, the mood, and the machinery like Norman Mailer.

MoonFire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11 by Norman Mailer, Colum McCann,
Published by TASCHEN, Limited Edition of 1957 copies, No. 1–1957, Hardcover in a box + framed print, 36.5 x 44 cm, 350 pages ISBN: 9783836511797
Update: Now available as a standard hardcover edition.

Buy it here: Amazon, or Standard Hardcover Edition