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Culled and assembled by Romeyn Beck Hough between 1888 and 1913 in what still remains a stunning and unparalleled achievement, American Woods—originally published in 14 volumes, with actual specimens mounted on card stock—is a work of breathtaking beauty that has set the standard for the study of trees and wood.The Woodbook reproduces, in painstaking facsimile, all of the specimen pages from the original volumes; for this purpose, TASCHEN obtained an extremely rare original set of volumes in very good condition, with minimal damage to the wood cuts. Arranged in alphabetical order, each tree is broken down into three different cross-section cuts of wood (radial, horizontal, and tangential), demonstrating the particular characteristics of the grain and the wealth of colors and textures to be found among the many different wood types. Also included in this special edition are lithographs by Charles Sprague Sargent of the leaves and nuts of most trees, as well as texts explaining each tree’s geographical origins and physical characteristics.

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It was an age of mighty heroes, misunderstood monsters, and complex villains. With the publication of Fantastic Four No. 1 in November 1961, comics giant Marvel inaugurated a transformative era in pop culture. Through the next two decades, the iconic Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the X-Men leapt, darted, and towered through its pages. Captain America was resurrected from his 1940s deep-freeze and the Avengers became the World’s Greatest Super Heroes. Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and dozens more were added to the pantheon, each with their own rogues’ gallery of malevolent counterparts. Nearly 60 years later, these thrilling characters from the 1960s and ’70s are more popular than ever, fighting the good fight in comics, toy aisles, and blockbuster movies around the world. In The Marvel Age of Comics 1961–1978, legendary writer and editor Roy Thomas takes you to the heart of this seminal segment in comic history—an age of triumphant character and narrative innovation that reinvented the super hero genre. With more than 500 images and insider insights, the book traces the birth of champions who were both epic in their powers and grounded in a world that readers recognized as close to their own; relatable heroes with the same problems, struggles, and shortcomings as everyone else. By the ’70s, we see how the House of Ideas also elevated horror, sword and sorcery, and martial arts in its stable of titanic demigods, introducing iconic characters like Man-Thing, Conan, and Shang-Chi and proving that their brand of storytelling could succeed and flourish outside of the capes and tights. Behind it all, we get to know the extraordinary Marvel architects whose names are almost as familiar as the mortals (and immortals!) they brought to life—Stan “The Man” Lee, Jack “King” Kirby, and Steve Ditko, along with a roster of greats like John Romita, John Buscema, Marie Severin, Jim Steranko, and countless others. The result is a behind-the-scenes treasure trove and a jewel for any comic fan’s library, brimming with the innovation and energy of an invincible era for Marvel and its heroes alike. © 2020 MARVEL

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Mount Fuji has long been a centerpiece of Japanese cultural imagination, and nothing captures this with more virtuosity than the landmark woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). The renowned printmaker documents 19th-century Japan with exceptional artistry and adoration, celebrating its countryside, cities, people, and serene natural beauty. Produced at the peak of Hokusai’s artistic ambition, the series is a quintessential work of ukiyo-e that earned the artist world-wide recognition as a leading master of his craft. The prints illustrate Hokusai’s own obsession with Mount Fuji as well as the flourishing domestic tourism of the late Edo period. Just as the mountain was a cherished view for travelers heading to the capital Edo (now Tokyo) along the Tōkaidō road, Mount Fuji is the infallible backdrop to each of the series’ unique scenes. Hokusai captures the distinctive landscape and provincial charm of each setting with a vivid palette and exquisite detail. Including the iconic Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa (also The Great Wave), this widely celebrated series is a treasure of international art history. Among only a few complete reprints of the series, this XXL edition pays homage to Hokusai’s striking colors and compositions with unprecedented care and magnitude. Bound in the Japanese tradition with uncut paper, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji presents the original 36 plates plus the additional 10 later added by the artist. The perfect companion piece to TASCHEN’s One Hundred Views of Edo and The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, this publication paints an enchanting picture of pre-industrial Japan and is itself a stunning monument to the art of woodblock printing.

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“What is it about a dull yellow metal that drives men to abandon their homes, sell their belongings and cross a continent in order to risk life, limbs and sanity for a dream?” – Sebastião Salgado When Sebastião Salgado was finally authorized to visit Serra Pelada in September 1986, having been blocked for six years by Brazil’s military authorities, he was ill-prepared to take in the extraordinary spectacle that awaited him on this remote hilltop on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. Before him opened a vast hole, some 200 meters wide and deep, teeming with tens of thousands of barely-clothed men. Half of them carried sacks weighing up to 40 kilograms up wooden ladders, the others leaping down muddy slopes back into the cavernous maw. Their bodies and faces were the color of ochre, stained by the iron ore in the earth they had excavated. After gold was discovered in one of its streams in 1979, Serra Pelada evoked the long-promised El Dorado as the world’s largest open-air gold mine, employing some 50,000 diggers in appalling conditions. Today, Brazil’s wildest gold rush is merely the stuff of legend, kept alive by a few happy memories, many pained regrets—and Sebastião Salgado’s photographs. Color dominated the glossy pages of magazines when Salgado shot these images. Black and white was a risky path, but the Serra Pelada portfolio would mark a return to the grace of monochrome photography, following a tradition whose masters, from Edward Weston and Brassaï to Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, had defined the early and mid-20th century. When Salgado’s images reached The New York Times Magazine, something extraordinary happened: there was complete silence. “In my entire career at The New York Times,” recalled photo editor Peter Howe, “I never saw editors react to any set of pictures as they did to Serra Pelada.” Today, with photography absorbed by the art world and digital manipulation, Salgado’s portfolio holds a biblical quality and projects an immediacy that makes them vividly contemporary. The mine at Serra Pelada has been long closed, yet the intense drama of the gold rush leaps out of these images. This book gathers Salgado’s complete Serra Pelada portfolio in museum-quality reproductions, accompanied by a foreword by the photographer and an essay by Alan Riding.Also available in a signed and limited Collector’s Edition

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An encounter with Gerhard Richter, the German artist who widened horizons in the relationship between painting and reality. From early photographic paintings, along with his famous RAF cycle, to late abstract paintings, experiencing Richter’s work always offers us the unexpected and unseen. Where he once set out to liberate the medium from ideological ballast, today, faced with the overwhelming presence of digital images, he shows us the unsurpassed impact and intensity of painting. A definitive introduction to one of the greatest artists of our time spanning not only his entire career, but also 50 years of cultural, economic, and political events.

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Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) was a clerk in the Paris customs service who dreamed of becoming a famous artist. At the age 49, he decided to give it a try. At first, Rousseau’s bright, bold paintings of jungles and exotic flora and fauna were dismissed as childish and simplistic, but his unique and tenacious style soon won acclaim. After 1886, he exhibited regularly at Paris’s prestigious Salon des Indépendants, and in 1908 he received a legendary banquet of honor, hosted by Picasso. Although best known for his tropical scenes, Rousseau, in fact, never left France, relying on books and magazines for inspiration, as well as trips to natural history museums and anecdotes from returning military acquaintances. Working in oil on canvas, he tended toward a vibrant palette, vivid rendering, as well as a certain lush, languid sensuality as seen in the nude in the jungle composition The Dream. Today, “Rousseau’s myth" is well established in art history, garnering comparison with such other post-Impressionist masters as Cézanne, Matisse, and Gauguin. In this dependable TASCHEN introduction, we explore the makings of this late-blooming artist and his legacy as an unlikely hero of modernism. “Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.” — Henri Rousseau

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Andy Warhol was a relentless chronicler of life and its encounters. Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, he amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself. Created in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation, this book features hundreds of these instant photos. Portraits of celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Nicholson, Yves Saint Laurent, Pelé, Debbie Harry are included alongside images of Warhol’s entourage and high life, landscapes, and still lifes from Cabbage Patch dolls to the iconic soup cans. Often raw and impromptu, the Polaroids document Warhol’s era like Instagram captures our own, offering a unique record of the life, world, and vision behind the Pop Art maestro and modernist giant. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

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The name Alfred Hitchcock is synonymous with suspense—that is to say, masterful, spine-tingling, thrilling, shocking, excruciating, eye-boggling suspense. With triumphs such as Rebecca, Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho, Hitchcock (1899–1980) fashioned a new level of cinematic intrigue and fear through careful pacing, subtlety, and suggestiveness. This complete guide traces Hitchcock’s life and career from his earliest silent films right through to his last picture in 1976, Family Plot. Updated with fresh images, the book combines detailed entries for each of Hitchcock’s 53 films, an incisive essay that sheds light on his fear-inducing devices, photos of the master at work, and an illustrated list of each of his cameos, together adding up to a movie buff’s dream.

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Walt Disney dreamed for decades about opening the ultimate entertainment venue, but it wasn’t until the early 1950s that his handpicked team began to bring his vision to life. Together, artists, architects, and engineers transformed a dusty tract of orange groves about an hour south of Los Angeles into one of the world’s most beloved destinations. Today, there are Disney resorts from Paris to Shanghai, but the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which has been visited by more than 800 million people to-date, remains one of America’s most popular attractions. From the day it opened on July 17, 1955, Disneyland brought history and fairy tales to life, the future into the present, and exciting cultures and galaxies unknown to our imaginations. This bountiful visual history draws on Disney’s vast historical collections, private archives, and the golden age of photojournalism to provide unique access to the concept, development, launch, and enjoyment of this sun-drenched oasis of fun and fantasy. Disneyland documents Walt’s earliest inspirations and ideas; the park’s extraordinary feats of design and engineering; its grand opening; each of its immersive “lands” from Main Street, U.S.A., to Tomorrowland; and the park’s evolution through the six decades since it opened. It is a treasure trove of original Disney documentation and expertise, with award-winning writer Chris Nichols drawing on his extensive knowledge of both Disneyland and Southern California history to reveal the fascinating tale of “the happiest place on Earth.”

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Religion, Renaissance, and Reformation—these three ideologies shaped the world of 16th-century portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543), a pivotal figure of the Northern Renaissance, whose skills took him to Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and England, and garnered patrons and subjects as prestigious as Henry VIII, Thomas More, Anne of Cleves, and Reformation advocate Thomas Cromwell. This book brings together key Holbein paintings to explore his illustrious and international career as well as the courtly drama and radical religious change that informed his work. With rich illustration, we survey the masterful draftsmanship and almost supernatural ability to control details, from the textures of luxurious clothing to the ornament of a room, that secured Holbein’s place as one of the greatest portraitists in Western art history. His probing eye was matched with a draftsman. Along the way, we see how he combined meticulous mimesis with an inspired amalgam of regional painterly traits, from Flemish-style realism to late medieval German composition and Italian formal grandeur. During his time in England, Holbein became official court painter to Henry VIII, producing both reformist propaganda and royalist paintings to bolster Henry’s status as monarch and as the new Supreme Head of the Church following the English Reformation. His portrait of Henry from 1537 is regarded not only as a portraiture pinnacle but also as an iconic record of this transformative monarch and the Tudor dynasty. Through this turbulent period, Holbein also produced anticlerical woodcuts, and sketched and painted Lutheran merchants, visiting ambassadors, and Henry’s notorious succession of wives.

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Whether it’s Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, or The Big Sleep, roam a screen world of dark and brooding elegance with this essential handbook to Film Noir. From private eyes and perfect crimes to corrupt cops and doomed affairs, editors Paul Duncan and Jürgen Müller examine noir’s key themes and their most representative movies from 1940 to 1960. Copiously illustrated with film stills as well as original posters, this book offers page after page of noir’s masterful visual compositions while exploring the narrative paradigms of this cryptic, compelling, and evolving genre. If that weren’t enough to tickle your cinematic appetite, the volume concludes with TASCHEN’s top 50 pick of noir classics. Brimming with the enigmatic dames, desperate gangsters, and psycho killers that continue to cast a long and captivating shadow over cinema, this is a must-have handbook for noir aficionados and amateurs alike.

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It was the Belle Époque, a time before air travel or radio, at the brink of a revolution in photography and filmmaking, when Burton Holmes (1870–1958) began a lifelong journey to bring the world home. From the grand boulevards of Paris to China’s Great Wall, from the construction of the Panama Canal to the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Holmes delighted in finding “the beautiful way around the world” and made a career of sharing his stories, colorful photographs, and films with audiences across America. He coined the term “travelogue” in 1904 to advertise his unique performance and thrilled audiences with two-hour sets of stories timed to projections of multihued, hand-painted glass-lantern slides and some of the first “moving pictures.” Paris, Beijing, Delhi, Dubrovnik, Moscow, Manila, Jakarta, Jerusalem: Burton Holmes was there. He visited every continent and nearly every country on the planet, shooting over 30,000 photographs and nearly 500,000 feet of film. This book represents the best of the Holmes archive, brimming with brilliant color photographs. A rare window onto the world of 100 years ago, it is also the ultimate inspiration to strike out on a travel adventure of your own.

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With more than 280 entries, this architectural A–Z, now part of our Bibliotheca Universalis series, offers an indispensable overview of the key players in the creation of modern space. From the period spanning the 19th to the 21st century, pioneering architects are featured with a portrait, concise biography, as well as a description of her or his important work. Like a bespoke global architecture tour, you’ll travel from Manhattan skyscrapers to a Japanese concert hall, from Gaudí’s Palau Güell in Barcelona to Lina Bo Bardi’s sports and leisure center in a former factory site in São Paulo. You’ll take in Gio Ponti’s colored geometries, Zaha Hadid’s free-flowing futurism, the luminous interiors of SANAA, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s unique blend of Scottish tradition and elegant japonisme. The book’s A to Z entries also cover groups, movements, and styles to position these leading individual architects within broader building trends across time and geography, including International Style, Bauhaus, De Stijl, and much more. Featuring modern architectural photography, this is a comprehensive source book for any architecture professional, student, or devotee.

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Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), was a legend even in his own lifetime. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: Violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. This work offers a comprehensive reassessment of Caravaggio’s entire œuvre with a catalogue raisonné of his works. Each painting is reproduced in large format, with recent, high production photography allowing for dramatic close-ups with Caravaggio's ingenious details of looks and gestures. Five introductory chapters analyze Caravaggio's artistic career from his early struggle to make a living, through his first public commissions in Rome, and his growing celebrity status. They look at his increasing daring with lighting and with a boundary-breaking naturalism which allowed even biblical events to unfold with an unprecedented immediacy before the viewer.

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Whether you’re thinking of getting a tattoo or just want to see to what lengths others have gone in decorating their bodies, this is the book to check out.1000 Tattoos explores the history of the art worldwide via designs and photos—from 19th-century engravings to tribal body art, from circus ladies of the ’20s to classic biker designs.

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Immerse yourself in the rich shades and textures of Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488–1576), commonly known as Titian, and the figurehead of 16th-century Venetian painting. With his bold approach to form and startling, opulent colors, Titian worked with a number of prestigious commissions and left behind an astonishing repertoire of portraits, mythological scenes, altarpieces, and landscapes that remains one of the most important legacies of Renaissance art. This dependable artist introduction traces Titian’s complete career and its trailblazing influence on successive generations of artists, from Diego Velázquez to van Dyck. From the rippling sensuality of Venus of Urbino (c. 1488–1576) to the airborne dynamism of Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–1523), all the major works are here, charting the artist’s stylistic experimentation over time as well as his consistent and unique ability to work across genres and to bring a defining new level of emotional and spiritual aspect to his subjects. “Titian has the finest talent and a very pleasant, vivacious manner.” — Michelangelo.

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In 1956, TIME magazine called him one of the defining “form-givers of the 20th century.” Today, Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) remains a locus classicus of modernism for architects and designers alike. As a Bauhaus pioneer, even his earliest work was marked by a material restraint; the balance of texture, color, and shape; and a symbiosis of local and global, big and small, rough and smooth. In this essential introductory monograph, we survey Breuer’s complete career through some of his most influential projects and ideas, from his landmark tubular furniture to the MoMA Research House to his innovation of “binuclear” housing, splitting living and sleeping areas into separate wings. Along the way, we follow Hungarian-born Breuer’s journey to international acclaim, with featured projects from Germany, France, England, Switzerland, and across the United States contributing to his global status as a modernist maestro.

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George Eastman’s career developed in a particularly American way. The founder of Kodak progressed from a delivery boy to one of the most important industrialists in American history, and a crucial innovator in photographic history. Eastman died in 1932, and left his house to the University of Rochester. Since 1949 the site has operated as an international museum of photography and film, and today holds the largest collection of its kind in the world, containing over 400,000 images and negatives—among them the work of such masters as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Ansel Adams. Home also to 23,000 cinema films, five million film stills, one of the most important silent film collections, technical equipment and a library with 40,000 books on photography and film, the George Eastman House is a pilgrimage site for researchers, photographers, and collectors from all over the world. This volume curates the most impressive images from the collection in chronological order to offer an incomparable overview of photographic history.

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In our imaginings of Paris, painter and graphic artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) has no small role to play. In his prints, posters, paintings, and drawings, the artist immortalized the city’s Belle Époque nightlife and put the northern neighborhood of Montmartre on the global map of creative-hedonist hotspots. The son of old French nobility, Toulouse-Lautrec seems to have been drawn early on to visions of a demimonde, centering his attention on the dance halls, cabarets, and brothels of Montmartre and adopting famed dancers and singers as his subjects, most notably Jane Avril. His works include both lively performance scenes and quiet, tender “after-hours” portraits such as The Sofa and In Bed. Stylistically, he mastered both bold graphics, as celebrated in his promotional posters of Jane Avril, and a loose yet evocative sketchwork. Though he died aged just 36, due to complications from alcoholism and syphilis, Toulouse-Lautrec’s cultural influence was immense. This introductory book takes a walk through his world of singers, dancers, musicians, and prostitutes to reveal an artist of great humanity, striking figurative skill, and a pronounced sense for the energy and stories of a city.

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Most commonly associated with the birth of the Impressionist movement in mid-19th-century Paris, Edgar Degas (1834–1917) in fact defied easy categorization and instead developed a unique style, strongly influenced by Old Masters, the body in motion, and everyday urban life. The elder scion of a wealthy family, Degas cofounded a series of exhibitions of “Impressionist” art, but soon disassociated himself from the group in pursuit of a more realist approach. His subjects centered on the teeming, noisy streets of Paris, as well as its leisure entertainments, such as horse racing, cabarets, and, most particularly, ballet. With often ambitious, off-kilter vantage points, his images of ballerinas numbered approximately 1,500 works, all deeply invested in the physicality and the discipline of dance. Through illustrations of Foyer de la Danse (1872), Musicians in the Orchestra (1872), and many more, this book provides an essential overview of the artist who created a category all his own, a world of classical resonance, bold compositions, and an endless fascination with movement, which together produced some of the most striking and influential works of the era.

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Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) was not cut out for finance. Nor did he last particularly long in the French Navy, or as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen who did not speak Danish. He began painting in his spare time in 1873 and in 1876 took part in the Paris Salon. Three years later, he was exhibiting alongside Pissarro, Degas, and Monet. A querulous, hard-drinking individual, Gauguin often called himself a savage. His close but fraught friendship with the similarly temperamental Vincent van Gogh climaxed in a violent incident in 1888, when van Gogh purportedly confronted Gauguin with a razor blade, and later cut off his own ear. Shortly afterwards, following the completion of a midcareer masterpiece Vision After the Sermon (1888), Gauguin took himself to Tahiti, with the intention of escaping “everything that is artificial and conventional…” On Tahiti, Gauguin’s unfettered joy in the island’s nature, native people, and figurative images soared, spurring a prolific output of paintings and prints. In works such as Woman with a Flower (Vahine no te Tiare, 1891) and Sacred Spring: Sweet Dreams (Nave Nave Moe, 1894), he developed a distinct, Primitivist style that positively oozed with sunshine and color. In the tradition of exotic sensuality, his thick, buttery lashings of paint lingered in particular over the curves of Tahitian women. Gauguin died alone, on Tahiti’s neighboring Marquesas Islands, with many of his personal papers and belongings dispersed in a local auction. It was not until a smart art dealer began curating and showing Gauguin’s work in Paris that the artist’s profound influence began making itself felt, especially to the new breed of French avant-garde artists, such as Picasso and Matisse.This book offers the essential introduction the artist’s truly colorful life, from the Impressionist salons of 1870s Paris to his final days in the Pacific, productive and passionate to the end.

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An extraordinarily prolific artist, Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) produced some 4,000 paintings in his lifetime, not including a prodigious quantity of commissioned editorial, commercial, and advertising work. His death in 1978 was regarded the loss of a national icon, an artist who, like no other, celebrated the American Dream. Shunning experimentation and avant-garde techniques in favor of effective composition and relatable subject matter, Rockwell created wholesome, homely paintings with accessible and aspirational appeal. Neat, quaint, and typically jovial, his subjects included classrooms, prom scenes, and Thanksgiving feasts, while his most long-standing projects were covers for The Saturday Evening Post magazine and calendars and covers for the Boys’ Life publication of the Boy Scouts of America. Imbued with optimism and patriotism, the work foregrounds classic professions such as doctor and teacher, as much as the conservative stalwarts of military, family, and faith. Hailed by President Gerald Ford as a “beloved part of the American tradition,” Rockwell’s works reveal as much about his own talents as they do about the story of 20th-century America. This fresh artist introduction from TASCHEN brings together key paintings and illustrations from his celebratory and sunny portfolio, as well as some more unusual works tackling the underside of the United States, to understand an integrally American artist, and the values and ideals that shaped his success.

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The Case Study House program (1945–66) was an exceptional, innovative event in the history of American architecture and remains to this day unique. The program, which concentrated on the Los Angeles area and oversaw the design of 36 prototype homes, sought to make available plans for modern residences that could be easily and cheaply constructed during the postwar building boom. The program’s chief motivating force was Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza, a champion of modernism who had all the right connections to attract some of architecture’s greatest talents, such as Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen. Highly experimental, the program generated houses that were designed to redefine the modern home, and thus had a pronounced influence on architecture—American and international—both during the program’s existence and even to this day. TASCHEN brings you a monumental retrospective of the entire program with comprehensive documentation, brilliant photographs from the period and, for the houses still in existence, contemporary photos, as well as extensive floor plans and sketches.

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In 1776, at the Enlightenment’s height, Jan Christiaan Sepp published a wholly unique and striking work: A Representation of Marble Types. Across 100 richly hand-colored plates, it traced an elegant visual journey through 570 different marble types. This facsimile edition, a world first, devotedly brings to life a forgotten book of great knowledge and rare beauty.

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The AvengersMarvel's dynamic ensemble of super heroesreturn in a second volume of Marvel Age classics. Rediscover the glory years of Avengers legends Stan Lee and Don Heck with epic battles, new characters and the expansion of the Marvel universe in meticulously reproduced, large-format detail over the course of 20 original issues.Also available in a Collector's Edition of 1,000 numbered copies

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Since the original TASCHEN edition of Manga Design, Japan's comic phenomenon has produced yet more captivating characters and a whole host of hot new talents. This revised edition delivers the lowdown on the latest and the greatest makers and shapers of the manga scene. Through an AZ directory, we discover the superstarsboth human and fictionalof what is now a vast global industry, inspiring advertisers, filmmakers, creative professionals, millions of avid fans, not to mention an entire cosplay lifestyle, in which manga devotees in elaborate costume meet to celebrate the existence of their characters at huge conventions from Los Angeles to Leipzig. From classic maestroslike Osamu Tezuka (creator of Astro Boy) and Katsuhiro Otomo (creator of Akira)to newcomers such as Hajime Isayama, each entry includes biographical and bibliographical informat

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Star Wars exploded onto our cinema screens in 1977, and the world has not been the same since. After watching depressing and cynical movies throughout the early 1970s, audiences enthusiastically embraced the positive energy of the Star Wars universe as they followed moisture farmer Luke Skywalker on his journey through a galaxy far, far away, meeting extraordinary characters like mysterious hermit Obi-Wan Kenobi, space pirates Han Solo and Chewbacca, loyal droids C-3PO and R2-D2, bold Princess Leia and the horrific Darth Vader, servant of the dark, malevolent Emperor. Writer, director, and producer George Lucas created the modern monomyth of our time, one that resonates with the child in us all. He formed Industrial Light & Magic to develop cutting-edge special effects technology, wh

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The turn of the 20th century was a golden era in France. It was an age of peace, prosperity, and progress after a series of bruising wars and turmoil within the French Republic, culminating in the Franco-Prussian War, which had ended in 1871. From the ruins of conflict, the Belle Époque brought joie de vivre flourish, a boom in art, design, industry, technology, gastronomy, education, travel, entertainment, and nightlife.Through some 800 vintage photographs, postcards, posters, and photochromes from the extensive archives of Marc Walter and Photovintagefrance, France 1900 follows up on TASCHEN's best-selling vintage photographic collections Italy 1900, The Grand Tour, Germany 1900, and America 1900 to provide a precious record of France in all its turn-of-the-century glory. With the photochrome technique used in many of the images restoring the past to vivid color, we enjoy a bristling close, bittersweet, encounter with this hopeful age: the brave, stony splendor of the

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As a boy, Tom’s first crush was a strapping young farmhand who worked the fields around his family home. Finland is a land of tough physical men, catching fish in the icy sea; cutting logs in the endless forests; threshing oats, rye, and barley on the farms. Tom, a more sensitive boy, admired these rough men and their distinctive clothing, designed for protection and utility. He later said, “When I was young, leather was worn by people who worked outside because it was warm. All the men who wore leather, they were the type of men which I adored.” When he began to draw he celebrated these early idols, improving their wardrobes with tight jeans, faded T-shirts, and thigh-high beak-toed Lappish boots. It was a young logger in this gear who appeared on the spring 1957 cover of Physique Pictorial, introducing Tom to the world. In the decades to follow Tom added truckers, repairmen, construction workers, circus roustabouts, and the American cowboy to his roster of working-class heroes. Though just sexual fantasies for him, his portrayal of blue-collar lovers helped working class gays accept their true selves. The Little Book of Tom: Blue Collar traces Tom’s fascination with working men in one compact and affordable package. A brawny lineup of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings is set alongside archival and contextual material, including historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom’s own reference photos.

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With the consumerist euphoria of the fifties still going strong and the race to the moon at its height, the mood of advertising in the sixties was cheerful, optimistic, and at times, revolutionary. The decade’s ads touted perceived progress—such as tang and instant omelets - "just add water"—while striving to reinforce good old American values. Stars like Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Salvador Dalí, and Sammy Davis Jr. endorsed everything from bourbon to handmade suits in an attempt by Madison Avenue to urge Americans to open their wallets and participate in one giant consumer binge. Social change at the end of the era brought psychedelic swirls and liberated women and minorities to a newly conscious public. Keep an eye out for some of the more surprising and controversial ads—such as Tupperware billing its storage container as a "wifesaver." From forgotten cars, to cigarettes to food and much more, this colorful collection of print ads explores the wide, wonderful world of 60s Americana.

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In the imaginations of young and old alike, the word pirate resonates with spine-tingling fear and swashbuckling adventure. Over centuries, our cultural landscape has been populated by a host of famous real and fictional figures immortalized in literature and art: Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, with his fearsome reputation for cruelty; Henry Bloody' Morgan, whose treasure is still sought today; and of course Long John Silver, the archetypal anti-hero of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1885).Pirate Tales gathers a treasure trove of excerpts from literary works inspired by the historical pirates of the 16th and 17th centuries. The edition begins with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), a book containing all the trappings of pirate lore shipwrecks, mutineers, undiscovered islands, and talking parrots and one which influenced hundreds of works of adventure fiction, not least Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (1871). The third nerve-jangling novel is

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The rural, remote, and wild territories we call “countryside”, or the 98% of the earth’s surface not occupied by cities, make up the front line where today’s most powerful forces—climate and ecological devastation, migration, tech, demographic lurches—are playing out. Increasingly under a ‘Cartesian’ regime—gridded, mechanized, and optimized for maximal production—these sites are changing beyond recognition. In his latest publication, Rem Koolhaas explores the rapid and often hidden transformations underway across the Earth’s vast non-urban areas.Countryside, A Report gathers travelogue essays exploring territories marked by global forces and experimentation at the edge of our consciousness: a test site near Fukushima, where the robots that will maintain Japan’s infrastructure and agriculture are tested; a greenhouse city in the Netherlands that may be the origin for the cosmology of today’s countryside; the rapidly thawing permafrost of Central Siberia, a region wrestling with the possibility of relocation; refugees populating dying villages in the German countryside and intersecting with climate change activists; habituated mountain gorillas confronting humans on ‘their’ territory in Uganda; the American Midwest, where industrial-scale farming operations are coming to grips with regenerative agriculture; and Chinese villages transformed into all-in-one factory, e-commerce stores, and fulfillment centers. This book is the official companion to the Guggenheim Museum exhibition Countryside, The Future. The exhibition and book mark a new area of investigation for architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas, who launched his career with two city-centric entities: The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (1975) and Delirious New York (1978). It’s designed by Irma Boom, who drew inspiration for the book’s pocket-sized concept, as well as its innovative typography and layout, from her research in the Vatican library. The book brings together collaborative research by AMO, Koolhaas, and students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Wageningen University in the Netherlands; and the University of Nairobi. Contributors also include Samir Bantal, Janna Bystrykh, Troy Conrad Therrien, Lenora Ditzler, Clemens Driessen, Alexandra Kharitonova, Keigo Kobayashi, Niklas Maak, Etta Madete, Federico Martelli, Ingo Niermann, Dr. Linda Nkatha Gichuyia, Kayoko Ota, Stephan Petermann, and Anne M. Schneider.

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Michael Muller has carved a career out of impressive encounters. Famed for his portraits of the world’s most elite actors, musicians, and sports stars, he has in the last decade built up one of the most spectacular portfolios of underwater shark photography. Muller’s quest is to document sharks with an unprecedented proximity and precision, bringing the Hollywood portrait session to the ocean predator. In ocean depths around the world, he approaches the sharks with a patented seven-bulb, 1200-watt plexi-encased strobe lighting rig, developed with NASA engineering, and no cage. This collection of Muller’s images, including the first-known photograph of a great white breaching at night, is a catalog of adrenalin and awe. Arranged geographically, it follows Muller’s ocean adventures from black tip and sand tiger sharks in South Africa to great hammerheads in the Bahamas, with thrilling narratives from each trip documenting the challenges and near-misses along the way. To compliment Muller’s work for advocacy organizations such as WildAid and EarthEcho, the images are contextualized with essays from Philippe Cousteau, Jr. and marine biologist Alison Kock, who discuss exploration and conservation of our oceanic kingdom. Culture writer Arty Nelson adds an overview of Muller’s work, while a technical section explains the precise equipment behind these spectacular shots. Together, these insightful texts and awesome images offer a record of breathtaking photographic feats, a tribute to the beauty and might of the shark, and a rallying cry for its fragile future.This book is also available in a signed Collector’s Edition and two Art Editions, each including a signed and numbered print.

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“Through these travels and the photographs, I got to love the United States more than I could have in any other way.” — Jack Delano Amid the ravages of the Great Depression, the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) was first founded in 1935 to address the country’s rural poverty. Its efforts focused on improving the lives of sharecroppers, tenants, and very poor landowning farmers, with resettlement and collectivization programs, as well as modernized farming methods. In a parallel documentation program, the FSA hired a number of photographers and writers to record the lives of the rural poor and “introduce America to Americans.” This book records the full reach of the FSA program from 1935 to 1943, honoring its vigor and commitment across subjects, states, and stylistic preferences. The photographs are arranged into four broad regional sections but otherwise allowed to speak for themselves—to provide individual impressions as much as they cumulatively build an indelible survey of a nation. The images are both color and black-and-white, and span the complete spetrum of American rural life. They show us convicts, cotton workers, kids, and relocated workers on the road. We see subjects victim to the elements of nature as much as to the vagaries of the global economic market. We find the work of such perceptive, sensitive photographers as Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Russell Lee, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Lange, and read their own testimonies to the FSA project and their encounters with their subjects, including Lange’s worn, weather-beaten and iconic Migrant Mother. What unites all of the pictures is a commitment to the individuality and dignity of each subject, as much as to the witness they bear to this particular period of the American past. The subjects are entrenched in the hardships of their historical lot as much as they are caught in universal cycles of growing, playing, eating, aging, and dying. Yet they face the viewer with what is utterly their own: a unique, irreplaceable, often unforgettable presence.

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Court painter to King Philip IV of Spain, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (June 1599 – August 6, 1660) is not only a leading light of the Spanish Golden Age, but among the most celebrated masters in all Western art history. Monet and Renoir, Corot and Courbet, Degas and Dalí all hailed his influence. Picasso was so inspired by his masterpiece Las Meninas that he painted 44 variations of it. Velázquez’s importance is found particularly in his naturalist approach, in contrast to the more ubiquitous idealized manner of his age. Early works included numerous “bodegones”, genre scenes of everyday life in early 17th century Spain, in which warm, rich tones and textures set off the most ordinary of subjects and humble of faces, such as Old Woman Frying Eggs. Later, his portraiture for the Royal Court brought the same naturalism to the highest echelons of society, marking a profound shift in the depiction of royalty with softer, more relaxed poses that offered his subjects a human warmth and character as much as a sense of grandeur. Velázquez’s most famous work, Las Meninas, was also painted in the royal court, but in its enigmatic composition raises many broader questions about reality and illusion and the relationship between the painter, painting, and viewer. This fresh TASCHEN Basic Art 2.0 edition introduces Velázquez through key works from throughout his career. From humble genre scenes to the royal portraits, the exquisite Rokeby Venus nude, and the ever-mysterious Las Meninas, we explore his exceptional attention to composition, masterful handling of tone, and his remarkable influence as, in Manet’s words, “the greatest painter of all.”

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Antiquarian, archaeologist, vulcanologist, and envoy to the British Embassy in Naples, Sir William Hamilton (1731–1803) was a leading European figure of his time. Though the romance between his wife Lady Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson tends to eclipse Sir William’s own activities, his work as a scientist and a classicist made major contributions to the study of Pompei, Herculaneum, and Mt. Vesuvius. As an expert in ancient art, Hamilton also built up an invaluable collection of ancient Greek vases, subsequently sold to the British Museum in London in 1772. Before the pieces were shipped off to England, Hamilton commissioned Pierre-François Hugues d’Hancarville, an adventurous connoisseur and art dealer, to document the vases in words and images. The resulting catalog, published in four volumes and known as Les Antiquités d’Hancarville, represents a neoclassical masterpiece. Never before had ancient vases been represented with such meticulous detail and sublime beauty. With this reprint, TASCHEN revives d’Hancarville’s masterful catalog for a contemporary audience, reproducing in exacting detail the same pristine images that sparked Europe’s love affair with the classical style.

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Starting with an early picture of a gang of badass gold prospectors who put this beautiful Northern California city on the map, this ambitious and immersive photographic history of San Francisco takes a winding tour through the city from the mid–nineteenth century to the present day. Enjoy eye-catching views of the city’s most enduring landmarks and symbols: the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, the picturesque trams that wind up and down the famously steep hills, the popular waterfront, its beautiful bay, and its spectacular cityscapes and vistas. San Francisco’s counterculture movements that shaped our collective consciousness are also featured prominently: the beats of North Beach, the hippies of Haight-Ashbury, the gay communities of Castro, and the Black Panthers of neighboring Oakland. Some of the city’s most famous residents also make appearances: Robin Williams, The Grateful Dead, Angela Davis, Janis Joplin, Sylvester, and Allen Ginsberg, among others. This book features hundreds of newly found images from dozens of archives including museums, universities, libraries, galleries, private collections, and historical societies, from 19th-century daguerreotypes to mid-century Kodachromes to 21st-century digital pictures. Master photographers include, among others: Stephen Shore, Imogen Cunningham, Fred Lyon, Steve Schapiro, Minor White, Dorothea Lange, Albert Watson, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, William Claxton, Fred Herzog, Ansel Adams, Jim Marshall, and many local shooters. Also includes introductory essays and captions by Bay Area–based author Richie Unterberger and a “Best of San Francisco” books, music, and movies section and biographies of the photographers. Tony Bennett famously sang, “I left my heart in San Francisco,” and this meticulously researched and conceived portrait will equally inspire and make you fall in love with the spirit of the City by the Bay.

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As cryptic as they are compelling, the masterpieces of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516) remain some of the most enduring enigmas of the art world. Their intricate, allegorical, and often startling content has captivated not only art historians, but also fashion designers, rock stars, writers, and punk rockers, as well as countless modern and contemporary artist successors. Although rooted in the Old Netherlandish tradition, Bosch developed a highly subjective, richly suggestive style to render both the celestial bliss of heaven and the grotesque tortures of hell, most famously and meticulously excecuted in The Garden of Earthly Delights. Here, as in his other known works, his artistic language combined religious humility with a razor-sharp wit, often playing off pictorial versions of contemporary proverbs or figures of speech. This book ties together the elusive threads of Bosch’s oeuvre to provide a concise introduction to an at once haunting and enthralling pictorial world.

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Sportive gentlemen, lascivious ladies: Since the earliest days of photography, people have been getting up to all manner of rannygazoo in front of the lens. This collection presents the finest highlights from the collection of New Yorker Mark Rotenberg, who began collecting antique smut after finding a stash of vintage erotic pictures in a Brooklyn dumpster and now owns a 95,000 strong collection of archive pornography dating from between 1860 and 1960. Flick through these pages and witness the fitness of our forebears as they romp, cavort, and frolic with unabashed energy and glee. From early monochromes of daringly dropped drawers and seductively waxed handlebar mustaches, to Kodachromes of cheery, twin-peaked pin-up beauties in the 1950s, this fine collection spans the sublimely sensual and the ridiculous.

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Scandinavia is world famous for its inimitable, democratic designs which bridge the gap between crafts and industrial production, organic forms and everyday functionality. This all-you-need guide includes a detailed look at Scandinavian furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, metalware, and industrial design from 1900 to the present day, with in-depth entries on 125 designers and design-led companies.Featured designers and designer-led companies include Verner Panton, Arne Jacobsen, Alvar Aalto, Timo Sarpaneva, Hans Wegner, Tapio Wirkkala, Stig Lindberg, Finn Juhl, Märta Måås-Fjetterström, Arnold Madsen, Barbro Nilsson, Fritz Hansen, Artek, Le Klint, Gustavsberg, Iittala, Fiskars, Orrefors, Royal Copenhagen, Holmegaard, Arabia, Marimekko, and Georg Jensen.

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Founded in 1928 as a “living diary” by the great Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti, domus has been hailed as the world’s most influential architecture and design journal. With both style and rigor, it has offered consistent coverage of major themes and stylistic movements in product, structure, interior, and industrial design. This fresh reprint features the highlights from the 1960s issues and documents the daring, practical, and beautiful projects of a decade of futuristic thrill and booming pop culture. Synthetics and plastics hit the stage, leading to radical new design, while conventional notions of elegance give way to fresh exploratory forms. For work to be featured in the magazine it had to offer function, spatial clarity, intellectual persuasion, relevant originality, and/or grace. Those projects and practitioners that made the grade include Ray and Charles Eames, Gae Aulenti, Kenzo Tange, Verner Panton, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Ettore Sottsass, Carlo Scarpa, Angelo Mangiarotti, Cesare Maria Casati, and Eero Saarinen. domus distilled Seven volumes spanning 1928 to 1999 Over 4,000 pages featuring influential projects by the most important designers and architects Original layouts and all covers, with captions providing navigation and context Introductory essays by renowned architects and designers Each edition comes with an appendix featuring texts translated into English, many of which were previously only available in Italian A comprehensive index in each volume listing both designers’ and manufacturers’ names

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The revered tradition of botanical illustration dates back to the Renaissance. It emerged from the desire to catalog nature in its unpredictable splendor, and the process demanded the most precise and talented of artists.With a remarkable skill that captured the most intricate subjects in nature, Pierre-Joseph Redouté is widely considered the best painter and engraver of botanical illustration. Working from live plants rather than from the herbarium specimens gave his watercolors unusual subtlety and freshness. He was also an innovator in printing techniques, introducing stipple-engraving to France, always striving for greater exactitude in his art. Redouté fortuitously acquired some of the most influential patrons of the time, including Marie Antoinette and Empress Josephine Bonaparte, thus ensuring that his work was well-funded and displayed.His impressive col

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When Stan Lee first pitched the idea of Spider-Man in 1962, his boss was full of objections: People hate spiders. Teenagers aren’t lead characters; they’re sidekicks. He should be glamorous and successful, not a friendless loser. But Stan persisted and Martin Goodman let him give the unlikely hero a tryout in Amazing Fantasy, which was already slated for cancellation. With Spider-Man on the cover, No. 15 shot to the top of Marvel’s best-seller list for the year, and the rest is history. Amazing Spider-Man, which debuted seven months later, broke the comics mold. Peter Parker lived in uncool Queens, was always broke, continually worried about his Aunt May, was unlucky in love, and was constantly getting yelled at by his boss, Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson. Spider-Man had the quips and confidence that Parker lacked, but learning to use his powers wasn’t always easy. He often seemed on the verge of defeat against the rogue’s gallery of classic foes that debuted in the first couple of years: Vulture, Doctor Octopus, Sandman, Lizard, Electro, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, and the Green Goblin. Much of the credit for Spider-Man’s greatness goes to co-creator and artist Steve Ditko, who had a knack for portraying teenagers and their problems. His artwork infused Spider-Man with a loose-limbed energy, and, while maybe everyone was scared of spiders, Ditko made swinging through New York seem like the coolest adventure ever. This XXL-sized collector’s dream, close in size to the original artworks, features the first 21 stories of the world’s favorite web slinger from 1962–1964. Rather than recolor the original artwork (as has been done in previous decades’ reprints of classic comics), TASCHEN has attempted to create an ideal representation of these books as they were produced at the time of publication. The most pristine pedigreed comics have been cracked open and photographed for reproduction in close collaboration with Marvel and the Certified Guaranty Company. Each page has been photographed as printed more than half a century ago, then digitally remastered using modern retouching techniques to correct problems with the era’s inexpensive, imperfect printing—as if hot off of a world-class 1960s printing press. A custom paper stock was exclusively developed for this series to simulate the feel of the original comics. With an in-depth historical essay by Marvel editor Ralph Macchio, an introduction by uber-collector David Mandel, and original art, rare photographs, and other gems, these 698 pages of wall-crawling wonder will make anyone’s spider-sense tingle with anticipation. © 2021 MARVEL

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Science and illustration have always walked hand in hand, and not only the scientific community but the general public as well have used images since early history to understand natural phenomena. Moreover, from Galileo to Einstein, our modern history has been written with the key support of art and with all the insights it contributes. This XL-sized book collects more than 300 graphic works that range from original sketches to technical drawings, and from meticulous hand illustrations to computer-generated images. The Western scientific revolution that started in the 14th century catapulted humankind into a completely new way of understanding how nature and the world around us behaved. Whether it was diseases caused by viruses or the vast galaxies of the cosmos, a new army of professionals turned their minds to unlocking and reshaping the universe of our experience with a dialectic positioned between theory and evidence. The field of illustration and the development of knowledge became inseparably intertwined, as can be seen by the majestic works shown in this book that were produced by the scientists and artists who specialized in this combined field. Explore here the work of more than 700 scientists and over 300 discoveries in anatomy, physics, chemistry, astronomy, mechanics, and many other scientific fields, through the visual works that bring them to life. Combined with detailed texts explaining their scientific significance, the illustrations in this book introduce the work of such pionieering scientists as Andreas Vesalius, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, and Rosalind Franklin. The visualizations themselves present game-changing ideas and discoveries from the 15th century to the present day, notably including Galileo’s watercolors of the moon, Bourgery’s unparalleled Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery, Florence Nightingale’s statistical diagrams to indicate war casualties, and Einstein’s quickly scribbled ideas for his general theory of relativity. Many discoveries in science take place as the result of counterintuitive thinking, and in order to visualize their work scientists have to connect with the resources of collective knowledge and in turn convey new information back to people. This book is for everyone who is continually amazed by the wonders of our world and who wants to find out more about it through the remarkable illustrations used to present advances in scientific understanding.

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