History & Criticism Books

“What is a good mail day?” A good mail day is a day when, instead of just bills, catalogs, and advertisements, your postal carrier delivers artful, beautiful, personal mail from friends and acquaintances all over the world. Mail art is a collaborative art form with a long and fascinating history ...more

ART, the ultimate visual guide to 2,000 of the world's most revered paintings and sculptures, begins with a short section on how to look at paintings and sculpture, explaining the simple steps of formal analysis that swiftly become automatic and greatly increase and inform your enjoyment of art. The main ...more

Artists and crafters have always been recyclers, but for many, it has not only become a thrifty choice, it has become a moral imperative. 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse contains a cutting edge collection of the most inventive work being made with re-used, upcycled, and already existing materials. The work ...more

In recent years, abstract painting has developed a rich complexity that, now more than ever, rewards intensive viewing; this authoritative book guides the reader through the key issues in the field. Painting Abstraction profiles 80 of today?s most vital contemporary abstract painters, such as Mark Grotjahn and Amy Sillman, featuring ...more

John Sloane's paintings capturing the natural beauty of America's countryside. ...more

When Two Knotty Boys, Dan and J. D., began teaching rope bondage together in 1999, they discovered that most people learn best when they're shown — close up, step by step, and repeatedly — how to tie basic knots and combine them into bondage techniques. It is this learning process ...more

Originally published by Abrams in 1977, Norman Rockwell's Christmas Book is a holiday classic that has remained a bestselling family treasure for over 30 years. With over 85 images from Norman Rockwell's archive of art, this fully redesigned edition brings a fresh, contemporary appeal to the original vintage volume. This ...more

FROM HELL is the story of Jack the Ripper, perhaps the most infamous man in the annals of murder. Detailing the events leading up to the Whitechapel killings and the cover-up that followed, FROM HELL is a meditation on the mind of a madman whose savagery and violence gave birth ...more

This survey features more than 400 works from the Polaroid Collection along with essays by Hitchcock, who illuminates the beginnings and history of the Polaroid Corporation. ...more

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of three men and an extraordinary deception: the revered artist Johannes Vermeer; the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him years later; and the con man's mark, Hermann Goering, the fanatical art collector and ...more