Lena Lencek Livres

Hypnotic flowering vines, black-and-white Op Art odysseys, and seas of patriotic warships are just some of the beautiful, strange, and fantastic patterns that have adorned the walls of homes the world over. In the tradition of best-seller Fabulous Fabrics of the 50s , this home decor reference book entertains while it inspires with flawless reproductions of 150 classic and unique wallpapers; many of which are drawn from the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Covering every decade of the century, Off the Wall celebrates robust pattern and detail in all their manifestations. Lively text and captions help to capture the designers, trends, and world events relevant to each piece, and the broader evolution of the genre, from a 1948 mural of rural America, replete with plump livestock and ripening fields, to the boldly colored abstractions produced in the 1950s by Herman Miller for MOMA. A useful resource for collectors, designers, decorators, and artists, Off the Wall is a colorful and captivating tribute to a widely appreciated medium.

The authors of The The History of Paradise on Earth, the best-selling history of everyone's favorite place, are back with a breathtaking visual companion. From moody, craggy coastlines to serene swathes of turquoise water and white sand, Beaches is an astounding photographic survey of the ineffable allure of paradise on earth. This spectacular collection of images from renowned photographers, including Richard Misrach, Joel Meyerowitz, and Art Wolfe, stirs the spirit, capturing the mutable beauty of sand, sea, and sky. Throughout, concise and poetic pieces of historic and scientific lore unveil little-known facts and curiosities. With an astonishing range of vision, Beaches evokes the idiosyncratic beauty of the world's most stunning coastlines.

Who doesn't dream of escape, whether to defy the strictures of a conventional or restricted life, to outrun the fates, to pursue an extraordinary goal, or, most inevitably, to distance oneself from the suffering, loss, and pain that unavoidably bear down on our lives. Now Escape is the first collection to bring together a wide array of the very finest stories about this universal impulse. Photographs and selections range from the comic to tragic, covering escapes from reality, domesticity, matrimony, intimacy, materialism, rules, and dependence, as well as escapes into hedonism, addiction, beauty, spirituality, intimacy, art, nature, and science. With the same mix of stellar short stories, novel excerpts, and narrative nonfiction that characterized Beach and Sail Away, Escape includes such writers as Isabel Allende, Isaac Babel, Harold Brodkey, Michael Chabon, Jamaica Kincaid, D.H. Lawrence, David Malouf, and others.

Turquoise water, pillowy sand, and a warm, salty breeze -- today the beach is regarded as the best possible place to restore body and soul. However, this has not always been the case. In other centuries the beach was considered a remote, terrifying wasteland on the margins of civilization. In their entertaining, elegant, and illuminating account, Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker trace the four-billion-year evolution of the place where land, water, and humans meet. Embedded in the narrative are the histories of sexuality, health, fashion, sport, the rise of the great resorts -- St. Tropez, Catalina, Newport, Miami Beach -- and the beach tales of Columbus, D-Day troops, and castaways Cook, Melville, and Swinburne. Including a marvelous selection of images evoking the beach's hypnotic appeal -- Impressionist paintings, archival photographs, advertising art, and postcards -- and an Appendix of the world's most beautiful, unspoiled beaches, The Beach will fascinate any reader from Coney