In 2008, Thomas "TomSka" Ridgewell uploaded a short animated film to YouTube; he called it asdfmovie. It has since been viewed more than 50 million times and has spawned eight sequels and many, many dedicated fans. Now, for the first time, the weird and wonderful world of asdf has exploded onto the page in ART IS DEAD, a book conceived and written by Tom and illustrated by Matt Ley. Featuring much-loved characters from the films, as well as brand-new, never-before-seen comics and bonus material - including the asdf origin story and Tom's own sketches - ART IS DEAD is a comic book like no other. Expect trains, potatoes, suicidal muffins and jokes about "death, destruction and things talking that don't normally talk", all wrapped up in book so awkwardly shaped it will make your shelves look weird. (Sorry about that.)

The Making of the American Creative Class narrates the history of workers in New York's publishing, advertising, design, and broadcasting industries and their efforts to improve their working conditions, set against the backdrop of the economic dislocations of twentieth-century capitalism.

With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados’s stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City. Isa Epley, all of twenty-one years old, is already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York with her newly blond best friend looking for adventure. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them. By day, the girls sell clothes on a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave between Brooklyn, the Upper East Side, and the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Resources run ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert social capital into something more lasting than precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill. Happy Hour is a novel about getting by and having fun in a system that wants you to do neither.

The "Art of the Dead" showcases the vibrant, charismatic poster art that emerged from the streets of San Francisco in 1964 and 1966. It traces the cultural, political, and historical influences of posters as art back to Japanese wood blocks through Bell Epoque, on to the Beatniks, the Free Speech Movement, and the Acid Tests. Featuring interviews and profiles of the key artists, including Rick Griffin, Stanley "Mouse" Miller, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson, and Victor Moscoso. The book uses Grateful Dead as the vehicle to tell the story of poster art as The Dead were the band that ultimately proved to be the most substantive and engaged partner for the artists and hence featured the best art of any rock 'n' roll band ever. The book will follow a chronological evolution of the art from the band's origination in 1965 through Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.

Art is Dead is an Early Works series 2nd installment. It is a very personal work that features paintings and sketches that deal with the subways of New York City. From depictions of fellow passengers to fallen straphangers, Art is Dead unfolds using station names mingled with descriptions of the pieces themselves, and hidden throughout are explanations of painting through storytelling. I dedicate this book to all the brave people of the world.

In 'Who is Changed and Who is Dead', Ahndraya Parlato uses the life-changing events of her mother's suicide and the birth of her children as the genesis for an expansive project exploring the contradictory and complex conditions of motherhood. The resulting image-text book threads the political and historical with the deeply personal, bringing together narratives from across genres and generations to create a nuanced and compelling body of work. Interwoven with her own writings are still lives, sculptures, photograms made from her mother's ashes, and reenactments of 19th century "hidden mother" images. Included amongst these are Parlato's photographs of her children, who are shown with both a fidelity to maternal intimacy and a more distanced contemplation. Within this complexity Parlato strives to find clarity around the fundamental questions of parenthood, mortality, and gender. Are her contemporary fears any different than the fears felt by mothers throughout history? Which anxieties are specific to having female children? And how is motherhood itself a construction?

A deeply researched warning about how the digital economy threatens artists' lives and work—the music, writing, and visual art that sustain our souls and societies—from an award-winning essayist and critic There are two stories you hear about earning a living as an artist in the digital age. One comes from Silicon Valley. There's never been a better time to be an artist, it goes. If you've got a laptop, you've got a recording studio. If you've got an iPhone, you've got a movie camera. And if production is cheap, distribution is free: it's called the Internet. Everyone's an artist; just tap your creativity and put your stuff out there. The other comes from artists themselves. Sure, it goes, you can put your stuff out there, but who's going to pay you for it? Everyone is not an artist. Making art takes years of dedication, and that requires a means of support. If things don't change, a lot of art will cease to be sustainable. So which account is true? Since people are still making a living as artists today, how are they managing to do it? William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of the arts and of contemporary culture, set out to answer those questions. Based on interviews with artists of all kinds, The Death of the Artist argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation. If artists were artisans in the Renaissance, bohemians in the nineteenth century, and professionals in the twentieth, a new paradigm is emerging in the digital age, one that is changing our fundamental ideas about the nature of art and the role of the artist in society.