Designers are great white sharks, and we roam the waters ourselves. We often pretend to like and admire each other, but sometimes we don't even bother to fake it. The fashion industry is as hardworking, incestuous, and political as any other, and it's virtually impossible, given the size of designers' egos, to sincerely wish someone else well, because behind every false tribute is 'It should have been me.'
So writes Joseph Abboud, who fell in love with style at five. There in the dark of the movie house, he wasn't just some Lebanese kid with a babysitter. He was the hero, in tweeds and pocket squares. That's where he learned that clothes represented a better life—a life he wanted, and would grab, for himself. From his blue-collar childhood in Boston's South End to his spread-collar success as one of America's top designers, he has forged a remarkable path through the unglamorous business of making people look glamorous.
He transformed American menswear by replacing the traditional stiff-shouldered silhouette with a grown-up European sensuality. He was the first designer to win the coveted CFDA award as Best Menswear Designer two years in a row and the first designer to throw out the opening pitch at Fenway Park. He's been jilted by Naomi Campbell (who didn't show up on the runway for his first women's fashion show) and questioned by the FBI (who did show up in his office right after September 11 because he fit the profile). He's soared and sunk more than a few times—and lived to tell the tales.
Threads is his off-the-record take on fashion, from the inside out. With breezy irreverence, he looks at guys and taste, divas and deviousness, fabric and texture, and all those ties. He takes us to the luxe bastion of Louis Boston, where he came of age and learned the trade, and to the seductive domain of Polo Ralph Lauren, where he became associate director of menswear design. He reveals the mystique of department-store politics, what's what at the sample sale, and who copies whom. He explains the process of making great clothes, from conception and sketch to manufacturing and marketing.
Whether he's traveling by daredevil horse, plunging plane, Paris Métro, or cross-country limo, Abboud is an illuminating guide to a complex world.

Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High-Stakes World of Fashion

Arts & Photography

Abboud, Joseph

Stern, Ellen

Graphic Design

Harper

Humor & Entertainment

Harper-perennial

I Saw a Bullfrog

Everyone knows what a bullfrog looks like . . . and a catfish. Don’t they? What if these creatures looked just like their names–half one animal and half another? Here’s an imaginary menagerie–from the cowbird to the zebra fish–richly illustrated in full color and with stunning detail. Each animal is introduced by a poem that speculates about what such a curiously named creature might be like. Also included is a glossary of facts about the real animals that inspired the author to create the imaginary ones.

Children's Books

Animals

Random House Books for Young Readers

Everyone knows what a bullfrog looks like . . . and a catfish. Don’t they? What if these creatures looked just like their names–half one animal and half another? Here’s an imaginary menagerie–from the cowbird to the zebra fish–richly illustrated in full color and with stunning detail. Each animal is introduced by a poem that speculates about what such a curiously named creature might be like. Also included is a glossary of facts about the real animals that inspired the author to create the imaginary ones. From the Hardcover edition.

Two hundred gourmet recipes call for herbs, spices, and imagination in creating dishes that are nutritious, healthful, and without cholesterol

The Good Heart Diet Cookbook

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Michaels, Jonathan

Special Diet

WARNER BOOKS

Once Upon a Telephone

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Random House Value Publishing

Say it with a kiss! This lovely keepsake box is filled with charming postcards featuring reproductions of vintage and Victorian images of all sorts of smooches. Full of romance and whimsy, the collection contains sentiments perfect for Valentine's Day or any time of year.

A Box of Kisses: 40 Collectible Postcards

Margolin Gwathmey, Emily

History & Criticism

Chronicle Books+

With a foreword by Mayor Bloomberg and the full cooperation of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, this book is the first-ever tribute to Gracie Mansion, New York City’s mayoral residence―from its construction as Archibald Gracie’s country home in 1799 to its importance as the home of New York City’s mayors and their families (starting with Fiorello LaGuardia in 1942) to its splendid 2002 restoration and new role as the “People’s House” under Michael R. Bloomberg. Combining a detailed architectural history of the mansion (including the Susan E. Wagner wing built by Mott B. Schmidt and the contributions of such master decorators as Albert Hadley, Mark Hampton, and Jamie Drake) with anecdotal portraits of the mayoral inhabitants, lavishly illustrated with more than 150 images (including paintings and watercolors, letters and maps, invitations and elevations, designers’ sketches and before-and-after photos), and enhanced by exclusive interviews and the recollections of those who have lived and visited there, this handsome volume will be the definitive work on a charming landmark that is more popular today than ever before.

Gracie Mansion: A Celebration of New York City's Mayoral Residence

Architecture

Rizzoli

A tribute to the unique, historic home and New York City treasure--a classic volume first published in 2005 is here revised and updated for today, with a new foreword by Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray. In this handsomely illustrated paean to New York City's mayoral residence, author Ellen Stern charts the history of Gracie Mansion from its construction as Archibald Gracie's country home in 1799, to its importance as the home of New York City's mayors and their families, to its splendid restoration in 2002, to its new role today as a center of diversity and openness--the people's house. Blending the mansion's architectural and decorative progress with anecdotal portraits of the mayoral families, exclusive interviews with many of those who have lived and worked here, and over 200 paintings and watercolors, letters and maps, invitations and elevations, designers sketches, and before and after photos, this beautiful volume, written with the cooperation of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, is the definitive account of a beloved New York landmark that is more popular today than ever before.

Gracie Mansion: A Celebration of New York City’s Mayoral Residence

World

Product Description 
The definitive biography of Al Hirschfeld, renowned caricaturist and artist.\nAl Hirschfeld knew everybody and drew everybody. He occupied the twentieth century, and illustrated it. 
Hirschfeld: The Biography is the first portrait of the renowned artist's life—as spirited and unique as his pen-and-ink drawings. Beginning in the 1920s, he caricatured Hollywood actors, Washington politicians, and—his favorite—celebrities of the stage. Broadway belonged to Hirschfeld. His work appeared in the 
New York Times and other publications, as well as on book jackets, album covers, posters, and postage stamps, for more than seventy-five years.\nHe lived in Paris, Moscow, and Bali, and in a pink New York townhouse on a star-studded block where his closest friends—Carol Channing, S. J. Perelman, Gloria Vanderbilt, Brooks Atkinson, Elia Kazan, Marlene Dietrich, and William Saroyan—flocked in and out. He played the piano, went to jazz joints with Eugene O'Neill, and wrote a musical that bombed. He drove until he was ninety-eight years old and always found a parking space. He worked every day, threw dinner parties twice a week, and hosted New Year's Eve soirees that were legendary. He had three wives, a formidable agent, and a daughter, Nina, the most famous little girl that no one knows.\nHirschfeld died in 2003, at the age of ninety-nine. "If you live long enough," he liked to say, "everything happens." For him, it did. And good and bad—it's all here. Through interviews with Hirschfeld himself, his friends and family (including the mysterious Nina), and his famous subjects, as well as through letters, scrapbooks, and home movies, Ellen Stern has crafted a delightful, detailed, and definitive portrait of Al Hirschfeld, one of our most beloved, and most influential, artists. 
 Review 
"An in-depth biography of America’s “line king” caricaturist. Born in St. Louis, Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) began drawing when he was 5 years old and never stopped. Journalist Stern ( 
Gracie Mansion: A Celebration of New York City's Mayoral Residence, 2005, etc.) interviewed Hirschfeld in 1987 for a 
GQ profile. Over the years, she has conducted extensive interviews with those who knew him—the book is packed with quotations—and had access to personal letters, journals, and scrapbooks, resulting in this much-needed, affectionate, and entertaining book-length profile. In 1912, the Hirschfeld family moved to New York City. Although he traveled around the world throughout his life, NYC was always home. While still in his teens, the young, talented artist began doing caricatures for Broadway posters and ads as well as lobby cards for local movie companies like Goldwyn and the Selznick Corporation. He came to be known as the “line king” for his minimalist black-lines-on-white-paper caricatures of actors and actresses that succinctly captured the looks and personalities of his subjects. He was fast and reliable. His theatrical caricatures—he preferred “character drawings”—became popular, his line “ever more surgical.” Broadway was his milieu, and every actor wanted to be “Hirschfelded.” He worked hard at it; sitting in his barbershop chair, his drawing board in front of him, he worked 7 days per week, 7 hours per day. S.J. Perelman described him as “a remarkable combination of Walt Whitman, Lawrence of Arabia, and Moe, my favorite waiter at Lindy’s.” In 1928, Hirschfeld started working for the 
 New York Times, in 1953, 
TV Guide, and in 1998 he did a cover for 
Time. As Stern shows, his married life with three wives was up and down, but for 75 years, he had his dream job. 
As the first substantive biography of Hirschfeld, this will be welcomed by art and Broadway lovers alike."\n—KIRKUS\n“This biography is as elegant and witty as Hirschfeld’s art itself, and author Stern deftly weaves her way through the artist’s life from his birth in St. Louis to his final days in a pink Manhattan brownstone. Stern’s affection for and knowledge of

Hirschfeld: The Biography

Skyhorse

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