The World in Vogue: People, Parties, Places | Introduced by Hamish Bowles | Designed by Charles Churchward | Knopf | 384 pages | $75
This handsome quarto volume is a classic guilty pleasure. It is a tribute to good genes, inherited wealth, and the fluid game known as fashion. Librarians should classify it as plutocracy porn. Unabashed Marxists will find in its sumptuous pages all the indictment they need of conspicuous consumption. Aspiring fashionistas— once they recover from their shock and awe— will be left with the unsettling sense that style has a ruthless power that is easier to appreciate than achieve. And fans of Project Runway will be forced to recognize that that show's cheesy charms are as aesthetically potent as a three-day-old open can of Diet Coke.
As fashion documents go, this is the real thing. Pretty faces, striking settings, and couture may be the subjects, but the book's real heroes are the stylists who orchestrate the fantasies and the photographers who realize them. It contains an A-list of shutterbugs: Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Jonathan Becker, Toni Frissell, Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, Edward Steichen, and Annie Leibovitz. Considered as an artifact, The World in Vogue is a masterpiece of design. It would make an exquisite gift for nobs, snobs, or voyeurs.
— Peter Kadzis
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- Coffeenomics
In 50 states and 49 countries, the experience is the same: a placid sense of place, air suffused with the rich aromatics of fresh-brewed espresso. Customers dollop cream and sprinkle brown sugar into their drinks. Behind the counter, green-clad baristas grind beans and steam milk, smiling as they take orders in a made-up language.
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There are — and have always been — two Günter Grasses. There's the Grass who was born in Danzig and the Grass who was born in Gdansk.
- 2009: The year in books
Here, listed alphabetically by author, are 10 of the best books the Phoenix reviewed in 2009.
- Interview: Raj Patel
"The opposite of consumption is not thrift but generosity; if you look at happiness studies, we are happiest when we give things away rather than when we accumulate or when we don't spend."
- Creating a legend
The soldiers of the 20th Maine Regiment marched quickly into the night, moving west from Hanover toward Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1863.
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If every last allegation that Church of Scientology (CoS) defector Nancy Many charges in My Billion Year Contract is true, then her book should inspire several FBI raids and a Lifetime mini-series to rival any Charles Manson documentary.
- Walk hard
In Joshua Ferris's unsparing second novel, Tim Farnsworth doesn't know why he walks, but nothing but exhaustion can stop him.
- Heart keeps beating
Storytelling is largely about character, and writer Thomas Cobb came up with a doozy when he conceived Bad Blake.
- Power of place
I'd arranged the trip (Dogtown is about an hour and a half south of Portland) because I was planning to write about Elyssa East's new book, Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town.
- Interview: Ozzy Osbourne
Long before he bit the heads off bats and doves, Ozzy Osbourne worked in a cheerless abattoir in the hardscrabble Aston section of Birmingham, England, where for 18 months he held such titles as "cow killer," "tripe hanger," "hoof puller," and "pig stunner."
- A memoir, a tour, and a state coming to grips with slavery
The latest turn in Rhode Island's complicated dialogue with its slaveholding past: a yearlong project encouraging locals to read a memoir by the son of a freed slave.
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