Green is the new white for today's environmentally conscious couples — this timely yet stylish book is an inspirational guide to making that special day perfect. Louise Moon, a leading wedding planner, shows how to green the most important day in any couple's life. From one or two thoughtful features, like using organic, locally grown food for the reception, to more imaginative solutions for making the entire event as low impact as possible, The Natural Wedding has everything couples need to make their special event naturally romantic, conscientious, and sustainable. The book shows that green weddings can be even more stylish than a traditional wedding and covers green options for all aspects of the big day: menus, the location, invitations, bridal party attire, flowers, the ceremony, the reception, gifts, the honeymoon, and beyond (since living green doesn't stop at I do).

Meet the four-legged friends who frolic, walk, and romp in New York City's biggest playground. Move over Westminster! There's a live canine show happening in Central Park seven days a week, 365 days a year. On top of the 25 million people who visit New York's iconic park each year are those with an extra two legs who utilize the 800-plus acres, be it to soak in the sun, fraternize with fellow canines, or promenade along the walkways with their well-heeled owners. Big dogs. Little dogs. Multibreeds. Photographer Fran Reisner captures all these playful creatures throughout the seasons in their furry splendor as they delight in the natural wonders of New York's biggest green lawn. There's snow-loving Lenny, an elderly Golden Retriever who was born in Austria and has traveled the world with his owners, an opera singer and his wife. Charley is a Standard Poodle and a certified Delta Dog, doing volunteer therapy at Mt. Sinai Hospital. And there's Daisy — a mixed breed with piercing blue eyes who hails from the Bronx and to whom Roberta Flack once stopped and sang Daisy Daisy — exudes cool as she relaxes on a bench. Calmly mugging for the camera, displaying panache and flair as they pose in front of Bethesda Fountain or Belvedere Castle, these urban sophisticates are all adorable prancers who make it clear that New York City is their turf.Whimsical, humorous, and genuinely endearing, The Dogs of Central Park is a unique love letter to dogs and to New York, and is a wonderful souvenir for tourists and dog lovers alike.

Located on Italy's sun-drenched southeast coast, the unique and rustic interiors of Puglia's ancient Masserie buildings speak of a historic past and are inspiring to all those who love rustic living. Surrounded by verdant vineyards and groves of olive trees, the Masserie of Puglia — fortified domestic structures of brick, stone, and concrete dating from the Middle Ages — embody a rich cultural past largely unexplored by the tourists and villa-seekers of Tuscany. Once serving as farmhouses and way stations for those traveling along the Via Appia, these buildings have been renovated to serve as private residences or boutique hotels, with their beautifully preserved interiors thoughtfully adapted and turned into a cool serenity. With striking photography by Mark Roskams, this book offers a previously unseen look into these spaces. Simultaneously austere and luxurious, the simple yet spacious rooms retain their original charm, including stone kitchen fireplaces, churchlike arched hallways, and magnificent marble floors. The rustic reds, golden yellows, and cornflower blues of classic Italy are surprising when set against the dazzlingly white backdrops of medieval stucco and stone. Richly contextualized with original essays by architect and scholar Diane Lewis, this volume will inspire interior lovers with the details of this unique and rustic architectural style.

A lavishly illustrated and definitive look at the design evolution of the racing motorcycle. The dynamic between competition and design has always fueled the evolution of racing motorcycles and inspired astonishing feats of design and engineering. This book traces the development of the sport bike, from the earliest French motorcycles to the dominance of British machinery in the 1930s, the exotic Italian motorcycles of the 1950s and 1960s, the influence of American racing in the 1970s and 1980s, and today’s Japanese superbikes. More than fifty classic motorcycles—from Harley-Davidsons to Peugeots, Velocettes, Moto Guzzis, BMWs, Kawasakis, and Ducatis—are presented chronologically illustrated with stunning studio photographs that present the machines as works of art and wonders of design in themselves, accompanied by rare and beautiful archival images that place the subjects in the contexts of classic races, rallies, and motorcycle shows, and accompanied by essays revealing the legends behind the machines. Some of the championship motorcycles featured include the 1902 Manon, the 1922 Harley Davidson 8-valve, the 1935 Terrot 500, the 1948 AJS Porcupine, the 1954 Moto Guzzi V8, the 1965 Honda GP 250, The 1976 Suzuki RK67, the 1986 Cagiva GP, and the 1990 Ducati Supermono.

A highly detailed look at the English country house interior, offering unprecedented access to England's finest rooms. In this splendid book, renowned historian Jeremy Musson explores the interiors and decoration of the great country houses of England, offering a brilliantly detailed presentation of the epitome of style in each period of the country house, including the great Jacobean manor house, the Georgian mansion, and the Gothic Revival castle. For the first time, houses known worldwide for their exquisite architecture and decoration — including Wilton, Chatsworth, and Castle Howard — are seen in unprecedented detail. With intimate views of fabric, gilding, carving, and furnishings, the book will be a source of inspiration to interior designers, architects, and home owners, and a must-have for anglophiles and historic house enthusiasts.

As one of today's most exciting artists, Kenny Scharf rose to prominence in the New York art scene in the '80s as part of a dynamic and influential group of artists that included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He has since returned to California, but he has retained the playful Pop aesthetic for which he is internationally renowned. This complete new volume covers Scharf's illustrious career and his experiences and activities in the downtown art scene. His work is instantly recognizable, with idiosyncratic cartoon creatures popping up in the oddest of places: in paintings, on functional objects, or piled up on top of each other to form huge totem-poles. Richard Marshall helps navigate the reader across the decades of Scharf's career. Carlo McCormick's essay focuses on Scharf's fanciful customized cars and installations. Ann Magnuson reminisces about Scharf's happenings in the East Village and the club scene.

The most comprehensive monograph on Turner Prize-nominated artist Peter Doig. In every generation of artists, there are a few-or perhaps just one-who propose a new set of questions and alter the way we understand art. Peter Doig is such an artist. While stories of painting's demise in the early 1990s deemed painters and their work quaintly anachronistic, Doig-looking ahead as much as back for inspiration-forged a new painterly language: an ironic mix of Romanticism and post-impressionism to create haunting and sometimes dreamlike landscape vistas. In this lavish new volume devoted to his entire career-which includes paintings, drawings, and reference material, such as found photographs-art historians Richard Shiff and Catherine Lampert mine the artist's rich and varied work. Doig's landscapes have been inspired by the many places the artist has lived-England, Canada, Trinidad. So, too, does memory, or the idea of memory, inform much of his production. This handsome slipcased volume is designed in close collaboration with the artist, with Doig specially creating the cover and various elements of the interior. Every facet of the painter's singular vision is explored, from his earliest paintings of the early 1990s to the most recent series of works. Published in association with Michael Werner Gallery.

An extraordinary private collection of watercolors and drawings by Andrew Wyeth depicting the subjects memorialized in his legendary painting Christina's World, one of the best-known works of American art. This book presents rarely seen watercolors and drawings Andrew Wyeth made of his friend Christina Olson, her brother Alvaro, and the weathered Maine farmstead where they lived. It features moving portraits and serene interior and exterior views of the house and the surrounding land, now memorialized in Wyeth's 1948 tempera painting Christina's World, one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art and now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Some forty-five works from the collection of the Marunuma Art Park in Japan, rarely shown before in the United States, are accompanied by works from the Farnsworth as well as by historical photographs of Wyeth, the Olsons, and the house. Otoyo Nakamura writes about the history of this collection of Wyeth works, and Michael Komanecky addresses the place of the Olson farm in Wyeth's career over three decades, and how Christina's World and the Olson House have inspired pilgrimages for fans of Wyeth's work. Despite its isolated location and seasonal schedule, Olson House draws thousands of visitors each year from around the world. The Olson House, acquired by the Farnsworth Art Museum in 1991, has been recommended for National Landmark status.

A catalogue of new work by American artist John Currin, one of the world's foremost figurative painters. John Currin's work draws upon a broad range of cultural influences that include Renaissance oil paintings, 1950s women's magazine advertisements, and contemporary politics. Labeled as mannerist, caricaturist, radical conservative, or satirist, Currin continues to confound expectations and evade categorization. While his virtuosic technique is indebted to the history of classical painting, the images engage startlingly contemporary ideas about the representation of the human figure. Currin paints challengingly perverse images of female subjects, from lusty doe-eyed nymphs to more ethereal feminine prototypes. With his uncanny ability to locate the point at which the beautiful and the grotesque are in perfect balance, he produces subversive portraits of idiosyncratic women in conventional settings. This much-anticipated volume comes four years after the definitive John Currin, and it features an interview with the artist by Angus Cook and six short-fiction essays by Wells Tower.

Evero che gli americani impazziscono per il ghiaccio, pretendono le mance facoltative, praticano la religione dello sconto e il culto delle poltrone reclinabili? Beppe Severgnini ci porta in viaggio negli Usa tra domande (perche non abbassano I'aria condizionata?) e risposte (perche gli piace cosi), descriven-do le molte sorprese della vita quotidiana, perche I'America vera si scopre solo attraverso i dettagli: le scaramucce con un idraulico di nome Marx; la terribile potenza dei telefoni e dei bambini, veri padroni del paese; le fallimentari escursioni nello shopping elettronico e le battaglie per (non) ottenere una carta di credito. Ironico, intelligente e divertente, Un italiano in America e frutto di una lunga inesperienza, perche, ammettiamolo, crediamo di sapere tutto ma in realta siamo impreparati. Allora pronti a cominciare?

Scritto nel 1897, Zio Vania è uno dei capolavori assoluti del teatro cechoviano. Nei quattro atti si intrecciano le monotone conversazioni e le banalissime vicende di un gruppetto di personaggi. La ricostruzione minuziosa di atmosfere sospese e vagamente inquietanti, l'indifferenza abulica dei personaggi intorno agli eventi, l'indefinito senso di attesa di una catastrofe incombente rendono questo testo una geniale anticipazione della drammaturgia novecentesca.

«The first book on the artist collective known for their raucous multimedia installations. Founded by artist Eli Sudbrack, assume vivid astro focus has been dazzling the art world since 1994 with its exuberant, visually spectacular room-size installations. Created out of recycled and appropriated imagery from a wide range of sources—such as unicorn tapestries, children’s stickers, pages from gay porn magazines, album covers, Buddhist thangka paintings, and street graffiti, to name a few—the finished works can feel like a cross between a ’70s disco, Brazilian Carnival, and a psychedelic version of Andy Warhol’s Factory. This volume, their first, will include many of the elements featured in their installations, which are known for the many «give-aways» the artists provide the visitors: a blow-in poster, postcard and sticker pages, and a pop-up, all designed by avaf.»

One of the greatest masters of the illustrated book, Antoine de Saint Exupéry has been well-known for his artistic and literary talents ever since the publication of The Little Prince in 1943. It is less well known that from childhood he decorated his letters, notebooks, journals, and diaries (and later his manuscripts) with small drawings, caricatures, cartoons, and visual puzzles, very few of which have ever been published. Now this remarkable anthology invites the reader to rediscover the life and work of one of the twentieth century’s most important writers. Facsimiles of his personal writings and of his corrections to original manuscripts are reproduced along with examples of the drawings, cartoons, and sketches with which he decorated almost every scrap of his personal writings.

«Chi è, da dove viene e da cosa è fuggita Sally, la bella ragazza che di notte lavora come guardarobiera all'Irish Coffee, un locale trendy alla periferia di Roma, e di giorno si «seppellisce» in uno sperduto monolocale poco distante? A sei anni dall'assunzione neppure i proprietari Anna e Alberto Vasile, i suoi soli amici, sono riusciti a penetrare il muro che Sally ha eretto tra sé, il passato e la vita stessa. Sarà Oliviero Belli, un ricco industriale della moda, attratto e incuriosito da lei, ad aprire la prima breccia: non è il principe azzurro che le dischiude la favola, ma un trentacinquenne divorziato da una donna distruttiva e alle prese con un figlio adolescente che lo respinge, lo detesta e lo provoca sino a rischiare la morte per overdose. Il drammatico segreto di Sally comincia a emergere lentamente, come in un thriller, via via che il rapporto con Oliviero si consolida diventando un amore appassionato e profondo. Discendendo nell'inferno di lui...»

Perché la maggioranza degli italiani ha appoggiato e/o sopportato Silvio Berlusconi per tanti anni? Non ne vede gli appetiti, i limiti e i metodi? Risposta: li vede eccome. (Anche) per questo, spiegare il personaggio ai connazionali è una perdita di tempo. Ciascuno di noi ha un'idea, raffinata in anni di indulgenza o idiosincrasia, e non la cambierà. Ogni italiano si ritiene depositario dell'interpretazione autentica e discuterla è inutile. Utile è invece provare a spiegare Berlusconi ai posteri: un giorno si chiederanno cosa è successo in Italia. Nella pancia della nazione si muovono tanti elementi: umanità e opportunismo, cautela e astuzia, distrazione e confusione, fantasia e ottimismo. Chi sa interpretarli e utilizzarli può andare lontano. Anzi: c'è già andato. Questo libro è un viaggio. La guida è acuta e incisiva, generosa di notizie, dettagli e informazioni, pronta a far discutere destra e sinistra. Un Severgnini in gran forma, che non rinuncia alla consueta ironia su se stesso e gli altri, ma deciso a farci riflettere sulle nostre scelte e sul cammino che tracciamo per i nostri figli.

Gatsby, giovane ambizioso, che ha saputo conquistare con tutti i mezzi prestigio, ricchezza e rispettabilità, vuol far rivivere l'amore fiorito un tempo tra lui e Daisy. Ma non solo non riuscirà a strappare a donna amata al suo facoltoso marito, pur mettendo in campo tutto il peso del suo fascino e del suo potere, ma finirà addirittura col diventarne vittima innocente. Gatsby è un personaggio circondato da un'aura di seduzione e di mistero, il cui arricchimento troppo veloce ricorda le parabole effimere dei giovani banchieri d'affari nella New York del terzo millennio. Le pagine di Fitzgerald, tese tra l'amore e l'odio nei confronti di quella società, ne descrivono i fasti e ne colgono i decadimento morale.

«A plethora of practical ideas for home improvement. Using interiors created by designers and decorators from all over the world, and incorporating the latest in furniture and object design, this book is a treasure trove of ideas for decorating the home, whether a house in the woods, an airy urban loft, or a post-collegiate studio. Aimed at a general audience, it offers hundreds of useful ideas, tips, suggestions, advice, and solutions for anyone interested in decorating a first-time home or remodeling an existing space. The book begins with an overview of space, lighting, color, and furniture and continues with a thorough review of the options available when considering flooring, wall coverings, window treatments, color schemes, incorporating furniture, and lighting for every room of the home. «Do and do not» tips are sprinkled throughout, and this sourcebook of inspirational ideas and themes addresses even the toughest design challenges on the road to transforming any space, big or small. Beautiful photographs, drawings, and informative sidebars make this volume a one-stop basic resource for interior design.»

A follow-up to the successful series Rooms to Inspire, this inspirational design guide presents a selection of novel urban interiors by the leading interior designers of our time. City living evokes cosmopolitan sophistication and artistic expression. This presentation of trend-setting ways to design residences by leading tastemakers such as Muriel Brandolini, Peter Dunham, Jonathan Adler, and Mary McDonald, shows an impressive mix of styles-from eclectic and exotic to neo-traditional. The variety of beautifully photographed dwellings-from townhouses and apartments to lofts in such vibrant locales as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Paris, London, and Jakarta-were chosen for their fresh design perspectives. This inspiring medley ranges from Carolina Irvingrs's Upper East Sidechic New York apartment with custom molding influenced by Gothic architecture to Robert Couturierrs's elegant residence with curved walls, decorated by Paulin Paris. Universal design issues fundamental to living quarters are addressed, including color and comfort, as well as innovative approaches to tight spaces such as kitchens and bathrooms. Sections devoted to bookshelves, home entertaining, and tabletop display, along with a useful resource list, complete this guide to city style. For professionals and novices alike, City Rooms encourages us to decorate our urban living spaces with panache.

In her first book, award-winning interior designer Mary McDonald inspires readers to combine old-fashioned elegance with the joy of fearless, exuberant decorating. Consistently ranked one of House Beautiful's top 100 designers, L.A. — based Mary McDonald's gorgeous, feminine interiors have graced the cover of every major design magazine. Dubbed the decorating daredevil by Domino magazine, McDonald began her career as a milliner and retains a sense of couture chic that inspires the look of her interiors, which are simultaneously timeless and of the moment. Her ability to combine bold patterns, chinoiserie, and Indian influences with contemporary lines and an impeccable sense of color has made her one of the most sought-after interior designers working today. Now in her first book, as vibrant and whimsical as Mary and her work, McDonald explores the themes that inform her stylish yet playful sensibility. From her own refurbishment of Buster Keaton's legendary villa to a stunning range of client projects, McDonald carefully details the colors, fabrics, and accessories she uses to seamlessly pull each look together. Exquisitely photographed, this vivid book is a must for anyone who loves sophisticated, ravishing interiors.

A unique insight into one of the most exciting fashion designers working today, revealing the imagination fueling his exuberant creations. Celebrated for his deluxe bohemian chic, Matthew Williamson's vivacious, color-drenched creations bedecked with exquisite embroidery and beading have made him a favorite with the fashion pack. This stunning volume explores Williamson's career, from his acclaimed first collection in 1997 to his current status as a multimillion-dollar brand with stores in London and New York and an international celebrity clientele. Lavishly illustrated, this monograph celebrates Williamson's trademark use of vibrant color and pattern. Editorial images highlighting his collections and iconic pieces, sumptuous photography of his textile designs, and celebrity fashion shoots are shown alongside mood boards, sketches, and scrapbooks revealing his influences and inspirations. With a text by fashion historian Colin McDowell providing historical and cultural context, this book is a must for anyone interested in fashion design and contemporary fashion culture.