10 MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOKS IN AMAZON’S NEW RELEASES NOW
1. Beautiful Pigeons, By Frank Povah (Ivy Press, 2012)
The latest in the Beautiful Animals series (cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens have come before), this book is a collection of gorgeous photos of more than 40 fancy pigeon species. Who knew pigeons could be so beautiful?
2. Eames - Beautiful Details, by Eames Demetrios, Charles Eames, & Ray Eames (Ammo Books, 2012)
Beautifully packaged, this book wants to grace your coffee table. Flip through to peer into the designs and lives of two of the most iconic designers of our time.
3. Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify, & Energize Your Life, Your Home, & Your Planet, by Norma Lehmeier Hartie (Lingham Press, 2012)
Clean is beautiful. Harmonious Environment shows you how to clean up your life and your world, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Don’t be fooled by the mundane title, this book shares some great ideas, from natural cleaning products to spiritual clearings. We love the message of Part 1 (Banish the Ugly From Your Life) and the ideas in Part 2 (Bringing in the Beautiful), which helps you add more peace, joy, and health to your everyday.
4. A Collection of Life’s Beautiful Things, by Barbara Durham (Amazon, 2012)
Perhaps one of the positive things about crisis and death is that they make us appreciate life more. Better yet, they make us appreciate beauty more. Life’s Beautiful Things is a collection of beautiful things that bring the people in Barbara Durham’s life happiness. Many are simple pleasures, some are treasures that were sent by Durham’s family and friends after her brother and father were diagnosed, within days of each other, with head and neck cancer. These beautiful bits helped to distract, calm, and inspire them, as they slogged through their treatments and recovery. Yeah, some of the entries are sappy and corny, but keep an open mind and heart. You’ll find yourself reaching for this often.
5. See the World Beautiful, by Anne Menke (Glitterati, 2012)
Beyond Paris and Milan. Beyond New York and Tokyo, see incredible fashion from pockets of design genius around the globe as captured by Anne Menke’s stunning photography. Can Mongolian horsemen or Sioux teenagers inspire your closet? Just maybe. There’s plenty more in this exquisite art-book. Menke, a fashion photographer for the top mags, leveraged her location assignments by going deeper into the surrounding culture of each place she visited. From jungles, deserts, mountain tops and tiny villages, she shares local people celebrating the art and design of the clothing, shoes, jewelry, and accessories they created. You’ll want to frame each page.
6. What is Beautiful?, by Etan Boritzer, illustrated by Nancy Forrest (Veronica Lane Media Press, 2012
What is Beautiful? is a sweet little children’s book that illustrates the beauty inside us. Raising ideas in growing minds about things that make up beautiful character, such as tolerance, generosity, peacefulness, bravery, and kindness, this book offers a balance to our culture’s main focus on exterior and material beauty.
7. Ocean Fishes: Paintings of Saltwater Fish, by James Prosek (Rizzoli, 2012)
Filled with watercolor paintings of big game fish, renowned naturalist, environmentalist, painter, and fisherman, this book adds another jewel to James Prosek’s crown of beautiful fish paintings. While the cover doesn’t do it justice, the paintings inside are dripping with color, so fresh and alive, they look as the these fish are there, swimming across the pages. More than just eye-candy, this author writes about why these fish are so important and why we need to protect them to ensure their species’ survival.
8. Photographing the World: A Guide to Photographing 201 of the Worlds Most Beautiful Places on Earth, by Tom Till (Phototrip USA Publishing, 2012)
Don’t judge this book by its unassuming cover. Inside Photographing the World are images that are truly inspiring. Tom Till, one of the most published photographers in the world today, not only shares his takes on our planet’s most beautiful landscapes, but also offers insights on how you might take photos that might be just as gorgeous as his. Spanning sites on each continent, this book serves as an armchair travel companion as well.
9. Jerusalem: A Cookbook, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Timimi (Ten Speed Press, 2012)
As frequent travelers to London, we love going to Ottolenghi, where first we eat with our eyes as we enter and gaze at the long counter brimming with the most colorful, mouth-watering salads, pastries, casseroles and more cooked up by Yotam Ottolenghi. One of the most creative chefs in London, Ottolenghi, an Israeli transplant, has a knack for rustic, soulful yet delicate cuisine that grabs all of your senses. As a fast follow to his book, Plenty, published in 2011, Jerusalem celebrates the highest art of Israeli cooking, presenting recipes from the melting pot of ethnicities that call Jerusalem their home. With roots in Eastern European, Arab, Yemenite, and Ethiopian recipes, Ottolenghi gives us a modern spin, featuring bright fruits and vegetables, earthy meats and fish, and comforting baked sweets. The photos will make you hungry for more.
10. Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, by Nathan Myrhvold
Have you noticed that food has gotten a lot more beautiful over the past decade, in particular? One trend, combining scientific techniques and methodology with gastronomy, sometimes referred to as molecular gastronomy, has elevated the whole experience of food to dazzle each of our senses. British chef, Heston Blumenthal, was one of the first to experiment with what some call "geek cuisine," while Nathan Myrhvold took it to an even higher level with his cookbook series, Modernist Cuisine. These large-format books are the kind that might sit temptingly on your coffee table so you and your guests can leaf through its gleaming pages to whet appetites before dinner. The photos, most taken by Myrhvold, offer some of the most magnificent eye-candy we've ever seen. Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, the latest in the series, attempts to make the geekery more approachable for home cooks. With over 1,400 riveting photos and a genius approach to the celebration of food, whether you ever take on any of the recipes inside or not, you will drink it in and eat it up for the sheer beauty that you will find on every page.
