A handsome black top hat changes the life of a penniless one-legged soldier.

In the tradition of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, Rodney Smith has a signature, timeless style. This dazzling collection, now in paperback and with a framable print, celebrates 50 years of Smith's photography. Rodney Smith bridges the gap between commercial photography and art, between the real world we live in and the artist's world of the imagination. His images--silhouettes and skylines, a man in a hat, elegant women in lush gardens--are by now familiar to us. Rodney Smith Photographs presents the man behind the photographs. A selection of pictures spanning four decades, organized thematically, stand alongside personal reflections drawn from Smith's popular blog. It reveals that the photographer's signature style is the product of his unusual background, his unique perspective, and his many years of self-analysis: in short, Smith's photographs are also pictures of their creator.

Revised to include presidential hats, new celebrity hats, and a fully updated resource listing of custom hatters. The Cowboy Hat Book features an impressive array of cowboy hats, showcasing the wide variety of styles, colors, and fabrics used to create the cowboy hat, now a symbol of America and western culture that is recognized all over the world. Beginning with a brief history of the cowboy hat, the authors go on to explain the building of the perfect hat, its care and feeding, hat etiquette, hat hair, and more. Beautiful photos of real cowboys and movie cowboys sporting their trademark hats illustrate how creases, brims, shapes, and trims are unique to the individual who wears each hat. The Cowboy Hat Book celebrates the history and importance of this unique piece of clothing that hasn't fundamentally changed in more than 100 years. Ritch Rand's family has been making handcrafted hats for over twenty years. His hats have rested on dozen's of famous heads-from presidents to kings and heads of state to movie stars. He lives in Billings, Montana. William Reynolds is president and CEO of the marketing, PR, and advertising agency Banning Company, Inc. The company has a special division that services the western and equine industries. He lives in Malibu, California.

Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A significant reason racism endures is because it is structural: it's embedded in culture and in institutions. One of the places that racism hides-and thus perhaps the best place to oppose it-is books for young people. Was the Cat in the Hat Black? presents five serious critiques of the history and current state of children's literature tempestuous relationship with both implicit and explicit forms of racism. The book fearlessly examines topics both vivid-such as The Cat in the Hat's roots in blackface minstrelsy-and more opaque, like how the children's book industry can perpetuate structural racism via whitewashed covers even while making efforts to increase diversity. Rooted in research yet written with a lively, crackling touch, Nel delves into years of literary criticism and recent sociological data in order to show a better way forward. Though much of what is proposed here could be endlessly argued, the knowledge that what we learn in childhood imparts both subtle and explicit lessons about whose lives matter is not debatable. The text concludes with a short and stark proposal of actions everyone-reader, author, publisher, scholar, citizen- can take to fight the biases and prejudices that infect children's literature. While Was the Cat in the Hat Black? does not assume it has all the answers to such a deeply systemic problem, its audacity should stimulate discussion and activism.

Hats are pure fun and the perfect item to cap off any costume or ensemble. The right headgear ensures complete transformation, especially on the head of an imaginative child. The Paper Hat Book offers creative families 20 fantastic paper hats, all of which can be created quickly and easily from readily accessible papers: shopping bags, newspapers, comics, recycled story books, magazines, packaging scraps, and junk mail! Artist and designer Alyn Carlson creates hats that are perfect for birthday parties, playdates, costumes, and everyday dress up. Each hat can be styled to perfectly suit the wearer by merely selecting the right paper and colors. The hat themes range from Floral Flappers to Viking Warriors, and from superheroes and pirates to beautiful butterfly hats.

Two children sitting at home on a rainy day meet the cat in the hat who shows them some tricks and games.