Lintcoat

The greatest show on earth: The birth of American popular culture For a hundred years, the American circus was the largest show-biz industry the world had ever seen. During the heyday of the American circus from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s, traveling circuses performed for audiences of up to 12,000-14,000 per show, employed as many as 1,600 men and women, and crisscrossed the country on 20,000 miles of railroad in one season alone. The spectacle of death-defying daredevils, strapping super-heroes and scantily-clad starlets, fearless animal trainers, and startling freaks gripped the American imagination, outshining theater, vaudeville, comedy, and minstrel shows of its day, and ultimately paved the way for film and television to take root in the modern era. Long before the Beat generation made “on the road” expeditions popular, the circus personified the experience and offered many young Americans the dream of adventure, reinvention, excitement, and glamour.

[The Circus 1870-1950]

The Designers Guide to Marketing and Pricing answers all of the common questions asked by creatives every day. This nuts and bolts guide to running a creative services business teaches you how to create a smart marketing plan–along with small actionable steps to take to reach your financial goals. From learning which marketing tools are most effective and how to use them to discovering how to establish contact with potential clients, this book is the must-have guide for navigating the murky waters of the design business.

[The Designers Guide to Marketing and Pricing]

Atomic Ranch celebrates midcentury houses—from 1940s ranch tracts to 1960s architect-designed modernist homes. With an emphasis on affordable solutions and homeowner renovations, our quarterly magazine shows you how to make your house cool, both inside and out.

[Atomic Ranch Magazine]

A new generation of talent is currently developing its own interdisciplinary and refreshingly off-key visual vocabulary. Lemon Poppy Seed is a compilation of work by young, international artists whose styles defy current trends and classifications and are all the more brilliant for doing so. The book is the perfect source for those who want to see the organic development of new artistic terrain before the mainstream attempts to erect shopping centers upon it.

[Lemon Poppy Seed]

What’s the science behind Tiger’s swing, Lance’s legs, or Andy Roddick’s serve? Focusing a scientific lens on athletic achievement, this book explains the biology, chemistry, and physics behind the winning stroke, hit, throw, dive, kick, punch and slam dunk. The issues discussed from Babe Ruth’s Home Run Secrets, to why swimming trunks don’t cut it anymore, or why a seemingly straight kick curves drastically just before its target—in other words, how to bend it like Beckham—plus so much more.

[Why a Curveball Curves The Incredible Science of Sports]

Ditko began his career in the 1950s drawing comics for the notorious low-budget Charlton Comics (the Roger Corman Productions of the comics industry) where he developed his craft on various genre titles. He started working for Stan Lee at Marvel Comics in 1958, churning out monster/horror stories, until he was conscripted to work on Marvel’s new super-hero line, for which he provided the visual conceptions of The Hulk, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange, and plotted and drew these characters’ adventures between 1962 and 1966. By 1966, Spider-Man had become a pop culture icon, and it was then that Ditko quit drawing the character over mysterious circumstances that will, for the first time, be investigated here. Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko is a coffee table art book tracing Ditko’s life and career, his unparalleled stylistic innovations, his strict adherence to his own (and Randian) principles, with lush displays of obscure and popular art from the thousands of pages of comics he’s drawn over the last 55 years.

[Strange and Stranger The World of Steve Ditko]

Brands are dead. Advertising no longer works. Weaned on TiVo, the Internet, and other emerging technologies, the short-attention-span generation has become immune to marketing. Consumers are “in control.” Or so we’re told. In Buying In, New York Times Magazine “Consumed” columnist Rob Walker argues that this accepted wisdom misses a much more important and lasting cultural shift. As technology has created avenues for advertising anywhere and everywhere, people are embracing brands more than ever before–creating brands of their own and participating in marketing campaigns for their favorite brands in unprecedented ways. Increasingly, motivated consumers are pitching in to spread the gospel virally, whether by creating Internet video ads for Converse All Stars or becoming word-of-mouth “agents” touting products to friends and family on behalf of huge corporations. In the process, they–we–have begun to funnel cultural, political, and community activities through connections with brands. Walker explores this changing cultural landscape–including a practice he calls “murketing,” blending the terms murky and marketing–by introducing us to the creative marketers, entrepreneurs, artists, and community organizers who have found a way to thrive within it. Using profiles of brands old and new, including Timberland, American Apparel, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Red Bull, iPod, and Livestrong, Walker demonstrates the ways in which buyers adopt products, not just as consumer choices, but as conscious expressions of their identities. Part marketing primer, part work of cultural anthropology, Buying In reveals why now, more than ever, we are what we buy–and vice versa.

[Buying In The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are]

Studio Olafur Eliasson is an experimental laboratory located in Berlin. Led by renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, it functions as an interdisciplinary space, generating fresh dialogues between art and its surroundings. This rich sourcebook enables the reader to delve into the corners and crevices of the Studio’s diverse projects. The key concepts behind the works are presented alphabetically, and unfold in the course of short conversations with the artist. The majority of Eliasson’s thought-provoking installations, photographs, sculptures, and architectural projects to date is included, with additional material focusing on the research processes at Studio Olafur Eliasson. The introduction is provided by the noted art historian Philip Ursprung, who also participates in the conversations.

[Studio Olafur Eliasson An Encyclopedia]