Abbeville Press

A monumental photo book documenting the scenes of more than 3,000 years of human conflict After a distinguished--and death-defying--career documenting the wars of today, Yan Morvan decided to undertake a different kind of battlefield photography, one that would show how war has imprinted its awful memory on all of human history, and on the landscape as well. Traveling the globe, he sought out the scenes of history's most important battles, positioning his 8 10 Deardorff view camera to capture the perspective of the soldier on the front lines. The result of his decade-long quest is this monumental volume, presenting 430 images of 250 historic battlefields, from the Trojan War to Muammar Gaddafi's last stand. In between are the battlegrounds of the Persian Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, the World Wars, the Vietnam War, and many others. The text includes a concise account of each battle, as well as an interview with Morvan about his work. Battlefields is a staggering work of art, an important historical document, and a memorial to all those who have fought and died on the battlefield.

For a contemporary artist of serious aesthetic purpose, David Hockney enjoys immense, perhaps unequaled public visibility: the shock of dyed blond hair, the owlish glasses, and the shy, schoolboy grin are known as much through the popular press as through the journals of the art world. His engaging personality, his quirky but always enlightening ideas about art, and his inexhaustible inventiveness both of imagery and of techniques ranging from oil painting to photography to faxes are captured by Peter Clothier with clear-eyed intelligence and grace in this concise but comprehensive overview. From his theatrical early canvases to his more recent photographic collages and operatic set designs, Hockney has tackled the challenge of space on a grand scale. At the same time, much of his work has been devoted to the things most dear to him-friends, family, home, and studio. An intellectual of wide-ranging erudition and a world traveler who makes his home in Hollywood, he still cherishes his roots in Bradford, the northern British town where he was born in 1937. Invention, the driving force behind Hockney's art, is in good part play: "If art isn't playful," he once commented, "it's nothing." This illuminating, color-rich volume conveys with vivid clarity Hockney's serious delight in making art that gives pleasure to both its creator and its audience.

It is our most passionate music, rooted in ancient Africa but brought to blossom in America at the doorstep of the twentieth century. It is a living heritage of song born in poverty, persecution, and hard labor, born of love and love betrayed, of holiness and sin, the pleasures and the pains of the flesh, the experience of tragedy, comedy, drunkenness, despair, desolation, and pure joy. It is the blues. At root, the blues is rich in its simplicity, but it has flowered across the years in a variety of rare complexity. Perhaps no form of popular art is more immediately appealing than the blues, yet so rewards a thorough knowledge of its finer points. In eleven authoritative essays commissioned especially for the book, Nothing But the Blues traces the African-American origins of the music, its early development as popular entertainment, its early recorded manifestations, its regional differentiation (Mid-South, Tidewater-Piedmont, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles), its many stylistic dimensions, and its contemporary manifestations. Country blues, urban blues, the evolution of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, and the blues revival are all fully covered. But the written history is only part of the story. Blues fans have always treasured rare photographs of their heroes, and Nothing But the Blues is gloriously illustrated with posed and candid shots of the musicians as well as photographs of such one-of-a-kind artifacts and documents as Leadbelly's NYPD rap sheet and classic recording contracts. Nothing But the Blues features an introduction by one of the genre's living legends, B. B. King, and a comprehensive "best of the best" discography, including current and rereleased recordings as well as the collectors' treasures to go after. Blues is more popular than ever before. Not only are reissues of historical blues classics selling in unprecedented numbers, but a whole new crop of vital young blues artists is active in clubs and on record today. Nothing But the Blues is a lavishly illustrated comprehensive history of the music and the musicians, as well as the promoters, producers, and others who have shaped--and continue to shape--this powerful and enduringly popular American musical art form.