Books
In her pathbreaking books Innovators in Sculpture and Innovators in Painting, Dianne Durante takes readers on a unique journey, a highly essentialized analysis of the major innovations throughout Western art. READ MORE
Fossil Future by energy expert Alex Epstein is required reading for anyone open to an incredibly more informed perspective of energy and related environmental issues than is standard today.
While Leonardo da Vinci was refining the Mona Lisa, he was also involved in dissecting human cadavers in a hospital’s morgue. Among his anatomical interests were the muscles that move the lips. At about the same time he discovered that the upper lip doesn’t pucker alone, he was perfecting what would become the most notable feature of the most recognizable painting in history: Mona Lisa’s smile. READ MORE
Though few know it today, Roger Williams preceded Thomas Jefferson in calling for a “wall of separation” between church and state, and he founded Rhode Island on freedom of conscience—even for atheists. READ MORE
Many people assume that Central Park, unlike the city of steel and concrete surrounding it, is a stretch of Manhattan that’s been left untouched by developers. In fact, the park is virtually as man-made a development as the neighboring skyscrapers. Sara Cedar Miller highlights this fact in her informative and eye-catching book Seeing Central Park: The Official Guide to the World’s Greatest Urban Park. READ MORE
New York New York
by Richard Berenholtz
A photograph Richard Berenholtz took on Fifth Avenue serves as a microcosm of his remarkable book New York New York. The worm’s-eye image features the sculpture of Atlas at Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral across the street, and the neighboring Olympic Tower (p. 51)—that is, a widely recognized work of art and a prominent church alongside a relatively inconspicuous Manhattan skyscraper. READ MORE
David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers is an inspiring portrait of the siblings’ pursuit of the knowledge, trial-and-error experimentation and independence that led them to become the first to create and, just as important, learn how to fly an engine-powered airplane. READ MORE
Consider how Sheeler, an obituary writer for the Denver Post and Boulder Planet newspapers during the 1990s, wrote “After 624 Deaths, One More,” his obit for Carolyn Jaffe. READ MORE
Ayaan Hirsi Ali gained international recognition in 2004 after she and Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh made Submission, a documentary about the brutal oppression of women under Islamic law. READ MORE
“Honey, we’re going to start to win. The guy talked about perfection!”—Bart Starr phoned to tell his wife about the new coach, Vince Lombardi, on the first day of quarterback camp in 1959. READ MORE
Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs presents Apple’s creator as a passionately driven producer that demanded excellence, both of him and others, and who was beset by intense emotionalist tendencies. READ MORE
When published in 2003, Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag: A History was touted as the most authoritative, comprehensive book on the Soviet labor camps. READ MORE
Dianne Durante’s “Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan” is a rarity: a book that evaluates art from Ayn Rand’s philosophy of aesthetics — the principles of which she peppers throughout — that highlights Manhattan’s relatively unexplored outdoor sculptures-statues, and that illustrates why they are worthy of such study. READ MORE
Try to imagine Dee's Nursery as a lone greenhouse, trolley tracks running along Woods Avenue, or polo players riding their horses on an open field behind Salamander Firehouse on Foxhurst Road. READ MORE
Movies
Ordinary People
Robert Redford’s Ordinary People portrays a teenager wrestling with—and overcoming—the complexities of unearned guilt while his mother fails to resolve her own psychological problems. As mental health issues abound in America and beyond, this Academy Award-winning film remains as relevant today as it was when released forty years ago. READ MORE
The Diplomat
The Diplomat, an ESPN documentary about two-time Olympic champion figure skater Katarina Witt of East Germany (the former German Democratic Republic, or GDR), is released to video February 18. The film serves as a reminder—or a revelation—of the crushing grip communist dictatorships held on the people who “lived” under them. READ MORE
Exhibits
Shortly after his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was completed in 1923, Frank Lloyd Wright published a book with photographs and plans of the lodge. Though it was demolished in 1963, the building has made a resurgence as the centerpiece for a major exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. READ MORE
(Women held in prison without charges in Leesburg, Georgia, in 1963. (© Danny Lyon, New York & Magnum Photos, New York / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.)
A photo in the exhibit Danny Lyon: Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement at Hofstra Museum perfectly captures the best element of that cause. READ MORE