Book recommendations

"How to Read Buddhist Art" assembles fifty-four masterpieces from The Met collection to explore how images of the Buddha crossed linguistic and cultural barriers, and how they took on different (yet remarkably consistent) characteristics in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Himalayas, China, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

"JAY-Z: Made in America" is the fruit of Michael Eric Dyson's decade of teaching the work of one of the greatest poets this nation has produced. This book wrestles with the biggest themes of JAY-Z's career, including hustling -- the attempt to make a way in the world by one's wits, either legally or in the underground economy.

Desmond Morris draws us into an absorbing story of art detection, tracing the roots of a number of gestures that have baffled and intrigued the art world for years. From prehistoric figurines, Roman artifacts and Renaissance frescoes to contemporary art and graffiti, "Postures: Body Language in Art" unlocks new ways of looking at art.

Annie Leibovitz, our most celebrated living photographer, explains how her pictures are made. Leibovitz addresses young photographers and readers interested in what photographers do, but any reader interested in contemporary history will be fascinated by her account of one of the richest bodies of work in the photographic canon.

With over 500 images and 13 specially commissioned 3-D artworks identifying key structural and aesthetic features, this is a visual tour covering more than 350 of the world's greatest buildings of architectural styles.

The passage from Imperial Rome to the era of late antiquity, when the Roman Empire underwent a religious conversion to Christianity, saw some of the most significant and innovative developments in Western culture. This stimulating book investigates the role of the visual arts, the great diversity of paintings, statues, luxury arts, and masonry, as both reflections and agents of those changes.

Throughout history, artist pigments have been made from deadly metals, poisonous minerals, urine, cow dung, and even crushed insects. From grinding down beetles and burning animal bones to alchemy and serendipity, "Chromatopia" reveals the origin stories of over 50 of history's most extraordinary pigments.

From 1976 until his death in 1987, Andy Warhol was never without his camera. He snapped photos at discos, dinner parties, flea markets, and wrestling matches. In a way, Warhol's daily photography practice anticipated our current smart phone habits -- our need to record our friends, our families, and our food. Warhol printed only about 17 percent of the 130,000 exposures he left on contact sheets. In 2014, Stanford's Cantor Center for the Arts acquired the 3,600 contact sheets from the Warhol Foundation. This book examines and documents for the first time these contact sheets and photographs -- Warhol's final body of work.

In "Future Sounds", David Stubbs charts the evolution of electronic music from the earliest mechanical experiments in the late nineteenth century to the pre-First World War inventions of the Futurist Luigi Russolo. Stubbs takes us through the musique concrète of radical composers such as Edgard Varèse, Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, to the gradual absorption of electronic instrumentation into the mainstream.

Today, powerful and low-cost digital technology makes it relatively easy to alter digital images, and the resulting fakes are difficult to detect. The field of photo forensics restores some trust to photography. In this book, Henry Farid describes techniques that can be used to authenticate photos.

"Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art" offers an overview of the life, work, and legacy of this singular artist, allowing readers to trace the interconnected aspects of his personal story and artistic trajectory.