Published to accompany the 1994 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, this book constitutes the most extensive survey of modern illustrated books to be offered in many years. Work by artists from Pierre Bonnard to Barbara Kruger and writers from Guillaume Apollinarie to Susan Sontag. An importnt reference for collectors and connoisseurs. Includes notable works by Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

On Diary is the second collection in English of the groundbreaking and profoundly influential work of one of the best-known and provocative theorists of autobiography and diary. Ranging from the diary’s historical origins to its pervasive presence on the Internet, from the spiritual journey of the sixteenth century to the diary of Anne Frank, and from the materials and methods of diary writing to the question of how diaries end, these essays display Philippe Lejeune’s expertise, eloquence, passion, and humor as a commentator on the functions, practices, and significance of keeping or reading a diary. Lejeune is a leading European critic and theorist of diary and autobiography. His landmark essay, "The Autobiographical Pact," has shaped life writing studies for more than thirty years, and his many books and essays have repeatedly opened up new vistas for scholarship. As Michael Riffaterre notes, "Lejeune’s work on autobiography is the most original, powerful, effective approach to a difficult subject. . . . His style is very personal, lively. It grabs the reader as scholarship rarely does. Lejeune’s erudition and methodology are impeccable." Two substantial introductory essays by Jeremy Popkin and Julie Rak place Lejeune’s work within its critical and theoretical traditions and comment on his central importance within the fields of life writing, literary genetic studies, and cultural studies.

This book argues for a theory of mobile mapping, a situated and spatial approach towards researching how everyday digital mobile media practices are bound up in global systems of knowledge and power. Drawing from literature in media studies and geography -- and the work of Michel Foucault and Doreen Massey -- it examines how geographical and historical material, social, and cultural conditions are embedded in the way in which contemporary (digital) cartographies are read, deployed, and engaged. This is explored through seventeen walking interviews in Hong Kong and Sydney, as potent discourses like cartographic reason continue to transform and weave through the world in ways that haunt mobile mapping and bring old conflicts into new media. In doing so, Mobile Mapping offers an interdisciplinary rethinking about how multiple translations of spatial knowledges between rational digital epistemologies and tacit ways of understanding space and experience might be conceptualized and researched.

"The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures," begins Paul Johnson's remarkable new American history. "No other national story holds such tremendous lessons, for the American people themselves and for the rest of mankind." Johnson's history is a reinterpretation of American history from the first settlements to the Clinton administration. It covers every aspect of U.S. history--politics; business and economics; art, literature and science; society and customs; complex traditions and religious beliefs. The story is told in terms of the men and women who shaped and led the nation and the ordinary people who collectively created its unique character. Wherever possible, letters, diaries, and recorded conversations are used to ensure a sense of actuality. "The book has new and often trenchant things to say about every aspect and period of America's past," says Johnson, "and I do not seek, as some historians do, to conceal my opinions." Johnson's history presents John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Cotton Mather, Franklin, Tom Paine, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison from a fresh perspective. It emphasizes the role of religion in American history and how early America was linked to England's history and culture and includes incisive portraits of Andrew Jackson, Chief Justice Marshall, Clay, Lincoln, and Jefferson Davis. Johnson shows how Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt ushered in the age of big business and industry and how Woodrow Wilson revolutionized the government's role. He offers new views of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover and of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and his role as commander in chief during World War II. An examination of the unforeseen greatness of Harry Truman and reassessments of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush follow. "Compulsively readable," said Foreign Affairs of Johnson's unique narrative skills and sharp profiles of people. This is an in-depth portrait of a great people, from their fragile origins through their struggles for independence and nationhood, their heroic efforts and sacrifices to deal with the `organic sin' of slavery and the preservation of the Union to its explosive economic growth and emergence as a world power and its sole superpower. Johnson discusses such contemporary topics as the politics of racism, education, Vietnam, the power of the press, political correctness, the growth of litigation, and the rising influence of women. He sees Americans as a problem-solving people and the story of America as "essentially one of difficulties being overcome by intelligence and skill, by faith and strength of purpose, by courage and persistence...Looking back on its past, and forward to its future, the auguries are that it will not disappoint humanity." This challenging narrative and interpretation of American history by the author of many distinguished historical works is sometimes controversial and always provocative. Johnson's views of individuals, events, themes, and issues are original, critical, and admiring, for he is, above all, a strong believer in the history and the destiny of the American people.

The Mass Ornament today remains a refreshing tribute to popular culture, and its impressively interdisciplinary writings continue to shed light not only on Kracauer's later work but also on the ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and, not least, the exigencies of intellectual exile.