Books
"I smile at the pile of books I found waiting for me here, wonder how
many will get read, and whether I shall be the wiser for having read them."
-Bernard Berenson in a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner, August 1, 1906
Illuminated manuscripts, a photograph of Walt Whitman, and even a lock of Nathaniel Hawthorne's hair: are just a few of the treasures in the vast collection of books, letters, and memorabilia that Isabella Stewart Gardner amassed.
Gift at the Gardner offers an eclectic array of books: from art history to poetry, literature to young readers, and more, start your literary collection with our featured titles today!
Botticelli's Witness: Changing Styles in a Changing Florence
$21.95
The life of Sandro Botticelli coincided with the close of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th. This historical moment saw the transition from the rule of the Medici—whose name is synonymous with patronage of the arts—to the fanatical reforms of the Dominican Savonarola.
The catalog that accompanied the exhibition Botticelli's Witness: Changing Styles in a Changing Florence—on view at the Gardner Museum from January 24 to April 6, 1997—features major paintings from all decades of Botticelli's career, along with works by his followers and contemporaries. Within this catalog, three experts explore the relationship between Botticelli's distinct yet changing visual "voice" and the turbulent Florence society of his day.
By Hillard T. Goldfarb, James Hankins, and Laurence Kanter, with preface by former Director Anne Hawley
73 pages
Published by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1997
Paperback
11.5 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes
$21.95
Accompanying the exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (February 14 – May 19, 2019), this catalog explores the work of legendary Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli (about 1444–1510). Today the alluring and enigmatic Primavera forms the cornerstone of his modern fame, but its familiarity belies distant origins in the heady intellectual environment of Laurentian Florence and the residences of its moneyed elite. Part of a genre called spalliera, so named for their installation around shoulder (spalla) height, this type of painting introduced beautiful, strange, and disturbing images into lavish Florentine homes. With staggering originality, Botticelli reinvented ancient subjects for the domestic interior, paneling patrician bedrooms with moralizing tales and offering erudite instruction to their influential inhabitants.
At the center of this exhibition is a spalliera reunited, the Gardner’s Tragedy of Lucretia and its companion The Tragedy of Virginia (Accademia Carrara, Bergamo). Together with extraordinary loans of the same genre from European and American public collections, Heroines and Heroes explores Botticelli’s revolutionary approach to antiquity – from ancient Roman to early Christian – and offers a new perspective on his late career masterpieces.
By Nathaniel Silver, Curator of the Collection, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
144 pages
Published by Paul Holberton Publishing, 2019
Paperback
9.5 x 11 inches
Boundless Books
$20.00 $40.00
Within the covers of this book, you'll find the texts of 50 literary classics, each transformed into a work of art. Enjoy the striking silhouettes that emerge, and - with the help of a magnifying glass - the timeless words themselves.
Written by Postertext128 pages
Published by Chronicle Books, 2016
Hardcover
10.2 x 15.2 inches
Brilliant Bodies
$109.95
Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati—gorgeously dressed and adorned men—to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power.
Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall’s investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials.
This groundbreaking study of masculinity makes an important intervention in the history of male ornamentation and fashion by examining a period when the public display of splendid men not only supported but also constituted authority. It will appeal to specialists in art history and fashion history as well as scholars working at the intersections of gender and politics in quattrocento Italy.
By Timothy McCall
240 pages
Published by University Press, 2022
Hardcover
9 x 0.94 x 10 inches
Brooklyn
$15.00
Colm Tóibín’s New York Times bestselling novel—now an acclaimed film starring Saoirse Ronan and Jim Broadbent, and nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture—is “a moving, deeply satisfying read” (Entertainment Weekly) about a young Irish immigrant in Brooklyn in the early 1950s.
“One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War II. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.
Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.
Author “Colm Tóibín…is his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times). “Written with mesmerizing power and skill” (The Boston Globe), Brooklyn is a “triumph…One of those magically quiet novels that sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations” (USA TODAY).
By Colm Tóibín
288 pages
Published by Simon and Schuster, 2015
Paperback
5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
Call Us What We Carry
$24.99
The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman
Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. Call Us What We Carry reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.
By Amanda Gorman
240 pages
Published by Viking Books, 2021
Hardcover
5.94 x 0.95 x 8.56 inches
Canterbury Tales
$25.00
In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories, and low farce. A storytelling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight’s account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath’s Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook. Nevill Coghill’s masterly and vivid modern English verse translation is rendered with consummate skill to retain all the vigor and poetry of Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Middle English.
Written by Geoffrey Chaucer
528 pages
Published by Penguin Classics, 2015
Hardcover
5 x 7.75 inches
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
$19.95
An empowering collection of essays on the author’s experiences in the disability justice movement.
In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award–winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all.
Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a tool kit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient, sustainable communities of liberation where no one is left behind. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.
By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
304 pages
Published by Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018
Paperback
6 x 0.5 x 8 inches
Cats in Art Pop-Up Book
$19.95
A new compilation of Susan Herbert’s enchanting feline reimaginings of famous paintings brought to life in pop-ups.
Cats in Art celebrates the work of Susan Herbert, whose paintings have been delighting cat fans and culture buffs for decades. Her trademark blend of humor and feline enthusiasm makes her art instantly recognizable to cat lovers everywhere. Since her first collection, The Cats Gallery of Art, was published in 1990, her work has appeared in numerous books that feature cats in iconic works of art, scenes from operas, Shakespearean plays, and movies.
In this new compilation of her work, renowned paper engineer Corina Fletcher has transformed six of Herbert’s most-loved paintings into three- dimensional works of art, including Herbert’s interpretations of classic paintings by Jan van Eyck, Sandro Botticelli, Diego Velázquez, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, John Everett Millais, and Édouard Manet. Each of these clever and charming feline portraits is accompanied by engaging and lively text, which illuminates the drama unfolding on the page.
Charming and fun, this book of pop-ups will delight fans of Susan Herbert as well as those encountering her work for the first time.
By Corina Fletcher and Susan Herbert
12 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2020
Hardcover
6.6 x 1 x 8.2 inches
Cerith Wyn Evans: The Illuminating Gas
$55.00
This monograph presents a selection of works by Welsh conceptual artist and sculptor Cerith Wyn Evans (born 1958)―from early sculptures to complex monumental installations. The book also documents an exhibition at Pirelli Hangar Bicocca alongside three previously unpublished essays.
By Cerith Wyn Evans, edited by Vicente Todlí and Roberto Tenconi
Change Sings: A Children's Anthem
$18.99
In its loudest, proudest song.
In this stirring, much-anticipated picture book by presidential inaugural poet and activist Amanda Gorman, anything is possible when our voices join together. As a young girl leads a cast of characters on a musical journey, they learn that they have the power to make changes—big or small—in the world, in their communities, and in most importantly, in themselves.
With lyrical text and rhythmic illustrations that build to a dazzling crescendo by #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator Loren Long, Change Sings is a triumphant call to action for everyone to use their abilities to make a difference.
By Amanda Gorman
32 pages
Published by Viking Books for Young Readers, 2021
Hardcover
10.5 x 0.42 x 11.25 inches
Chasing Beauty
$37.50
Copies signed by the author now available!
The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella’s world, museum, and the art she collected.
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.
An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella’s wishes in the exact placements she initially curated.
Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston’s insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old.
But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace—all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent—whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal—came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer.
From award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty is the story of the complex and singular woman behind one of the most fascinating museums in the nation and the world—a tale of beauty and loss, grit and American self-invention.
By Natalie Dykstra
512 pages
Published by Mariner Books, 2024
Hardcover
Close Up: Bourdichon's Boston Hours
$19.95
This absorbing book explores the crown jewel of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s collection of rare books and manuscripts: Jean Bourdichon’s Boston Hours. As court artist to King François I of France, Bourdichon produced paintings, books and even parade floats for the sovereign and his entourage. This publication accompanies the museum’s first ever exhibition dedicated to this spectacular illuminated manuscript.
Painter to two kings, Jean Bourdichon remains today one of the most celebrated artists of the French Renaissance. By age twenty-four, he was already serving as “peintre du roy,” a title which Bourdichon held for the rest of his life. His illustrious career at the French royal court led to a wide range of commissions—from portraits to wall maps to stained glass—but he is remembered principally for astonishing illuminated manuscripts. The peerless Grandes Heures for Queen Anne of Brittany remains the touchstone of this group which includes some of the most lavishly painted books of hours ever produced.
One of these masterpieces—Bourdichon’s Boston Hours—in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is the subject of this book. Bourdichon’s only intact book of hours in the United States was acquired by Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1890 and became the crown jewel of her collection of rare books and manuscripts. Leading scholars Nicholas Herman and Anne-Marie Eze explore its history in depth, shedding new light on the book’s patronage and provenance—from the shelves of a wealthy Catholic landowner in Lincolnshire to the shop of a Venetian art and antiques dealer.
This book is the latest in the Gardner’s Close Up series, each installment focusing on an individual, outstanding work of art in the collection. This publication is the first dedicated to this rare treasure, and precedes an exhibition opening in summer 2022.
64 pages
Published by Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021
Paperback
9.3 x 7.6 inches
Close Up: Piermatteo D'Amelia's Annunciation
$14.95
A new exhibition program, Close Up, features a single work in Isabella Stewart Gardner’s collection. Removed from the historic Palace and displayed in Hostetter Gallery for a short time, it is the subject of lectures, in-gallery presentations and a publication. To inaugurate the exhibition series, we chose a painting close to Isabella’s heart, an altarpiece of The Annunciation by Italian Renaissance painter Piermatteo d’Amelia, traditionally found in our Raphael Room.While Gardner fell in love with this Annunciation, its history was only revealed after her death. This book recounts three fascinating stories behind this work of art: the riveting tales of its acquisition, its attribution, and its painter. These stories take us back through half a millennium of history, from the false compartment of a smuggler’s trunk on a train bound for Paris to the high altar of a tiny hermitage in rural Italy, with a brief detour to the Sistine Chapel. Like the exhibition, this book offers fresh perspectives on The Annunciation, shedding new light on a familiar masterpiece.
By Nathaniel Silver, Associate Curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
60 pages
Published by Applewood Books, 2016
Paperback
5.5 x 0.2 x 8.2 inches
Close Up: Raphael & The Pope's Librarian
$19.95
Published in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, this engrossing book accompanies an exhibition the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Raphael and the Pope’s Librarian brings together for the first time one of the most fascinating works in the museum’s collection – the Gardner Museum’s portrait of papal librarian Tommaso Inghirami – and a painting from the Vatican Museums depicting an episode in his life. This book tells the story of the first Raphael in America and explores Inghirami’s fascinating career.
Nearly five centuries after his death in 1520, Raphael’s fame remains undiminished. According to the celebrated writer Henry James, Raphael’s work was “semi-sacred.” Gilded Age American collectors swooned over his iconic religious images. They feverishly tried and failed to acquire Raphael’s rare paintings in a market flooded with copies, and the occasional forgery.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was the first collector to bring a work by Raphael to America, where she named an entire gallery of her new Boston museum after the Renaissance master and installed many of her most celebrated works of art around his portrait of the rotund cleric Tommaso Inghirami.
Raphael and the Pope’s Librarian (October 31, 2019 - January 30, 2020) is part of the Close Up exhibition series, each installment of which sheds new light on an outstanding work of art in the permanent collection.
By Nathaniel Silver and Ingrid Rowland
Colnaghi Journal Vol 4,
$50.00
Colnaghi Studies Journal is produced biannually by the Colnaghi Foundation. Its purpose is to publish texts on significant pre-twentieth-century artworks in the European tradition that have recently come to light or about which new research is underway, as well as on the history of their collection. Texts about artworks should place them within the broader context of the artist’s oeuvre, provide visual analysis and comparative images.
The Museum is featured in the essay "Selling Botticelli to America: Colnaghi, Bernard Berenson and the sale of the Madonna of the Eucharist to Isabella Stewart Gardner" written by Jeremy Howard.
Edited by Stijn Alsteens, et al.174 pages
Published by Colnaghi Foundation, March 2019
Paperback
Colorstrology
$19.99
The bright and insightful guide to birthday colors is back with an all-new cover inspired by the iconic Pantone color system. Discover every vibrant aspect of your personality with Colorstrology, a fascinating blend of astrology, numerology, and color theory that offers exciting new insights about our lives and relationships. Written by renowned astrologer Michele Bernhardt using the numbers and color schemes of Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color, the system features 366 “birthday colors” that illustrate who we are and how we behave. Using Colorstrology, you’ll quickly understand how to enhance your best personality traits with your birthday color. This full-color book features detailed profiles of everyone you know, plus 366 perforated swatches so you can take your birthday color wherever you go.
Written by Michele Bernhardt432 pages
Published by Quirk Books, 2014
Paperback
5.89 x 5.89 inches
Comet Chaser: The True Cinderella Story of Caroline Herschel, the First Professional Woman Astronomer
$19.99
The real-life Cinderella story of the very first professional woman astronomer—Caroline Herschel!
Comet Chaser is the thrilling and beautifully illustrated biography of a woman who made a lifetime of incredible contributions to science. She was the first woman to discover a comet, the first officially recognized in a scientific role, and the first to be given a Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society.
In a day when girls were barely educated at all, Caroline Herschel's father taught her math and music . . . until, suddenly, he died. Her mother saw her as little more than a household servant. Caroline might have been doomed to a life of drudgery and dimness if not for her brother, who took her from Germany to England. There they started looking for comets, and building telescopes in their free time, gradually making them larger and larger. Their many discoveries brought the great astronomers of the day to their doorstep, where they found that the Herschels had made the best telescopes of their time.
From household drudge to belle of the scientific ball, Caroline Herschel won international prizes never before awarded to a woman and earned a professional wage from the king. She and her discoveries remain as stunning today as they were then. In this delightfully imaginative retelling of Caroline's career, her fairy godmother is none other than her own bright intelligence, hard work, and passion for science.
By Pamela S. Turner with illustrations by Vivien Mildenberger
60 pages
Published by Chronicle Books, 2024
Hardcover
11.25 x 0.44 x 10.9 inches
Composite Landscapes: Photomontage and Landscape Architecture
$40.00
Composite Landscapes examines one of landscape architecture's most recognizable forms: the montage view. The volume gathers work from a select group of contemporary artists and a dozen of the world's leading landscape architects. These composite views reveal practices of photomontage depicting the conceptual, experiential, and temporal dimensions of landscape.Composite Landscapes illustrates the analog origins of a method now rendered ubiquitous through digital means. In revisiting the composite landscape view as a cultural form, Composite Landscapes illuminates the contemporary status of the photographically constructed image for the design disciplines and beyond.
Edited by Charles Waldheim and Andrea Hansen, with contributions by James S. Ackerman, James Corner, Stephen Daniels, Anette Freytag, Andrea Hansen, Karen M'Closkey, and Charles Waldheim
176 pages
Published by Hatje Cantz, 2014
Hardcover
10 x 1 x 12 inches
Confessions of Saint Augustine
$22.00
The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting faiths and worldviews. His Confessions, written when he was in his forties, recount how, slowly and painfully, he came to turn away from his youthful ideas and licentious lifestyle, to become instead an ardent devotee of Christianity and one of its most influential thinkers. A remarkably honest and revealing spiritual autobiography touching on issues relevant to people of all faiths, the Confessions also address fundamental issues of Christian doctrine, and many of the prayers and meditations it includes are still an integral part of the practice of Christianity today. In his insightful introduction, R. S. Pine-Coffin discusses Saint Augustine’s intentions in writing his Confessions and issues of translation. This edition also includes a list of dates of events recorded in the Confessions.
Written by Augustine of Hippo576 pages
Published by Penguin Classics
Hardcover
4.13 x 6.67 inches
Corazon Aquino
$15.99
Discover the life of Corazon Aquino, the first female president of the Philippines
Little Cory was a shy, studious child with a great sense of justice. As a young woman and wife, she and her family felt compelled to speak out against the unjust leader who was ruining their country. Showing bravery, reliability, and honesty, she led the revolution that ended the dictator's rule and went on to become the president of the Philippines. This moving book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the politician's life.
Written by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, Illustrated by Ginnie HsuFrom the Little People, Big Dreams Series
32 pages
Published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2020
Hardcover
8 x 9.8 inches
Crime and Punishment
$30.00
720 pages
Published by Penguin Classics, 2018
Hardcover
5 x 7.75 inches
Curatorial Activism
$34.95
Current art world statistics demonstrate that the fight for gender and race equality in the art world is far from over: only sixteen percent of this year’s Venice Biennale artists were female; only fourteen percent of the work displayed at MoMA in 2016 was by non white artists; only a third of artists represented by U.S. galleries are female, but over two-thirds of students enrolled in art and art-history programs are young women.
Arranged in thematic sections focusing on feminism, race, and sexuality, Curatorial Activism examines and illustrates pioneering examples of exhibitions that have broken down boundaries and demonstrated that new approaches are possible, from Linda Nochlin’s “Women Artists” at LACMA in the mid-1970s to Jean-Hubert Martin’s “Carambolages” in 2016 at the Grand Palais in Paris. Profiles key exhibitions by pioneering curators including Okwui Enwezor, Linda Nochlin, Jean-Hubert Martin and Nan Goldin, with a foreword by Lucy Lippard, internationally known art critic, activist and curator, and early champion of feminist art, this volume is both an invaluable source of practical information for those who understand that institutions must be a driving force in this area and a vital source of inspiration for today’s expanding new generation of curators.
By Maura Reilly with forward by Lucy Lippard
240 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2018
Hardcover
7.2 x 1 x 9.4 inches
Dad's Story
$24.95
The perfect gift for any dad, this keepsake legacy journal is a special place to record special moments, stories, and advice that you want to pass down to your children one day.
Dad’s Story is a guided life story journal thoughtfully designed to help dads of all ages write down memories that they want to preserve and share with their children and family. Designed by best-selling artist and author Korie Herold, this memory journal provides dads with thoughtful writing prompts and plenty of journaling pages to record memories from their childhood, school years, early adulthood, and more. Show dad that you love him and want to hear more about his life with this timeless gift that’s ideal for Father's Day, birthdays, or any time of year.
Sections and writing prompts include:
- Early Childhood: What was your house like growing up? What were your favorite toys or playtime activities?
- School Years: What did you think you wanted to be when you grew up? What were you like as a teenager?
- Work and Travel: What was your first job? What family vacations do you remember the most?
- Love and Family: What's your best relationship advice? How did you feel when you found out you were going to be a dad?
- Character and Values: What do you value most in life? What family values do you hope to pass down?
- Hypotheticals and Curiosities: What's something you wish you had done differently? What's the best advice you ever received?
- Words of Wisdom: Additional space to write letters to your family
Special features include:
• Elegant linen with gold foil cover
• Acid-free and archival paper
• Layflat design allows you to easily write in the book
• Carefully developed designs and prompts allow to you reflect and remember
By Korie Herold
112 pages
Published by Paige Tate & Co, 2022
Hardcover
6.22 x 0.69 x 9.41 inches
Danijel Zezelj: Days of Hate, Act I
$17.99
Danijel Zezelj: The United States of America, 2022.The loss that ripped them apart drove Huian into the arms of the police state and Amanda towards a guerrilla war against the white supremacy. Now they meet again.
This is a story of a war.
By Ales Kot, Danijel Zezelj, Jordie Bellaire, and Tom Muller
176 pages
Published by Image Comics, 2018
Paperback
6.6 x 0.6 x 10.1 inches
David Bowie
$15.99
David Bowie was a star man from the very beginning. From excelling in dance and music at school, to starting his very first band, David always broke the mold. As an adult, he became one of the most celebrated musicians and magical performers around, consistently dazzling audiences with his talent, costumes, and stage presence. This inspiring story of the musical legend's life features a facts and photos section at the back.
Little People, Big Dreams - Discover the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.
Written by Isabel Sánchez Vegara, Illustrated by Ana AlberoFrom the Little People, Big Dreams Series
32 pages
Published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2019
Hardcover
8 x 9.8 inches
David Copperfield
$30.00
This is the novel Dickens regarded as his “favourite child” and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the ‘umble Uriah Heep, along with Mr. Micawber, a portrait of Dickens’s own father that evokes a mixture of love, nostalgia, and guilt.
Written by Charles Dickens
1024 pages
Published by Penguin Classics, 2016
Hardcover
5 x 7.75 inches
Dayanita Singh: Dream Villa
$35.00
In Dream Villa Singh explores how the night transforms what seems ordinary by day into something mysterious and unsettling. This series of colour photographs presents a landscape which exists as much in the artist’s imagination as in the real world. Singh travels to many different cities never knowing where Dream Villa or its inhabitants will present themselves. It is a place where nothing is quite as it seems to be – it comes alive at night, when all is lit by artificial light and the moon is just ornamentation.
By Dayanita Singh136 pages
Published by Steidl, 2010
Hardcover
4 x 8 inches
Dayanita Singh: House of Love
$45.00
“House of Love” is a work of photographic fiction that takes the form of nine short stories. Working closely with writer Aveek Sen, whose prose follows a journey of its own, Singh explores the relationship between photography, memory, and writing. “House of Love”, designed to blur the lines between an art book of photographic images and a work of literary fiction, is a book whose images demand to be read, not just seen, and whose texts create their own sensory worlds. The combination creates a new vocabulary for the visual book.
The “House of Love” itself is the Taj Mahal, but the Taj Mahal as a recurring motif that stands for a range of meanings—meanings made up of the truths and lies of night and day, love and illusion, attachment and detachment.
By Dayanita Singh172 pages
Radius Books & Peabody Museum Press
Hardcover
6.25 x 9.75 inches
Dayanita Singh: Museum of Chance
$65.00
Dayanita Singh’s Museum of Chance is a book about how life unfolds, and asks to be recorded and edited, along and off the axis of time. The inscrutably woven photographic sequence of Singh’s Go Away Closer has now grown into a labyrinth of connections and correspondences. The thread through this novel like web of happenings is that elusive entity called Chance. It is Chance that seems to disperse as well as gather fragments or clusters of experience, creating a form of simultaneity that is realised in the idea and matter of the book, with its interlaced or parallel timelines and patterns of recurrence and return. The eighty-eight quadratone images in the book will also appear on the front and back covers in random pairs, transforming each copy of the book into a distinct piece of work by the author.
By Dayanita Singh, texts by Aveek Sen96 pages
Published by Steidl, 2014
Clothbound hardcover
11 x 12.8 inches
Degas at the Opera
$60.00
A lavish new investigation into the Paris Opera’s influence on Edgar Degas's painting.
From his debut in the 1860s up to his final works after 1900, the Paris Opera formed a focal point of Edgar Degas's paintings. He explored the theater's various spaces―auditorium and stage, private boxes, foyers, and dance studios―and painted those who frequented them: dancers, singers, orchestral musicians, audience members, and subscribers watching from the wings. This theater presented a microcosm of infinite possibilities, allowing him to experiment with multiple points of view, contrasting lighting, motion, and the precision of movement.
This catalog, created in concert with an exhibition at the Muse´e d'Orsay in Paris, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, considers the Paris Opera’s influence on Degas as a whole, examining not only his passionate relationship with the house and his musical tastes, but also the infinite resources of the opera's marvelous toolbox. Filled with striking reproductions of Degas’s work and including insightful essays by leading curators and scholars, Degas at the Opera offers admission into the world of Degas and the Paris Opera of the nineteenth century.
By Henri Loyrette
320 pages
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2020
Hardcover
10.1 x 1.4 x 12 inches
Degas: A Passion for Perfection
$50.00
A beautiful celebration of six decades of work by Edgar Degas, published in the centennial year of the artist’s death.
Edgar Degas’s (1834–1917) relentless experimentation with technical procedures is a hallmark of his lifelong desire to learn. The numerous iterations of compositions and poses suggest an intense self-discipline, as well as a refusal to accept any creative solution as definitive or finite. Published in the centenary year of the artist’s death, this book presents an exceptional array of Degas’s work, including paintings, drawings, pastels, etchings, monotypes, counter proofs, and sculpture, with approximately sixty key works from private and public collections in Europe and the United States, some of them published here for the first time. Shown together, the impressive works represent well over half a century of innovation and artistic production.
Essays by leading Degas scholars and conservation scientists explore his practice and recurring themes of the human figure and landscape. The book opens with a study of Degas’s debt to the Old Masters, and it concludes with a consideration of his artistic legacy and his influence on leading artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Ryan Gander, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, R. B. Kitaj, Pablo Picasso, and Walter Sickert.
Edited by Jane Munro
272 pages
Published by Yale University Press, 2017
Hardcover
9.7 x 1 x 11.6 inches
Dennis Miller Bunker and His Circle
$8.00
From the exhibition Dennis Miller Bunker and His Circle, on view from January 13 to June 4, 1995 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The exhibition featured works from the Gardner, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and several private collections.The essay in this catalog explores Dennis Miller Bunker and the broader crosscurrents of influence in which Bunker participated, as well as his own crucial role as teacher and artistic pioneer. Also included are selected entries from the exhibition, featuring brief commentaries on the works.
By Erica E. Hirshler, with forward by Anne Hawley, former Director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
63 pages
Published by the Trustees of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1995
Paperback
10.8 x 0.4 x 10.5 inches
Designing a Garden: Monk's Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
$40.00
Designing a Garden presents Michael Van Valkenburgh’s concept and execution of the Monk’s Garden, an intimate, walled site immediately adjacent to Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Venetian palazzo on the Fenway. Devoted to horticulture and music as well as Old Master paintings and sculpture, Mrs. Gardner planted multiple gardens on the site herself. Van Valkenburgh’s design aims to interpret the museum’s meandering gallery layout, and the rich colors and textures of its idiosyncratic collection, in a contemporary landscape context.
A small-scale, dreamlike woodland, the garden is composed of approximately sixty trees including Stewartia, paperbark maple, and gray birch, that establish a detail-rich palette of colors and textures suitable for intimate appreciation. Winding paths, paved in a striking combination of black brick and reflective mica schist, meander through the trees in the Olmstedian tradition that invites a gentle pace and contemplation.
Van Valkenburgh’s text explores the origins of his love of landscape and plants in his family farm in Upstate New York and moves through the designing of the Monk’s Garden, focusing on the experiential nature of the process and the challenges and satisfactions of the small scale and the historic and cultural context.
By Michael Van Valkenburgh
208 pages
Published by The Monacelli Press, 2019
Hardcover
7.5 x 9.5 inches
Dolly Parton
$15.99
Little Dolly grew up singing near the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. She was poor in money but rich in love and talent. After school, she moved to Nashville to pursue her singing-songwriting dreams. Dolly became a musical superstar, but she never forgot where she came from. She now uses her wealth to give back to people in need.
Written by Isabel Sanchez Vegara, Illustrated by Daria SolakFrom the Little People, Big Dreams Series
32 pages
Published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2019
Hardcover
8 x 9.8 inches
Dolly Parton's Billy the Kid Makes it Big
$19.99
From the legendary Dolly Parton comes a story about her god-dog and Instagram personality, Billy the Kid, who is hoping to make it big as a country music star in Nashville, Tennessee.
French bulldog Billy the Kid was born with an ear for music. And not just any music. He loves barking to the beat of country music! So Billy sets out to Nashville to sing his heart out.
But when he meets some big bullies at the Battle of the Bow-wows, Billy worries he's barking up the wrong tree. He'll need his favorite songs ("Jowlene" and "I Will Pawlways Love You," of course), a group of scrappy new friends, and his favorite country music star to regain self-confidence and be the star he always knew he could be.
Written by Dolly Parton with Erica S. Perl and illustrated by MacKenzie Haley, this is a delightful picture book about standing up to people (and dogs) who put you down and finding the drive to achieve your dreams.
By Dolly Parton and Erica S. Perl with illustrations by MacKenzie Haley
40 pages
Published by Penguin Workshop, 2023
Hardcover
9.31 x 0.29 x 9.31 inches
Don't Call Us Dead: Poems
$16.00
“[Smith's] poems are enriched to the point of volatility, but they pay out, often, in sudden joy.”―The New Yorker
Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality―the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood―and a diagnosis of HIV positive. “Some of us are killed / in pieces,” Smith writes, “some of us all at once.” Don’t Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America―“Dear White America”―where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.
By Danez Smith
96 pages
Published by Graywolf Press, 2017
Paperback
6.61 x 0.31 x 8.99 inches
Donde Viven Los Monstrous
$8.95
Donde viven los monstruos tiene cincuenta años de publicación. Maurice Sendak ganador de la Medalla Caldecott por su libro de imágenes se ha convertido en uno de los libros infantiles más queridos y aclamados de todos los tiempos. Todo niño debe tener una copia.
Las travesuras llevan a Max a su habitacion castigado y sin cenar. Encerrado entre esas cuatro paredes, imagina un viaje fantastico al país de los monstruos, donde se convertirá en el rey. Un libro para aprender a domar monstruos (en este caso, de lo más dulces y tiernos).
Este clásico de la literatura infantil es ideal para los primeros lectores, quienes se veran identificados con Max, sus juegos, sus miedos y, su mundo.
By Maurice Sendak
48 pages
Published by HarperCollins Espanol, 1996
Hardcover
10 x 0.19 x 9 inches
Dracula
$25.00
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival. In Dracula, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.
Written by Bram Stoker512 pages
Published by Penguin Random House, 2011
Hardcover
5 x 7.75 inches
Drama: David Rockwell
$59.95
A celebration of the work of contemporary architect David Rockwell, at the intersection of architecture and performance
David Rockwell's fascination with theater has long informed his built work, which includes hotels, restaurants, and cultural institutions. Drama explores the core principles that Rockwell uses to enhance the impact of his architecture, with contributions from experts across the creative world — from record producer Quincy Jones to chef José Andrés. It's both an exciting new insight into the work of an important contemporary architect and a compelling case for the virtues of interdisciplinary collaboration.
By David Rockwell, Bruce Mau, and Sam Lubell
312 pages
Published by Phaidon Press, 2021
Hardcover
8.66 x 1.22 x 11.65 inches
Edouard Manet: Rebel in a Frock Coat
$33.00
A portrait of the French painter explores the interplay of his life and art and blends the cultural and social history of nineteenth-century Paris with the artist's struggle against adversity.
By Beth Archer Brombert
505 pages
Published by Little Brown & Co, 1996
Hardcover
6.5 x 1.75 x 9.5 inches
Elton John
$15.99
Discover the life of Elton John, the piano wizard who rocketed to stardom with his music.
As a child, Elton started playing his grandmother's piano in Harrow, London. He could pick tunes out by ear and was soon attending lessons at the Royal Academy. After answering an advertisement in a newspaper, Elton teamed up with a lyric-writing buddy: Bernie Taupin. The rest was history. Elton's songwriting talent, musical skill, and dazzling outfits have made him one of the all-time greats. This moving book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the musician's life.
From the Little People, Big Dreams Series
32 pages
Published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2020
Hardcover
8 x 9.8 inches
Embroidered Art
$25.00 $50.00
"Nature Made Opulent"
With the emphasis placed firmly on showcasing Lindsay's unique style of embroidered art, this coffee table book also provides an insight into her life journey – the evolution of her work, her inspiration, and methods she uses.
After her first exhibition, Lindsay's career started to develop and she became an elected member of the Society of Designer Craftsmen. Lindsay's work continues to evolve, and she is now a well-established and highly respected designer-maker whose work is exhibited in prestigious galleries throughout the UK.
By Lindsay Taylor144 pages
Published by Search Press, 2013
Hardcover
10.5 x 10.5 inches
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
$16.00
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want.
Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.
By adrienne maree brown
280 pages
Published by AK Press, 2017
Paperback
5 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches
Emma
$26.00
Beautiful, clever, rich – and single – Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protégée Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen’s most flawless work.
Written by Jane Austen512 pages
Published by Penguin Classics, 2010
Hardcover
5 x 7.75 inches
Emma: Cozy Classics
$9.95
Cuddle up with a classic! In twelve needle-felted scenes and twelve child-friendly words, each book in this ingenious series captures the essence of a literary masterpiece. Simple words, sturdy pages, and a beloved story make these books the perfect vehicle for early learning with an erudite twist. Budding bookworms will delight in this clever retelling of the classics made just for them!
Jane Austen's Emma tells of a well-to-do young lady who loves to play the matchmaker, and the many surprises she encounters as she attempts to secure a happy ending for her friends—and for herself. It's a first words primer for your literary little one!
By Jack Wang and Holman Wang
24 pages
Published by Chronicle Books, 2016
Hardcover
5.25 x 0.25 x 8 inches
Every Day a Word Surprises Me & Other Quotes by Writers
$24.95
Advice, strong opinions, and personal revelations by the world's greatest writers - exclusively researched for this book
Featuring the most inspirational and insightful collection of quotes by writers through the ages and across the globe, Every Day a Word Surprises Me is the ideal keepsake for readers, writers, and everyone who appreciates the exquisite power of words. This carefully curated book, packed with original research, is a go-to resource for thoughts on a variety of subjects, including originality, punctuation, reading, daily routines, rejection, money troubles, the creative process, love, truth, and more. 'Every day a word surprises me' is a quotation from British neurologist and author Oliver Sacks. This collection is full of its own surprises and hard-earned advice - communicated with the eloquence and clarity that only the world's finest writers could summon.
Conceived and edited by Phaidon Editors336 Pages
Published by Phaidon Press, 2018
Hardcover
5.50 x 8.10 inches
© 2024 Gift at the Gardner.
