"Drawing Calm teaches artists and non artists how to use the work of master painters in order to inspire your own masterpiece"--

In the 2008 Wimbledon men's final, Centre Court was a stage set worthy of Shakespearean drama. Five-time champion Roger Federer was on track to take his rightful place as the most dominant player in the history of the game. Yet in the last few moments of daylight, swashbuckling Spaniard Rafael Nadal prevailed in what was, according to the author, "essentially a four-hour, forty-eight-minute infomercial for everything that is right about tennis." This...

Worringer identifies two opposing tendencies pervading the history of art from ancient times through the Enlightenment. He claims that in societies experiencing periods of anxiety and intense spirituality, such as those of ancient Egypt and the Middle Ages, artistic production tends toward a flat, crystalline "abstraction," while cultures that are oriented toward science and the physical world, like ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy, are dominated...

"After surviving fourteen years of hell in a violently abusive marriage, Rosie Daniels finally summons the courage to flee for her life. But leaving her husband, Norman, for a new city and a new start is a very daunting prospect. It's hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder, and with good reason - Norman's a police officer with the instincts of a predator, a force of relentless terror and savagery ... a man almost mythic in his monstrosity....

"William A. Noguera tells his story from early childhood: heartrending experiences growing up physically and emotionally abused by his parents. It was no more safe outside, falling victim to vicious beatings by local gangs--a target of racial discrimination for being the only Colombian in a Mexican and Black Los Angeles County suburb. To cope, Noguera escaped into his imagination. Art has always been his refuge. To protect himself from attacks he...

"From former editor-in-chief of New York magazine Adam Moss, a collection of illuminating conversations examining the very personal, rigorous, complex, and elusive work of making art. What is the work of art? In this guided tour inside the artist's head, Adam Moss traces the evolution of transcendent novels, paintings, jokes, movies, songs, and more. Weaving conversations with some of the most accomplished artists of our time together with the journal...

"As a novelist, art critic, and cultural historian, John Berger is a writer of dazzling eloquence and arresting insight whose work amounts to a subtle, powerful critique of the canons of our civilization. In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking...

"After finishing his powerful memoir The Return, Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists whom he had admired throughout his life, such as Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he has had with works...