Andre Leon Talley

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A powerful study of how to bear witness in a moment when America is being called to do the same.”—Time James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. What can we learn from his struggle in our own moment? One of the Best Books of the Year: Time, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune • One of Esquire’s Best Biographies of All Time • Winner of the Stowe Prize • Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice “Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.”—James Baldwin Begin Again is one of the great books on James Baldwin and a powerful reckoning with America’s ongoing failure to confront the lies it tells itself about race. Just as in Baldwin’s “after times,” argues Eddie S. Glaude Jr., when white Americans met the civil rights movement’s call for truth and justice with blind rage and the murders of movement leaders, so in our moment were the Obama presidency and the birth of Black Lives Matter answered with the ascendance of Trump and the violent resurgence of white nationalism. In these brilliant and stirring pages, Glaude finds hope and guidance in Baldwin as he mixes biography—drawn partially from newly uncovered Baldwin interviews—with history, memoir, and poignant analysis of our current moment to reveal the painful cycle of Black resistance and white retrenchment. As Glaude bears witness to the difficult truth of racism’s continued grip on the national soul, Begin Again is a searing exploration of the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.

New York Times Bestseller Nigel Barker—fashion authority, photographer, and host of Oxygen's The Face—presents 50 of the most influential models from the 1940s to today through a wealth of full-color photographs from the world's most renowned fashion photographers and an anecdotal text that reveals each woman's indelible place in the pantheons of fashion and popular culture. Interweaving 200 gorgeous photographs and informative and entertaining anecdotes, Models of Influence profiles 50 women who have made an unforgettable impression on fashion, the modeling industry, and our notions of beauty. Eight chronological chapters, each of which spotlight an era, feature the stories and images of women who made their mark. These include Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, Dovima, and Dorian Leigh, who reigned during modeling's golden age in the 1950s; Twiggy, Veruschka, and Jean Shrimpton, who embodied the free spirit of the 1960s; and Lauren Hutton, Iman, and Janice Dickinson, models who revolutionized the notion of beauty in the 1970s. Barker profiles those who've become the million-dollar faces of their time, such as Christie Brinkley and Elle Macpherson; revisits the age of the supermodel, when Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, and Naomi Campbell rose to global stardom; and spotlights eternal chameleons Kate Moss, Stella Tennant, and Amber Valletta, among others. Also included are models who brought us into the twenty-first century, and those who are leading the way into the future, from Gisele Bündchen, Daria Werbowy, Liya Kebede, and Coco Rocha to Cara Delevingne, Karlie Kloss, Lara Stone, Joan Smalls, and Kate Upton. Nigel Barker showcases each model's incandescent style—that special something that sets her apart, whether it's her unique physicality, a daring approach to image-making, or a particular energy that reflects the zeitgeist. Here, too, are models who broke the mold in their respective eras and turned the standard notion of beauty on its head. Stunning in its breadth and beauty, comprising some of the finest fashion images over the last 70 years, Models of Influence is a celebration of fashion and a group of unforgettable women who have helped shape and change modern culture.