Art History Nonfiction

With Muse of Fire, Michael Korda, the bestselling author of Alone and Hero, takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war's unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation—destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England—and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives.

Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper delves deeply into Michael Jackson's music and talent. From the artist's early days with the Jackson 5, to his stratospheric success as a solo artist, to "Beat It" and "Thriller", "Bad", and "The Man in the Mirror", to his volatile final years, his attempted comeback, and his untimely death, Knopper explores the beguiling and often contradictory forces that fueled Michael Jackson's genius.

In the 1970s, Lee Gutkind, a leather-clad hippie motorcyclist and former public relations writer, fought his way into the academy. His goal: to make creative nonfiction an accepted academic discipline, one as vital as poetry, drama, and fiction. In this book Gutkind tells the true story of how creative nonfiction became a leading genre for both audiences and writers.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK From one of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists, an important and timely work of cultural history that looks at the origins and much debated future of anthropology museums “A provocative look at questions of ethnography, ownership and restitution...

After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today. By placing the image of the Virgin...

Throughout history, precious stones have inspired passions and poetry, quests and curses, sacred writings and unsacred actions. In this scintillating book, journalist Victoria Finlay embarks on her own globe-circling search for the real stories behind some of the gems we prize most. Blending...

The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense. From The Gashlycrumb Tinies to The Doubtful Guest, Edward Gorey's wickedly funny and deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in innumerable ways, from the works of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman...

Johnny Cash is one of the most influential figures in music and American popular culture today. While he was an icon to people of all ages during his life, Cash's legacy continues after his death. His remarkable story is captured in this exclusive authorized biography, addressing the whole life...

The fascinating Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is remembered for her self-portraits, her dramatic works featuring bold and vibrant colors. Her work brought attention to Mexican and indigenous culture, and she is also renowned for her works celebrating the female form. Brown's story recounts Frida's beloved pets - two monkeys, a parrot, three dogs, two turkeys, an eagle, a black cat, and a fawn - and playfully considers how Frida embodied many wonderful characteristics of each animal.

"The challenge facing Christianity today is not a lack of motivation or resources, but a failure of imagination.A growing number of people are disturbed by the values exhibited by the contemporary church. Worship has become entertainment, the church has become a shopping mall, and God has become...

One of the most popular television and cultural icons ever, Regis Philbin has been entertaining television audiences for more than fifty years—as a beloved morning-show host (Live with Regis and Kelly), a nighttime game-show host (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) and also as a fixture on...

A bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth? Creativity. It is the secret of what...

In the spirit of works by Jia Tolentino and Anne Helen Peterson, a smart and incisive essay collection centered on the fashion industry—its history, its importance, why we wear what we wear, and why it matters—from Elle Magazine’s fashion features director. Why does fashion hold so much...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! At one of the most chaotic periods in American history, in a time of national distrust and despair, one tanned TV host holds the key to the future. In How I Saved the World, Jesse Watters takes readers on a tour of his life from basement-dwelling Fox minion to...

In the 1930s, composers and musicians began to flee Hitler's Germany to make new lives across the globe. The process of exile was complex: although some of their works were celebrated, these composers had lost their familiar cultures and were forced to navigate xenophobia as well as entirely different creative terrain. Others, far less fortunate, were in a kind of internal exile-composing under a ruthless dictatorship or in concentration camps and ghettos.

Part cultural history, part literary criticism, and part memoir, A Body Made of Glass is a definitive biography of hypochondria. Caroline Crampton’s life was upended at the age of seventeen, when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a relatively rare blood cancer. After years of...

During World War I, British and American ships were painted with bold colors and crazy patterns from bow to stern. Why would anyone put such eye-catching designs on ships? Desperate to protect ships from German torpedo attacks, British lieutenant-commander Norman Wilkinson proposed what became known as dazzle. These stunning patterns and colors were meant to confuse the enemy about a ship's speed and direction. By the end of the war, more than 4,000 ships had been painted with these mesmerizing designs.

The late Grammy-winning founder of the legendary pop/R&B/soul/funk/disco group tells his story and charts the rise of his legendary band in this sincere memoir that captures the heart and soul of an artist whose groundbreaking sound continues to influence music today. With a foreword by David...

A moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land—this is a “winsome memoir of departure and reversal . . . about the way a series of unknowns accrue into a life” (Jia...

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they wore spacesuits made by Playtex: 21 layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of that spacesuit. It is a story of the triumph over the military-industrial complex by the International Latex Corporation, best known by its consumer brand of "Playtex" - a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics.