A WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Beautiful, sober and affecting - a testament to remembrance and friendship' - DALIA SOFER 'A momentous historic retrieval and work of literary art' - PHILLIP LOPATE 'Having the last word can be very lonely.' Nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never shared the full details of her past with anyone. That is until she met Michael Frank, and asked him to help her polish a talk she was to give about life in the Juderia of Rhodes. Neither of them could know that this was the first of one hundred Saturdays that they would spend in each other's company. Courageous and sharp, elegant and sly, Stella is a formidable modern Scheherazade whose Saturday instalments give a window into the vibrant, vanished world of the Jews of Rhodes. She unspools for the first time the long threads of her history - from the sun-soaked shores of her childhood, to the fifteen harrowing months she spent in camps scattered throughout Europe, and finally to the United States and New York as one of only 150 Jews from Rhodes to survive. Featuring colour illustrations based on Stella's family photographs, One Hundred Saturdays is an unusual and extraordinary memoir. It is a testament to the soul-saving power of relationships; to memories revisited; to resilience. It's not only a vital slice of history that has largely been ignored, but a story of the possibility of an ever-evolving self, even after confronting Hell.

From the critically acclaimed artist, designer, and author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and My Favorite Things comes a wondrous collection of words and paintings that is a moving meditation on the beauty and complexity of women's lives and roles, revealed in the things they hold. "What do women hold? The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of being human. The memories. And the troubles. And the sorrows and the triumphs. And the love." In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet "Women Holding Things," which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into this extraordinary visual compendium. Women Holding Things includes the bright, bold images featured in the booklet as well as an additional sixty-seven new paintings highlighted by thoughtful and intimate anecdotes, recollections, and ruminations. Most are portraits of women, both ordinary and famous, including Virginia Woolf, Sally Hemings, Hortense Cezanne, Gertrude Stein, as well as Kalman's family members and other real-life people. These women hold a range of objects, from the mundane-balloons, a cup, a whisk, a chicken, a hat-to the abstract-dreams and disappointments, sorrow and regret, joy and love. Kalman considers the many things that fit physically and metaphorically between women's hands: We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women's lives-their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain. Ultimately, she reveals that many of the things we hold dear-as well as those that burden or haunt us-remain constant and connect us from generation to generation. Here, too, are pictures of a few men holding things, such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Anton Chekhov, as well as objects holding other objects that invite us to ponder their intimate relationships to one another. Women Holding Things explores the significance of the objects we carry-in our hands, hearts, and minds-and speaks to, and for, all of us. Maira Kalman's unique work is a celebration of life, of the act and the art of living, offering an original way of examining and understanding all that is important in our world-and ultimately within ourselves.

Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic, shrunken-down form. These narrow strips of paper, covered with tiny ant-like pencil markings a millimeter high, came to light only after the author s death in 1956.At first considered random restless pencil markings or a secret code, the microscripts were in time discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of antique German script: a whole story was deciphered on the back of a business card. These twenty-five short pieces address schnapps, rotten husbands, small town life, elegant jaunts, the radio, swine, jealousy, and marriage proposals."

At Grand Central Station, Chief of Police George Coppola finds lost people, and Mr. Chidchester, head of the Lost and Found, finds lost dogs. Marino Marino makes oyster stew, while thinking up interesting math problems. A man in a porkpie hat buys cherry pies. Maira Kalman's stylized artwork, along with entertaining text, brilliantly captures the excitement of Grand Central Station, "the busiest, fastest, biggest place there is."

One of Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year * Winner of the National Jewish Book Awards for Holocaust Memoir and Sephardic Culture * Recipient of the Jewish Book Council's Natan Notable Book Award * Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal The remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi whose conversations with the author over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale. With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood on the Greek island of Rhodes where she'd grown up in a Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium. Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays over the course of six years that they would spend in each other's company. During these meetings Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians conquered in 1912, began governing as an official colonial possession in 1923, and continued to administer even after the Germans seized control in September 1943. The following July, the Germans rounded up all 1,700-plus residents of the Juderia and sent them first by boat and then by train to Auschwitz on what was the longest journey--measured by both time and distance--of any of the deportations. Ninety percent of them were murdered upon arrival. Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time--and to construct a life after that place has vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors drawn at nearly the last possible moment, as well as an account of a tender and transformative friendship between storyteller and listener, offering a powerful "reminder that the ability to listen thoughtfully is a rare and significant gift" (The Wall Street Journal).

2018 National Jewish Book Award Finalist Maira Kalman, the author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and The Elements of Style, and Alex Kalman, the designer, curator, writer, and founder of Mmuseumm, combine their talents in this captivating family memoir, a creative blend of narrative and striking visuals that is a paean to an exceptional woman and a celebration of individuality, personal expression, and the art of living authentically. In the early 1950s, Jewish emigre Sara Berman arrived in the Bronx with her husband and two young daughters When the children were grown, she and her husband returned to Israel, but Sara did not stay for long. In the late 1960s, at age sixty, she left her husband after thirty-eight years of marriage. One night, she packed a single suitcase and returned alone to New York City, moving intoa studio apartment in Greenwich Village near her family. In her new home, Sara began discovering new things and establishing new rituals, from watching Jeopardy each night at 7:00 to eating pizza at the Museum of Modern Art's cafeteria every Wednesday. She also began discarding the unnecessary, according to the Kalmans: "in a burst of personal expression, she decided to wear only white." Sara kept her belongings in an extraordinarily clean and organized closet. Filled with elegant, minimalist, heavily starched, impeccably pressed and folded all-white clothing, including socks and undergarments, as well as carefully selected objects-from a potato grater to her signature perfume, Chanel No.19-the space was sublime. Upon her death in 2004, her family decided to preserve its pristine contents, hoping to find a way to exhibit them one day. In 2015, the Mmuseumm, a new type of museum located in a series of unexpected locations founded and curated by Sara's grandson, Alex Kalman, recreated the space in a popular exhibit-Sara Berman's Closet-in Tribeca. The installation eventually moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show will run at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles from December 4, 2018 to March 10, 2019; it will open again about a month later at the National Museum of American Jewish History from April 5, 2019 to September 1, 2019. Inspired by the exhibit, this spectacular illustrated memoir, packed with family photographs, exclusive images, and Maira Kalman's distinctive paintings, is an ode to Sara's life, freedom, and re-invention. Sara Berman's Closet is an indelible portrait of the human experience-overcoming hardship, taking risks, experiencing joy, enduring loss. It is also a reminder of the significance of the seemingly insignificant moments in our lives-the moments we take for granted that may turn out to be the sweetest. Filled with a daughter and grandson's wry and touching observations conveyed in Maira's signature script, Sara Berman's Closest is a beautiful, loving tribute to one woman's indomitable spirit.

Based on a journal she kept when her granddaughter was new, Darling Baby celebrates life with a baby. Like Tell Me Again About the Night I was Born and The Night You Were Born, this book offers a telling for young children about the time before they can remember, a phase about which they are endlessly curious. Like Vera Williams' classic More, More, More Said the Baby, this book bursts with the joy and love shared with babies and their multigenerational family members. With resonant simplicity, the book conveys the way that a baby, even when very small, is the center of a world of joy and enduring love.

This is the inspiring true story of the John J. Harvey -- a retired New York City fireboat reinstated on September 11, 2001. Originally launched in 1931, the Harvey was the most powerful fireboat of her time. After the September 11 attacks, with fire hydrants at Ground Zero inoperable and the Hudson River's water supply critical to fighting the blaze, the fire department called on the Harvey for help. There were adjustments -- forcing water into hoses by jamming soda bottles and wood into nozzles with a sledgehammer -- and then the fireboat's volunteer crew pumped much-needed water to the disaster site. The John J. Harvey proved she was still one of New York's Bravest!

Maira Kalman brings a New York City icon to life, celebrating the energy, vitality and hope of a place and its people.

From Maira Kalman, the author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and The Elements of Style, comes this beautiful pictorial and narrative exploration of the significance of objects in our lives, drawn from her personal artifacts, recollections, and selections from the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

With more than fifty original paintings and featuring bestselling author and illustrator Maira Kalman's signature handwritten prose, My Favorite Things is a poignant and witty meditation on the importance of both quotidian and unusual objects in our culture and private worlds.

Created in the same colorful, engaging, and insightful style as her previous works, which have won her fans around the world, My Favorite Things features more than fifty objects from both the Cooper-Hewitt and Kalman's personal collections: the pocket watch Abraham Lincoln was carrying when he was shot, original editions of Winnie-the-Pooh and Alice in Wonderland, a handkerchief in memoriam of Queen Victoria, an Ingo Maurer lamp, Rietveld's Z chair, a pair of Toscanini's pants, and photographs Kalman has taken of people walking towards and away from her. A pictorial index provides photographs of the actual objects and a short description of them, enhancing the reading experience.

As it speaks to the universal experience and importance of beloved objects in our lives--big and small, famous and private--this unique work is a fresh way of examining and understanding our society, history, culture, and ourselves.

From former Talking Heads frontman and multimedia visionary David Byrne and revered bestselling author, illustrator, and artist Maira Kalman--an inspiring celebration in words and art of the connections between us all.

Don't miss the Spike Lee film of the Broadway hit American Utopia--on HBO.

A Beat Most Anticipated Graphic Novel of Fall 2020

A joyful collaboration between old friends David Byrne and Maira Kalman, American Utopia offers readers an antidote to cynicism, bursting with pathos, humanism, and hope--featuring his words and lyrics brought to life with more than 150 of her colorful paintings.

The text is drawn from David Byrne's American Utopia, which has become a hit Broadway show and is now a film from Spike Lee on HBO. The four-color artwork, by Maira Kalman, which she created for the Broadway show's curtain, is composed of small moments, expressions, gestures, and interactions that together offer a portrait of daily life and coexistence.

With their creative talents combined, American Utopia is a salvo for kindness and a call for jubilation, a reminder to sing, dance, and waste not a moment. Beautifully designed and edited by Alex Kalman, American Utopia is a balm for the soul from two of the world's most extraordinary artists.

The only style manual to ever appear on a bestseller list now refreshed by one of our most beloved illustrators
Every English writer knows Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." The book's mantra, make every word tell, is still on point. This much-loved classic, now in its fourth edition, will forever be the go-to guide when in need of a hint to make a turn of phrase clearer or a reminder on how to enliven prose with the active voice. The only style manual to ever appear on bestseller lists has explained to millions of readers the basic principals of plain English, and Maira Kalman's fifty-seven exquisite illustrations give the revered work a jolt of new energy, making the learning experience more colorful and clear.

From bestselling author Lemony Snicket and celebrated illustrator Maira Kalman comes an uproarious, whimsical word book like no other.

Together, Snicket and Kalman present a strikingly beautiful journey woven from a practical introduction to thirteen wonderful words, featuring such marvels as Bird, Dog, Panache, and Haberdashery. Snicket, the notoriously clever and elusive New York Times bestselling author, pushes the boundaries of storytelling in the most fanciful of ways. Maira Kalman, renowned for her art and design, carries this madcap adventure to wondrous heights with her vision of a world populated with hats, song, and cake. This rollicking, surprising book is a true celebration of words.

A portion of the proceeds from Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey will be donated to the Twin Towers Orphan Fund. For more information or to make a donation, please visit http://www.ttof.org.

This is the inspiring true story of the John J. Harvey—a retired New York City fireboat reinstated on September 11, 2001. Originally launched in 1931, the Harvey was the most powerful fireboat of her time. After the September 11 attacks, with fire hydrants at Ground Zero inoperable and the Hudson River's water supply critical to fighting the blaze, the fire department called on the Harvey for help. There were adjustments—forcing water into hoses by jamming soda bottles and wood into nozzles with a sledgehammer—and then the fireboat's volunteer crew pumped much-needed water to the disaster site. The John J. Harvey proved she was still one of New York's Bravest!

Maira Kalman brings a New York City icon to life, celebrating the energy, vitality and hope of a place and its people.

Is there anything Pete won't eat? Poppy Wise's sweet but unruly dog starts with Nico's accordion and works his way through the alphabet, making a nuisance of himself by leaving nothing untouched, not even glue sticks or Uncle Norman's underpants. Despite Pete's ravenous ways, a frazzled Poppy Wise can't help loving him. Kids will laugh at Pete's impossible cuisine, adults will appreciate the offbeat sense of humor, and both will love the artwork that perfectly captures the fun of the text in this unique alphabet book only Maira Kalman could create.

Maira Kalman paints her highly personal worldview in this inimitable combination of image and text
An irresistible invitation to experience life through a beloved artist's psyche, "The Principles of Uncertainty" is a compilation of Maira Kalman's "New York Times" columns. Part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman, these brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images?which initially appear random?ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue.

Hurry Up and Wait, the second volume in a new series of collaborations between artist Maira Kalman, author Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, is a whimsical collection of images that capture people in motion - or not. In snapshots by the likes of Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, Helen Levitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans, some people stride forth, dash across streets, race on bicycles, and jump over puddles, while others form snaking lines, daydream on park benches, and linger on sidewalks with friends. So what's the rush? With 11 new vibrant illustrations by Kalman inspired by photographs in MoMA's collection, and thought-provoking prose by Handler that ponder the merits of action, Hurry Up and Wait is a spirited reflection on the daily rhythms of life.