Described as “a continuous carnival” and “the crossroads of the world,” Times Square is a singular phenomenon: the spot where imagination and veracity intersect. To esteemed scholar and author Marshall Berman, it is also the flashing, teeming, and strangely beautiful nexus of his life. In this remarkable book, Berman takes us on a thrilling illustrated tour of Times Square, revealing a landscape both mythic and real. On the Town is a unique look through the lens of the ideas and works of art that inspired–or were inspired by–this landmark’s allure. Times Square pulses with life, drawing countless millions who long to be surrounded by too many in the midst of too much. Beyond the immense crowds, the intoxicating lights, the imposing architecture, and even the recent incursion of corporate headquarters that limn the Square’s present boundaries, there is an indefatigable humanity (and undeniable sexual tension) that, for more than a century, has nourished creative expression. Interleafing his own recollections with astute social commentary, Berman reveals how movies, graphic arts, literature, popular music, television, and, of course, the Broadway theater have reflected Times Square’s voluminous light to illuminate a vast spectrum of themes and vignettes. Berman shows us Times Square as it is seen in Alfred Eisenstadt’s iconic photography, the movies of Busby Berkeley, John Schlesinger, and Martin Scorsese, and the stage choreography of Jerome Robbins. Conversely, we see how Times Square’s distinctive aura finds its source in a stunningly diverse list of performers, writers, and impresarios, including Theodore Dreiser, Florenz Ziegfeld, Ethel Merman, Al Jolson, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. Berman also celebrates the unsung heroes of Times Square–the artists, engineers, and hucksters behind the Square’s landmark signs that, throughout the decades, re-created raging waterfalls, blew smoke rings, bathed onlookers in the Square’s eerily welcoming light, and projected the image of what Americans want to be against a surface of who we really are. Part love letter, part revelatory semiotic exposition of a place known to all, On the Town is a nonstop excursion to the heart of American civilization, written by one of our keenest, most entertaining cultural observers.

"Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics considers the way artists, filmmakers, and activists use polar art to illustrate our current environmental crises as well as to reimagine our world and the ways we engage with it. Examining a wide range of contemporary art, photography, and film, Lisa E. Bloom shows how these works demonstrate the ways that our planetary crises are linked to climate change as well as a long history of colonialism and capitalism. Bloom insists on linking racial, sexual, and gendered discriminatory violence to wider environmental destruction, and she engages feminist, Black, indigenous, and non-western perspectives to address the exigencies of what we are experiencing now as the Anthropocene, or the new geological period characterized by ecosystem failures, rising sea levels, and climate-led migrations"--

The Thames was London's 'grandest street', a stage for royal and civic ceremony as well as a bustling commercial thoroughfare. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, this magnificent catalogue charts 500 years of river-borne pomp and pageantry, including Anne Boleyn's coronation and Nelson's funeral. Illustrated with rarely seen paintings, prints and artefacts, the book also records the shipping, bridges and tunnels and frost fairs of the Thames, and the buildings that line its shores.--publisher's description.

Ruth Weisberg Unfurled presents three decades of painting and printmaking by celebrated Los Angeles artist Ruth Weisberg. It features the complete ninety-four-foot long mixed-media drawing The Scroll, in addition to more than thirty works from throughout Weisberg's career. Together the works highlight the artist's extraordinary depictions of her life story and its convergence with art history and Jewish memory. They also illuminate the parallels Weisberg draws between the contemporary and biblical worlds, her desire to memorialize those who perished during the Holocaust, and her fervent belief in renewal.