Even coffee table books should have some value beyond slick illustrations and their use as interior design accoutrements. Here are a few that I found interesting.
1900, by Rebecca West, is a book of reflections on some of the trends in history, technology and art that were underway in this pivotal year which opened the last two decades of old, monarchical Europe, and saw the beginning of the ascendancy of America to superpower status. The book has numerous, very striking, black and white photographs (including some fairly grisly ones from the end of the Boxer Rebellion), and is a fascinating retrospective on the deceptive calm that existed before the militarist and totalitarian storms that were to follow.
Frederick Remington and Charles Russell are renowned for capturing the spirit of the Old West in their paintings and sculptures, and Remington & Russell: Artists of the West, by William C. Ketcham, Jr., includes not only a generous selection of their work, but also provides comprehensive biographical information on each man. I was particularly taken with the later, impressionist paintings of Remington displayed in this book – e.g., A Taint on the Wind, a night scene showing a stagecoach on a moonlit road, hauled by a team of horses that have sensed some unseen, but menacing, presence. Most of Charles Russell’s dramatic paintings of Indian scenes are here, too, and there is a whole section dedicated to the bronzes created by both artists.
The Blue and the Gray, by Thomas B. Allen (published by the National Geographic Society) is a fine one-volume history of the American Civil War, and is filled with rare black and white photographs, illustrations, and original modern photographs by Sam Abell of various battlefields and memorials. The text is arranged to cover events chronologically, and the book is accompanied (or at least mine was) with a soft-cover book describing the major civil war sites that are preserved as national parks.
Just for fun, I am listing The Consummate Cigar Book, a three-dimensional pop-up book that relates the history of cigars, facts about the growing of tobacco, instructive information on blends, coloration, cigar bands – and even advice on how to light and smoke a handmade stogie (there are right ways and wrong ways, as I can tell you from long experience).
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A Taint on the Wind, some say In the Wind, fine painting but especially loved the evocative language of the title - taint is normally a verb and sounds to me like genuine Old West lingo. I suppose no one made a movie with that title because of the suggestion of being near the sewage works, but it could have been a great story.
ReplyDeleteLast time I smoked a cigar I was 18 and they were $1 each, I smoked it on a public train and I loved the taste. Nowadays I can't afford them and you can only smoke in 'designated areas' which may not include your own home if others live there. Nanny govt.
Bruce: It was the exorbitant prices of cigars, plus the growing restrictions on where one could smoke them, that caused me to give them up (although my sons will occasionally make me a present of a handful now and again). I switched to Winchester Little Cigars years ago, and they are really nothing but strong cigarettes.
ReplyDeleteI still enjoy a good handmade cigar, though, especially those made from Honduran tobacco (the Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur, above all). The very best cigar I ever had was a Romeo y Julieta from Cuba, some 30 or so years ago. Communism ruins all things, however, and Cuban cigars have become very erratic as to quality.
The Illustrated Atlas of the Universe
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Atlas-Universe-Mark-Garlick/dp/1740893778/ref=ed_oe_h
Finally got my copy of "Stolen Valor" by Burkett (hard to get in Australia). Very interesting so far. It has raised my disgust with the MSM to new heights.
ReplyDeletePenguin