Traces the author's Hollywood experiences, from Magnum, P.I. to his adventures among the rich and famous to his stint as a restaurateur, and his friendship with Tom Selleck

This book is a biography of Magnum, told largely in the words of its photographers. It offers a unique perspective on half a century of world history from an extraordinary group of men and women who were front line witnesses at virtually every major event in the last fifty years. Wars, famines, natural disasters, social, political and environmental crises - Magnum photographers were there. They have been acute observers of the human condition, photographing the richest people in the world, the poorest, the least known and the most celebrated, from Marilyn Monroe to Che Guevara, JFK to Nelson Mandela, Picasso to Krushchev. This is a multi-layered story. At one level, it tells how a small group of photographrs - among them Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger - came together, established and nurtured a co-operative photographic agency that has survived against all the odds to become the most famous in the world. At a secondary level, it is the richly anecdotal story of the photographers themselves, their adventures around the world and their feelings about, and reactions to, their assignments.

Ex-cop Winnie Farlowe has been retired from police work due to a back injury, and has been fighting the bottle instead of bad guys ever since. But suddenly he meets Tess Binder, a stunning, three-time divorcée from the Balboa Bay Club where wallets are fat, bikinis are skimpy, and cosmetic surgery is one sure way to a billionaire's bank account. She believes her father's suicide was actually a murder and wants Winnie to help her prove it. Death and chicanery flourish amidst ranches, mansions, and yachting parties. Publishers Weekly called it "comic and deeply moving . . . a stupendous climax . . . virtually sure to be hailed as Wambaugh's best." And the San Diego Union-Tribune said, "a profoundly serious work and in reading it I laughed my head off."

Presents more than four hundred photographs taken by the photograhers of Magnum Photos.

At their best, the pictures add to our understanding of the surface event documented and reveal something profound about the people pushing that history forward. — The Los Angeles Times Available for the first time in an accessible paperback edition, this groundbreaking book presents a remarkable selection of contact sheets and ancillary material, revealing how the most celebrated Magnum photographers capture and edit the very best shots. Addressing key questions of photographic practice, the book illuminates the creative methods, strategies, and editing processes behind some of the world’s most iconic images. Featured are 139 contact sheets from sixty- nine photographers, as well as zoom-in details, selected photographs, press cards, notebooks, and spreads from contemporary publications including Life magazine and Picture Post. Further insight into each contact sheet is provided by texts written by the photographers themselves or by experts chosen by the members’ estates. Many of the acknowledged greats of photography are featured, including Henri Cartier- Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, and Inge Morath, as well as such members of Magnum’s latest generation as Jonas Bendiksen, Alessandra Sanguinetti, and Alec Soth. The contact sheets cover over seventy years of history, from Robert Capa’s Normandy landings and the Paris riots of 1968 via Bruno Barbey, to images of Che Geuvara by René Burri, Malcolm X by Eve Arnold, and portraits of classic New Yorkers by Bruce Gilden.

The Magnum Photos archive—a collection of more than 200,000 photographs by some of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries' greatest image makers—is the most comprehensive accumulation of prints made by the distinguished photo cooperative. Consistently and with striking artistry, Magnum's photographers have done more than simply document the far reaches of the globe; they have helped shape generations' understanding of the world around them. While many of its photographs have been widely published, until now no one has examined the Magnum archive itself. In Reading Magnum, experts from several fields investigate this visual archive, now residing at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, to discover how a select, influential group of visual authors has used the camera for an ambitious project of cultural interpretation and social commentary. The chapters in Reading Magnum are devoted to themes generated by a close reading of the archive—war and conflict, portraiture, geography, cultural life, social relations, and globalization. These themes are further developed by evocative portfolios of images, which suggest something of the depth and range of the photo agency, and by tracing the trajectory of several iconic images from annotated press print to distribution to eventual publication. Volume editor Steven Hoelscher provides an overview of the Magnum enterprise, and Alison Nordström offers an appreciation of the Magnum archive as a material record of information about the making and disseminating of photographs that is being lost as images on paper are replaced by images on screen. As a whole, the book's unique reading of the Magnum archive reveals patterns of intention, aesthetic vision, and political perspective that become legible only by viewing both the physical objects and the recorded images that constitute this remarkable collection.

Award-winning photographer Matt Black traveled over 100,000 miles to chronicle the reality of today’s unseen and forgotten America. When Magnum photographer Matt Black began exploring his hometown in California’s rural Central Valley—dubbed “the other California,” where one-third of the population lives in poverty—he knew what his next project had to be. Black was inspired to create a vivid portrait of an unknown America, to photograph some of the poorest communities across the US. Traveling across forty-six states and Puerto Rico, Black visited designated “poverty areas,” places with a poverty rate above 20 percent, and found that poverty areas are so numerous that they’re never more than a two-hour’s drive apart, woven through the fabric of the country but cut off from “the land of opportunity.” American Geography is a visual record of this five-year, 100,000-mile road trip, which chronicles the vulnerable conditions faced by America’s poor. This compelling compilation of black-and-white photographs is accompanied by Black’s own travelogue—a collection of observations, overheard conversations in cafe´s and public transportation, diner menus, bus timetables, historical facts, and snippets from daily news reports. A future classic of photography, this monograph is supported by an international touring exhibition and is a must-have for anyone with an interest in witnessing the reality of an America that’s been excluded from the American Dream.