Art History Architecture

The astonishing life of Caterina Sforza, one of the most prominent women of Renaissance Italy, who was a wife, mother, leader, and warrior with enough fierceness to make Machiavelli himself wince. In this glittering biography, Elizabeth Lev reexamines Caterina's extraordinary life and...

Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this...

A National Book Critics Circle finalist One of Vogue's Best Books of the Year A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York “The magic of Alexander Nemerov's portrait of Helen...

"In this fascinating, witty, and provocative book, Delbourgo's collectors range from emperors to scientists, from shopaholics to taxonomists, from bibliomaniacs to serial killers. Give it to the collector in your life, and watch the sparks fly!"―Cathy Gere, author of The Tomb of Agamemnon A...

How a Florentine orphanage rescued thousands of children and revolutionized childhood education amid the splendor of Renaissance art. The story begins with the abandonment of the newborn Agata Smeralda on February 5, 1445, in Florence’s Hospital of the Innocents, the first—but certainly not...

This new biography—featuring over 150 archival images and full-color photographs printed throughout—introduces Julia Morgan as both a pioneering architect and a captivating individual. Julia Morgan was a lifelong trailblazer. She was the first woman admitted to study architecture at the...

“Brimming, addictive . . . In Everybody Behaves Badly, the party has just begun and the taste of fame is still ripe . . . The Lost Generation [is] restored to reckless youth in living black and white.” — James Wolcott, Vanity Fair “An essential book . . . a page-turner. Blume combines...

#1 Kids Indie Next List * Parents Magazine Best Book of the Year * Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book of the Year * SLJ Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Best Book of the Year * Junior Library Guild Selection * Edgar Award Nominee * Four Starred Reviews * Bank Street Best Children’s...

The first definitive biography of Richard Avedon, a monumental photographer of the twentieth century, from award-winning photography critic Philip Gefter. In his acclaimed portraits, Richard Avedon captured the iconic figures of the twentieth century in his starkly bold, intimately minimal, and...

The first biography of the epic life of one of the most important, enigmatic and private artists of the 20th century. Drawn from almost 40 years of conversations with the artist, letters and papers, it is a major work written by a well-known British art critic. Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is one...

It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore gray, and went to church. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the liberated 1960s; the...

“Barbie and her creator, the sharp-elbowed gal who built the biggest toy company, have a story to tell.” —Time Barbie and Ruth is the remarkable true story of the world’s most famous toy and the woman who created her. It is a fascinating account of how one visionary woman and her product...

“Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.” —Flannery O’Connor Flannery O’Connor’s work has been...

"Describes with plenty of colour how surrealism, from Rene Magritte's bowler hats to Salvador Dali's watches, was born and developed." - The Times (UK) As she did for the Modernists In Montmartre, noted art historian and biographer Sue Roe now tells the story of the Surrealists in Montparnasse...

An exuberant biography of the life of the iconic photographer and naturalist Peter Beard, whose life and work captured the cultural imagination Peter Beard lived an astonishing life. The artist, wildlife photographer, and bon vivant enthralled and inspired both because of his work and his...

A fascinating biography of the philanthropist Albert Barnes, whose pioneering collection of modern art was meant to transform America’s soul From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new portrait of America’s first great collector of modern art, Albert Coombs...

From America’s top courtroom sketch artist, a penetrating, compulsively readable memoir about her dramatic four-decade career “A mesmerizing look at this rarest of professions…”–Bookpage STARRED review "Readers will be hard-pressed to put this down.”—Publishers Weekly STARRED...

One of the nation’s chief architecture critics reveals how the environments we build profoundly shape our feelings, memories, and well-being, and argues that we must harness this knowledge to construct a world better suited to human experience. Taking us on a fascinating journey through some...

Journalist Julie Satow's thrilling, unforgettable history of how one illustrious hotel has defined our understanding of money and glamour, from the Gilded Age to the Go-Go Eighties to today's Billionaire Row. From the moment in 1907 when New York millionaire Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt strode...

“Bestor-Siegal switches perspective among a group of characters with tenderness and intimacy. . . . The writing is smooth as honey. . . It's utterly absorbing.” — NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Thrilling and deeply moving, gorgeously written and intricately plotted . . . bold and brilliant...