In the spirit of Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl, and Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, a powerful collection of essays about gender, sexuality, race, beauty, Hollywood, and what it means to be a modern woman.

One month before the release of the highly anticipated film The Birth of a Nation, actress Gabrielle Union shook the world with a vulnerable and impassioned editorial in which she urged our society to have compassion for victims of sexual violence. In the wake of rape allegations made against director and actor Nate Parker, Union—a forty-four-year-old actress who launched her career with roles in iconic ’90s movies—instantly became the insightful, outspoken actress that Hollywood has been desperately awaiting. With honesty and heartbreaking wisdom, she revealed her own trauma as a victim of sexual assault: "It is for you that I am speaking. This is real. We are real."

In this moving collection of thought provoking essays infused with her unique wisdom and deep humor, Union uses that same fearlessness to tell astonishingly personal and true stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame. Union tackles a range of experiences, including bullying, beauty standards, and competition between women in Hollywood, growing up in white California suburbia and then spending summers with her black relatives in Nebraska, coping with crushes, puberty, and the divorce of her parents. Genuine and perceptive, Union bravely lays herself bare, uncovering a complex and courageous life of self-doubt and self-discovery with incredible poise and brutal honesty. Throughout, she compels us to be ethical and empathetic, and reminds us of the importance of confidence, self-awareness, and the power of sharing truth, laughter, and support.

Since South Africa's transition to democracy, many universities have acquired new works of art that convey messages about the advantages of cultural diversity, and engage critically with histories of racial intolerance and conflict. Given concerns about the influence of British imperialism or Afrikaner nationalism on aspects of their inherited visual culture, most tertiary institutions are also seeking new ways to manage their existing art collections, and to introduce memorials, insignia or regalia, which reflect the universities' newfound values and aspirations. In Picturing Change, Brenda Schmahmann explores the implications of deploying the visual domain in the service of transformative agendas and unpacks the complexities, contradictions and slippages involved in this process. She shows that although most new commissions have been innovative, some universities have acquired works with potentially traditionalist - even backward-looking - implications. While the motives behind removing inherited imagery may be underpinned by a desire to unsettle white privilege, in some cases such actions can also serve to maintain the status quo. This book is unique in exploring the transformative ethos evident in the curation of visual culture at South African universities. It will be invaluable to readers interested in public art, the politics of curating and collecting, as well as to those involved in transforming tertiary and other public institutions into spaces that welcome diversity.

Volume 3 of Visual Century: South African Art in Context 1907-1948 is part of a four-volume publication that reappraises South African visual art of the twentieth century from a postapartheid perspective. Edited by Mario Pissarra, the volume looks at the years 1973 to 1992. The forw0rd by Rashied Araeen titled `Art and Human Struggle', sets the theme for this period. Bracketed by porous transitional moments in the early 1970s and 1990s, this volume covers a period characterised by a deepening of the struggle for democracy, a time when historical preoccupations with race were increasingly complemented with growing discourses on class and gender. It was a time when unprecedented internal and external pressure resulted in heightened introspection and action in and through the visual arts. The essays address a multiplicity of ways in which artists responded directly and indirectly to the challenges of this period, mostly as individuals but also through organisations. Resistance and complicity, and the spaces between, found expression in the use of everyday themes, biblical sources, ethnically derived themes, subtle and extreme forms of humour, as well as through representations of conflict. This is a period when challenging art was produced in community arts centres, universities and in public places, a time when the cultural boycott simultaneously united and polarised artists, and exiles mediated the ambivalences of `home'.

Volume 4 of Visual Century: South African Art in Context 1907-1948 is part of a four-volume publication that reappraises South African visual art of the twentieth century from a postapartheid perspective. The years 1990 to 2007 are covered in Volume 4, edited by Thembinkosi Goniwe, Mario Pissarra and Mandisi Majavu. The end of the Cold War and subsequent emergence of globalisation, along with the advent of democracy in South Africa introduced new social and political orders, with profound implications for South African artists. Concurrently, the persistence of economic inequalities and conflicts within and beyond national borders constantly mitigated against an unbridled celebration of `freedom'. The essays in this volume critically address some of the most notable developments and visible trends in postapartheid South African art. These include South Africa's entry into the international art community, its struggle to address its past, and artists' persistent and often provocative preoccupations with individual and collective identity. The widespread and often unsettling representation of human bodies, as well as animal forms, along with the steady increase in use of new technologies and the development of new forms of public art are also discussed. While much of the art of the period is open-ended and non-didactic, the persistence of engagement with socially responsive themes calls into question the reductive binary between `resistance' and post-apartheid art that has come to dominate accounts of `before' and `after'.

Volume 1 of Visual Century: South African Art in Context 1907-1948 is part of a four-volume publication that reappraises South African visual art of the twentieth century from a postapartheid perspective. Volume 1 begins after the South African War when efforts were made to unify the white `races'. It ends with the coming to power of the Afrikaner nationalists. The period encompasses two world wars, the incremental dispossession of the rights of black South Africans, and the rise of organised black South African resistance to white rule. Jillian Carman, the editor of this volume, notes that art is not created in a vacuum. In her introductory essay titled `Other Ways of Seeing' she notes that this volume sets the overall approach: "an interpretation of the history of twentieth century visual art in South Africa against the backdrop of momentous social and political events". This volume provides critical perspectives on the ideological and institutional frameworks for white and black artists of the period, and the art they produced. Discussions of public art and architecture, traditionalist African art, and Western-style painting and sculpture are complemented with consideration of the roles played by museums, training, art societies and exhibitions, art historical writing, and patronage. Fresh perspectives on the art of the fi rst half of the twentieth century highlight complexities that still resonate today.

A self-portrait in 154 songs, by our greatest living songwriter.

In this extraordinary book, with unparalleled candour, Paul McCartney recounts his life and art through the prism of 154 songs from all stages of his career - from his earliest boyhood compositions through the legendary decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his solo albums to the present. Arranged alphabetically to provide a kaleidoscopic rather than chronological account, it establishes definitive texts of the songs' lyrics for the first time and describes the circumstances in which they were written, the people and places that inspired them, and what he thinks of them now.

Presented with this is a treasure trove of material from McCartney's personal archive - drafts, letters, photographs - never seen before, which make this also a unique visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time. We learn intimately about the man, the creative process, the working out of melodies, the moments of inspiration. The voice and personality of Paul McCartney sings off every page.

There has never been a book about a great musician like it.

Published in celebration of BTS’s 10th Anniversary, stories that go beyond what you already know about BTS, including unreleased photos, QR codes of videos, and all album information.

After taking their first step into the world on June 13, 2013, BTS will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut in June 2023. They have risen to the peak as an iconic global artist and during this meaningful time, they look back on their footsteps in the first official book. In doing so, BTS nurtures the power to build brighter days and they choose to take another step on a road that no one has gone before.

BTS shares personal, behind-the-scenes stories of their journey so far through interviews and more than three years of in-depth coverage by Myeongseok Kang, who has written about K-pop and other Korean pop culture in various media. Presented chronologically in seven chapters from before the debut of BTS to the present, their vivid voices and opinions harmonize to tell a sincere, lively, and deep story. In individual interviews that have been conducted without a camera or makeup, they illuminate their musical journey from multiple angles and discuss its significance.

In addition, portrait photos that show BTS as individuals and artists open the book, and throughout there are concept photos, tracklists of all previous albums, and over 330 QR codes. As digital artists, BTS has been communicating with the world through the internet and this book allows readers to immediately access trailers, music videos, and more online to have a rich understanding of all the key moments in BTS history. Complete with a timeline of all major milestones, BEYOND THE STORY is a remarkable archive—truly everything about BTS in one volume.

Spirit of Africa transports you to some of the continent’s last remaining wild places. This selection of powerful landscape, wildlife and people images, underpinned by evocative, sometimes poignant, personal anecdotes and hard-hitting conservation stories, reflect Scott’s deep connection with nature. Spirit of Africa is a call to the modern world to recognise that the protection of African wilderness is now more important than ever – not only for the preservation of biodiverse landscapes and endangered species, but also to fortify the human spirit.

• The most extensive collection of fine-art imagery from Africa’s national parks and wilderness in countries including South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe.
• 150 spectacular, large-scale images, both colour and black and white, of landscapes, wildlife, ocean, rivers, skies and people.
• Insightful and science-informed text that highlights many of the conservation challenges facing iconic species such as lions, elephants and pangolins.
• Explores the essential personal connection that all humans around the world have with African wilderness.
• Images of animals include the gorillas of Congo, the wildebeest migration in Serengeti and the flying lions of Busanga Plains in Zambia, but also less obvious – yet no less fascinating – subjects such as bees and geckos.

Karl Lagerfeld is a modern master of couture. He is also famously outspoken: his wise, surprising statements pop up like offbeat news flashes. This collection of quotations pays homage to the legendary eminence grise of the fashion world.

Lagerfeld's pronouncements - on fashion, women, art, politics, love, and life high and low - are famously oracular, seized upon by fashionistas, acolytes and sages around the world. Created with the full approval of the designer himself, this cornucopia of Lagerfeld's maxims is required reading for us all today as we negotiate the trickiest curves of modern life.

Cultivated, unpredictable, provocative, sometimes shocking, Lagerfeld's `bons mots' are always impossible to ignore.

"Around South Africa in Eighteen Days" documents the author's journey to the country s most scenic and photogenic areas.

The book is divided into eighteen sections, each one representing a day in a different area. The beautiful photographs and witty captions make for pleasant reading and for contemplating your own trip to far-flung regions.

The book may also inspire readers to move away from their coffee tables and couches and make the eighteen-day trip themselves, as it gives practical advice on the route and the photographic equipment that is needed to make this journey a successful photographic expedition

In this ground-breaking collection of critical essays, 15 writers explore the experimental, interdisciplinary and radically transgressive field of contemporary live art in South Africa.

Set against a contemporary South African society that is chronologically `post' apartheid, but one that continues to grapple with material redress, land redistribution and systemic racism, Acts of Transgression finds a representation of the complexity of this moment within the rich potential of a performative art form that transcends disciplinary boundaries and aesthetic conventions. The collection probes live art's intersection with crisis and socio-political turbulence, shifting notions of identity and belonging, embodied trauma and loss, questions of archive, memory and the troubling of colonial systems of knowing,

an interrogation of narratives of the past and visions for the future.These diverse essays, analysing the work of more than 25 contemporary South African artists and accompanied by a striking visual record of more than 50 photographs, represent the first major critical study of contemporary live art in South Africa; a study that is as timeous as it is imperative.

The killing of thirty-four miners by police at Marikana in August 2012 was the largest massacre of civilians in South Africa since Sharpeville. The events have been covered in newspaper articles, on TV news and in a commission of inquiry, but there is still confusion about what happened on that fateful day.

In Murder At Small Koppie, renowned photojournalist Greg Marinovich explores the truth behind the Marikana massacre. He investigates the shootings near Wonderkop hill, which happened in view of the media, as well as the killings that happened beyond the view of cameras at a nondescript collection of boulders known as Small Koppie, some 300 metres away. Many of the men killed here were shot in cold blood at close range. Drawing on his own meticulous research, eyewitness accounts and the findings of the Marikana Commission of Inquiry, Marinovich accurately reconstructs that fateful day as well as the events leading up to the strike, and looks at the subsequent denials, obfuscation and buck-passing by Lonmin, the SAPS and the government.

This is the definitive account of the Marikana massacre from the journalist whose award-winning investigation into the tragedy has been called the most important piece of South African journalism since apartheid.

Two long-time friends share an intimate and urgent conversation about life, music and their enduring love of America, with all its challenges and contradictions, in this stunningly-produced expansion of their ground-breaking Higher Ground podcast, featuring more than 350 photographs, exclusive bonus content, and never-before-seen archival material.

Renegades: Born in the USA is a candid, revealing, and entertaining dialogue between President Barack Obama and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen that explores everything from their origin stories and career-defining moments to their country's polarized politics and the growing distance between the American Dream and the American reality. Filled with full-colour photographs and rare archival material, it is a compelling and beautifully illustrated portrait of two outsiders - one Black and one white - looking for a way to connect their unconventional searches for meaning, identity, and community with the American story itself.

It includes:

• Original introductions by President Obama and Bruce Springsteen
• Exclusive new material from the Renegades podcast recording sessions
• Obama's never-before-seen annotated speeches, including his "Remarks at the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Marches
• Springsteen's handwritten lyrics for songs spanning his 50-year-long career
• Rare and exclusive photographs from the authors' personal archives
• Historical photographs and documents that provide rich visual context for their conversation.

Obama and Springsteen discuss marriage and fatherhood, race and masculinity, the lure of the open road and the call back to home. They also compare notes on their favourite protest songs, the most inspiring American heroes of all time, and more. Along the way, they reveal their passion for - and the occasional toll of - telling a bigger, truer story about America throughout their careers, and explore how their fractured country might begin to find its way back toward unity.

Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig...

Cavorting naked through the countryside painted green...

Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head...

These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare.

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra.

Here she reveals her behind the scenes secrets; inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour and striking honesty.

Witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent.

Amid evictions, raids, killings, the drug trade, and fire, inner-city Johannesburg residents seek safety and a home. A grandmother struggles to keep her granddaughter as she is torn away from her. A mother seeks healing in the wake of her son’s murder. And displaced by a city’s drive for urban regeneration, a group of blind migrants try to carve out an existence.

The Blinded City recounts the history of inner-city Johannesburg from 2010 to 2019, primarily from the perspectives of the unlawful occupiers of spaces known as hijacked buildings, bad buildings or dark buildings. Tens of thousands of residents, both South African and foreign national, live in these buildings in dire conditions. This book tells the story of these sites, and the court cases around them, ones that strike at the centre of who has the right to occupy the city.

In February 2010, while Johannesburg prepared for the FIFA World Cup, the South Gauteng High Court ordered the eviction of the unlawful occupiers of an abandoned carpet factory on Saratoga Avenue and that the city’s Metropolitan Municipality provide temporary emergency accommodation for the evicted. The case, which became known as Blue Moonlight and went to the Constitutional Court, catalysed a decade of struggles over housing and eviction in Johannesburg.

The Blinded City chronicles this case, among others, and the aftermath – a tumultuous period in the city characterised by recurrent dispossessions, police and immigration operations, outbursts of xenophobic violence, and political and legal change. All through the decade, there is the backdrop of successive mayors and their attempts to ‘clean up’ the city, and the struggles of residents and urban housing activists for homes and a better life.

The interwoven narratives present a compelling mosaic of life in post-apartheid Johannesburg, one of the globe’s most infamous and vital cities.

Across paintings, prints and drawings, Gavin Jantjes' journey embodies a quest for artistic emancipation freed from Eurocentric traditions and expectations of Black creativity.

Through over 100 works in addition to archival material, To Be Free! celebrates Gavin Jantjes (born 1948) while tracing his development as a painter, printmaker, writer and activist―from his childhood in Cape Town under apartheid to his compelling portrayals of the global Black struggle for freedom and his recent transition to nonfigurative painting.

Structured into chapters spanning the 1970s to the present, this retrospective focuses on pivotal phases in his life, including his formative years in Cape Town and his transformative role at art institutions in the UK, Germany and Norway.

Dwarstrekkers, nonkonformiste, buitestaanders, randeiers...Noem hulle wat jy wil, Suid Afrika het meer as sy deel eksentrieke karakters opgelewer wat mense van die vroegste tye af na hulle asem laat snak of verstom agter hulle hand laat fluister het.

Hierdie rare mense het met die jare hul merk gemaak op vele terreine.

Dis hulle wat Daniël Lotter aan 'n nuwe geslag lesers bekendstel.

Daar is al soveel oor Jan Smuts geskryf. Smuts is in baie opsigte steeds ’n raaisel, veral wat sy komplekse persoonlikheid betref.

Hierdie chronologiese rangskikking van foto’s uit sy lewe bied ‘n beeld van hom as mens, staatsman, bevelvoerder en politikus.

Dis ’n visuele reis deur die lewe van een van ons grootste staatsmanne.

Reynardt Hugo speel Dr Tertius Jonker in Binnelanders en was van 2011 tot 2019 lid van die Afrikaanse popgroep ADAM. Tog, agter al sy sukses, sangtoere, toekennings en die vele lofbetuigings is daar ’n diep gewonde en verlore siel. Nes duisende ander mans, het Reynardt jare lank gestoei om sy verwondheid met drank, dagga, vroue en pornografie te verdoesel. Sy oorlog was ’n soeke na betekenis en aanvaarding.

Soldaat vertel van ’n klein seuntjie en die verwarrende wêreld waarin hy grootgeword het. Hy praat eerlik en opreg oor die impak wat sy ouers se egskeiding op hom gehad het, en die invloed van drankmisbruik in hulle huis, en hoe hy dit alles as jong seun ervaar het en daarvan moes sin maak. Hy praat openlik oor sy swakheid vir vroue en die gevolge van sy dade.

Vandag is Reynardt Hugo ’n suksesvolle jong man wat ’n groot impak maak. Die pad was lank en rof en hy moes vele uitdagings oorkom, maar vandag is sy lewe ’n ware getuienis van wat God kan doen met iemand wat op moedverloor se vlakte sit, en hoe God ’n storie van verwoesting in ’n storie van hoop kan verander.

Reynardt se verhaal is boeiend. Dit bevat al die elemente van tragedie, intrige, neerlaag en oorwinning, maar ook die heel belangrikste bestanddeel: die krag van die evangelie van Jesus Christus.

Room by room, this striking catalogue of South African artist Sue Williamson’s major retrospective at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town takes readers on a walk through 45 years of her work.

We begin with A Few South Africans (1983–1987), the iconic photo-etched and silk-screened portraits of women who fought for liberation from apartheid—a series now held in a number of international museum collections. From there, the reader moves through The Apartheid Years, Africa and her Colonisers, The Voices on the Street, No More Fairy Tales, Messages from the Moat, and The Story of District Six. Each room highlights a distinct theme.

New York Times art critic Holland Cotter has called Williamson “a dynamic amazement.” Her work flows fluidly across a wide range of media, including drawing, printmaking, photography, video, and sculptural installation. Critical texts by award-winning writers Zoé Whitley and Sean O’Toole offer further insights into her practice. The final room In the Studio is wallpapered with a facsimile of the artist’s studio, featuring a timeline and vitrines containing press clippings, posters, photographs, tools, and objects from Williamson’s working life, and Sihle Sogaula’s text reflects on this archive.

For anyone interested in how art can speak to power, in the courage of women, or in making collaborative work that resonates within a community, this is a must-have book.

The first authorised biography of eternal legend Elizabeth Taylor.

Known for her glamorous beauty, soap-opera personal life and magnetic screen presence, Elizabeth Taylor was the twentieth century's most famous film star. Including unseen photographs and unread private reflections, this authorised biography is a fascinating and complete portrait worthy of the legend and her legacy.

Elizabeth Taylor captures this intelligent, empathetic, tenacious, volatile and complex woman as never before, from her rise to massive fame at the age of twelve in National Velvet to becoming the first actor to negotiate a million-dollar salary for a film, from her eight marriages and enduring love affair with Richard Burton to her lifelong battle with addiction and her courageous efforts as an AIDS activist.

Using Elizabeth's unpublished letters, diary entries and off-the-record interview transcripts as well as interviews with 250 of her closest friends and family, Kate Andersen Brower tells the full, unvarnished story of the classic Hollywood star who continues to captivate audiences the world over.

It has been said that the best-known South Africans outside South Africa is Nelson Mandela and Jan Smuts. Smuts is regarded as the most prominent Afrikaner ever and one of the most influential world leaders of his time. So much and so many books have been written about him, but because of his complex personality, some aspects of his life remains a mystery.

In this photobook his life is captured chronologically in photographs, some never published before. Foreword by Fransjohan Pretorius and background information by Richard Steyn.

When a burning sun dips low enough on the horizon to touch the brown-black earth, that is when South Africa is at its very best – a blazing expanse of broad landscapes of sea and veld, dusty savanna and equally dusty pavements. It is a vast country, extending from pristine coastal plain to rugged mountain passes across wide stretches of semidesert and forest, hills and valleys. Even travelling South Africans are unprepared for the sheer scale and enormous diversity of this grand landscape. Every day, everywhere, there are new sights to behold and new experiences to share – a graceful old Cape Dutch homestead set against lush vineyards, blue-purple mountains, the demure smile of a Zulu bride, a bird on a wire. It is the sun, the sand, the textures, the colours and the sounds that conjure up the spirit of South Africa. This volume is a fine tribute to the country, its people and its land- and cityscapes. This is the face of the nation – the essence of South Africa.

Marvel Entertainment was a struggling toymaker not even twenty years ago. Today, Marvel Studios is the dominant player both in Hollywood and in global pop culture. But what accounts for its stunning rise?

In MCU, beloved culture writers Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards draw on more than a hundred interviews with actors, producers, directors, and writers to present the definitive chronicle of Marvel Studios and its sole, ongoing production, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As they delve into the studio’s key moments – from the contentious hiring of Robert Downey Jr. for Iron Man to the negotiations over Disney’s acquisition of Marvel to studio head Kevin Feige’s embrace of streaming TV – the authors demonstrate that the genius of Marvel was its resurrection and modification of Hollywood’s old studio system.

Dishy and authoritative, MCU is the first book to tell the Marvel Studios story in full – and an essential, effervescent account of popular culture.

The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel's transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy.

It is impossible to imagine American popular culture without Marvel Comics. For decades, Marvel has published groundbreaking visual narratives that sustain attention on multiple levels: as metaphors for the experience of difference and otherness; as meditations on the fluid nature of identity; and as high-water marks in the artistic tradition of American cartooning, to name a few.

This anthology contains twelve key stories from the first two years of Spider-Man's publication history (from 1962 to 1964). These influential adventures not only transformed the super hero fantasy into an allegory for the pain of adolescence but also brought a new ethical complexity to the genre-by insisting that with great power there must also come great responsibility.

A foreword by Jason Reynolds and scholarly introductions and apparatus by Ben Saunders offer further insight into the enduring significance of The Amazing Spider-Man and classic Marvel comics.

The Penguin Classics black spine paperback features full-colour art throughout.