Beautiful Evidence
By Edward Tufte
Graphics Press, Cheshire, Conn.
This latest work from the Leonardo da Vinci of information display takes aim at ubiquitous but inadequate PowerPoint presentations and low-resolution graphics. Science and art share a requirement for “wide-eyed observing,” in the words of Tufte, professor emeritus of statistics, graphic design, and political economy at Yale University.
$52
Ely Jacques Kahn, Architect: Beaux-Arts to Modernism in New York
By Jewel Stern and John A. Stuart
W.W. Norton & Company, New York A first critical study of Ely Jacques Kahn (1884–1972), pre-eminent architect of commercial buildings in 1920s New York City and well beyond.
$60
Yearning for Beauty: The Weiner Werkstatte and the Stoclet House
Edited by Peter Noever, Etienne Davignon, Paul Dujardin, and Anne Mommens
Distributed Art Publishers, New York/Jatke Camtz Publishers
An authoritative history of the Viennese movement and its “total concept” for architecture, art, and design. $95
Metropolitan World Atlas
By Arjen van Susteren
Design by Joost Grootens
010 Publishers, Rotterdam
After globalization comes the era of the megacity. Just in time, a book has arrived that allows comparative analysis of such bellwether metropolitan areas as Beijing, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo. Plans, key indices, and tables add value to this 21st century atlas for the urban age.
$45
The Universitas Project: Solutions for a Post-Technological Society
Directed by Emilio Ambasz
Foreword by Terence Riley
Distributed Art Publishers/Museum of Modern Art, New York
The landmark 1972 Museum of Modern Art symposium on the future of design, recaptured word for word to inspire a new generation of architects and designers. $34.95
American Gardens 1890–1930: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest Regions
Edited by Sam Watters
Acanthus Press, New York
First of three volumes evoking the American melting pot of landscape design by its great practitioners: Marian Coffin, Beatrix Jones Farrand, Rose Standish Nichols, Charles Platt, Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles Freeman Gillette, and Jens Jensen.
$75
Typography and Graphic Design
By Roxane Jubert, Ellen Lupton, and Serge Lemoine
Flammarion, Paris
The glories of graphics from antiquity to the digital age, filtered through the demanding eye of art historian Roxane Jubert. Forewords by Ellen Lupton, curator at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and Serge Lemoine, director of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, make this an indispensable guidebook to fonts. $95
Classic English Design and Antiques: Period Styles and Furnishings Masterpieces of the 18th and 19th Centuries from the Hyde Park Antiques Collection
By Emily Eerdmans
Foreword by Mario Buatta
Introduction by Rachel Karr
Rizzoli, New York
English period interiors deciphered, from Queen Anne and Georgian to Palladian, Rococo, Neoclassic, and Regency. $60
