Robert Shelton met Bob Dylan when the young singer arrived in New York in 1961. He became Dylan's friend, champion, and critic. His book, first published in 1986, was hailed as the definitive unauthorized biography of this moody, passionate genius. Shelton tells the intimate and first-hand story of Bob Dylan's formative years in Greenwich Village NYC, and it is the only biography that has been written with his active cooperation. ​ ​ Dylan gave Shelton access to his parents, Abe and Beatty Zimmerman - whom no other journalist has ever interviewed; to his brother, David; to childhood friends from Hibbing; to fellow students and friends from Minneapolis; and to Suze Rotolo, the muse immortalized on the cover of Freewheelin' , among others. Concluding Dylan's story during his triumphant 1978 world tour, No Direction Home took 20 years to complete and when it was finally published the book received widespread critical acclaim. ​ ​ Following his Nobel Prize for Literature Award in 2016, Dylan's standing is higher than at any time since the 1960s and Shelton's book is now seen as a classic. This new illustrated edition, published in the year of Dylan's 80th birthday, includes key images of Dylan throughout his incredible, enduring career, making it a must for all Dylan fans. ​

Seeing the Insane is a richly detailed cultural history of madness and art in the Western world, showing how the portrayal of stereotypes has both reflected and shaped the perception and treatment of the mentally disturbed. Covering the Middle Ages through the end of the nineteenth century, Sander L. Gilman explores the depictions of mental illness as seen in manuscripts, sculptures, lithographs, and photography. With artistic renderings and medical illustrations side-by-side, this volume includes over 250 visual displays of the mentally ill. These images capture society's reliance on visual motifs to assign concrete qualities to abstract ailments in an attempt to understand the marginalized. Gilman's collection of images demonstrates how society has relegated the mentally ill to a state of "otherness" and portrays how society's perceived realities concerning the insane have morphed and evolved over centuries. Sander L. Gilman, PhD, is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A respected educator, he has served as Old Dominion Visiting Professor of English at Princeton; Northrop Frye Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto; Mellon Visiting Professor of Humanities at Tulane University; Goldwin Smith Professor of Humane Studies at Cornell University; and Professor of the History of Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College. He has written and edited several books including The Face of Madness and Sexuality: An Illustrated History . " Seeing the Insane is a visual history of the stereotypes that have shaped the perception of the mentally ill from medieval through modern times. The result is nearly as heartbreaking as a visual history of the Holocaust. In picture after picture, the book portrays centuries of intolerance for deviance, mindless cruelty, unthinking prejudice, and self-righteous abuse of the weak and ill." - American Journal of Psychiatry "As extraordinary in concept as it is in its execution. . . . This remarkable book helps laymen as well as specialists to see the insane, but it does far more. When we study the past, we understand the present. When we see the conventional stereotype images of insanity, we find they still color our concepts of madness. Through these pictures of the insane, we see all humanity. We look, not through a glass darkly, but through a multiplicity of media, brightly." - Antiquarian Bookman Readers interested in related titles from Sander L. Gilman will also want to see: Face of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography (ISBN: 9781626549234), Sexuality: An Illustrated History (ISBN: 9781626549227).

Learn how to find faces in unexpected places using everyday objects in this interactive guide to cultivating creativity, from globally acclaimed portrait artist Hanoch Piven. There are so many faces to discover in our world! All you have to do is look. Is a button just a button? Or is it an eye? That stick of gum sure looks like a mouth. How about some old yarn, unraveled from a scarf—that could be hair. Put all these objects together and you can make a face! Join internationally renowned portrait artist Hanoch Piven on a delightful, artistic journey to reimagine the everyday world into facial fun in this instructive, illustrated guide.

Kenneth Goldsmith's Theory offers an unprecedented reading of the contemporary world: 500 texts – from poems and musings to short stories – printed on 500 pages assembled in the form of a ream of paper. Curated by the author-poet, this unique collection maps out the various issues and trends in contemporary literature in a world currently being shaken up by everything online and digital,and calls for the reinvention of creative forms.

Two central themes run through this new collection of authoritative and undogmatic essays: the Jewish experience and that of the work of art as a toy to be used for dreaming and playing rather than as a window to the world. The collection includes three essays on the Bible, as well as pieces devoted to Twelfth Night, Rembrandt's self-portraits, Tristram Shandy, Kafka's stories and aphorisms, Borges, Kierkegaard, and painter Andrez Jackowski. The title essay examines the relationship of the artists' works and their ideas, and the book concludes with personal meditations on memory, the Holocaust, Jewishness, and being a writer-teacher.