Fire Island's gay communities, documented in a nocturnal erotic fever-dream by Matthew Leifheit Featuring 77 color photographs, To Die Alive portrays Fire Island's world of desire and its layers of history: the Ice Palace bar's infamous underwear party; the men-only Belvedere Guesthouse; clandestine encounters in the Meat Rack; and landscapes in all seasons of the island's delicate maritime forest. The wide-ranging subjects of Matthew Leifheit's portraits reflect the intergenerational community who come to the island for refuge or employment, ranging from weekend visitors to sugar daddies to bartenders and sex workers. Tinged with sadness, the book's climax mixes feelings of pleasure with desperation and loss. As homosexuality gains mainstream acceptance, many queer Americans no longer need to go to geographic extremes like Fire Island, Provincetown, Palm Springs or Key West to express themselves. But what is the cost of assimilation? To Die Alive is both romantic and grotesque, challenging the sun-bleached history of homoerotic representation on this fragile island, which itself is under constant threat of erosion by the sea. Matthew Leifheit (born 1988) is an American photographer, magazine editor and professor born in Chicago and based in Brooklyn. A graduate of the Yale School of Art, he was formerly photo editor of Vice and is currently on faculty at Pratt Institute. Leifheit's photographic work has been exhibited internationally and is held in public collections. His photographs have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, Aperture, Time and Artforum. Leifheit is editor-in-chief of Matte Magazine, a journal of emerging photography that he has edited and published since 2010.

Photographs by Matthew Leifheit, Yale University, 2015-2017

Baltimore photographer Michael Northrup (born 1948) has been making gently humorous but decidedly jubilant color photographs of his daily life since the early 1970s. His 2004 J&L publication Beautiful Ecstasy depicted young families (Northrup's own and those of friends) partying and performing for the camera, often in each other's homes, bringing a beautifully understated formal elegance to moments of tender and chaotic everyday living. This sequel to Beautiful Ecstasy presents a further selection of previously unpublished photographs from the 1970s and 80s, all permeated with Northrup's characteristic joie de vivre. Period details in furniture and clothing vividly resurrect the textures of these bygone moments; here, we also see young couples bringing children into their chaotic worlds, freighting these scenes of small town America with a powerful atmosphere of fragility and wonder.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems. “Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works. Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award • Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

In the course of evolution, a great variety of root systems have learned to overcome the many physical, biochemical and biological problems brought about by soil. This development has made them a fascinating object of scientific study. This volume gives an overview of how roots have adapted to the soil environment and which roles they play in the soil ecosystem. The text describes the form and function of roots, their temporal and spatial distribution, and their turnover rate in various ecosystems. Subsequently, a physiological background is provided for basic functions, such as carbon acquisition, water and solute movement, and for their responses to three major abiotic stresses, i.e. hard soil structure, drought and flooding. The volume concludes with the interactions of roots with other organisms of the complex soil ecosystem, including symbiosis, competition, and the function of roots as a food source.

"This book will offer an in-depth account of the work of David Lebe, reproducing many of his important works for the first time in print. Peter Barberie's essay will examine Lebe within the context of other gay and lesbian artists working in the 1970s and 1980s, many of whom turned to photography for its erotic immediacy and confrontational possibilities. The book will present approximately 90-100 images by David Lebe, along with some 20 comparatives by other artists such as Barbara Blondeau, Zoe Leonard, and David Wojnarowicz . Lebe's work will be divided into two main sections: his photographs from the 1970s and 1980s, mostly made in Philadelphia; and his work from the 1990s and beyond"--