A new coffee book has landed on the market for those who love the beauty of waterfront cottages and cabins – specifically on the Great Lakes: Lakeside Living by Linda Leigh Paul, who happens to be a specialist on the subject. ”The lakeside home represents its owner’s love for the outdoors and passion for life on the water. Houses by the lake are designed to maximize the flow of air, the use of sunlight, and the views of the landscape. These Great Lakes homes range in style from converted barns and Prairie Style houses to modernist inspired dwellings but each is always a reflection of the style, taste and interests of their owners. The houses featured here illustrate an experimentation with materials and an economy of design. Residences are designed to be practical-many can “close up” during adventures in the out-of-doors and travels-and they exhibit an open-minded style in which to live. Great Lakes houses are modern yet sufficiently warm and inviting to provide comfort for life here. Capturing the universal desire to live on the water, the book will speak to waterside homeowners everywhere, and especially to residents of the seven U.S. states and two Canadian provinces that border the Great Lakes. With more than 250 images, Lakeside Living is a book for all those who yearn for a life at the water’s edge.”

Available now from Amazon.

The American landscape provides the basis for Todd Hido’s A Road Divided. On the open road, the photographer found inspiration in empty roads and often used the windows of his own car to frame the shots. The resulting images are sometimes stirring, sometimes poignant, and often employ nature (rain, ice, snow, etc) to point an abstracted lens toward his subjects.

28 color photographs come over the 60 pages of Road Divided, which is published by Nazraeli Press.

From the International Center of Photography.

Available now from Amazon.

Bibliophiles will swoon at many of the offering at the block at Christie’s tomorrow. The “Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Americana” sale includes signed letters from Presidents – Jefferson and Lincoln – along with some superb artifacts of New York history. Shown above, Lot 24, an original post-top style street sign of the late 19th-century (Wall and Broad Streets), is a real winner. It’s also tipped to go for a pretty penny – something to the tune of $70,000.

From my perspective, the true gem of the auction is William Faulkner’s ca. 1918 Canadian Royal Air Force Uniform (lot 104). The garments come with a photograph of the author wearing the uniform. This complements a number of Faulkner books and manuscripts.

Check out the uniform after the jump.

Here’s a great new book, coming June 30th from Fiell Publishing on the topic of plastics in design by Charlotte & Peter Fiell. ”Over the past 150 years, the role of plastics within the field of design has been fundamental to the development of the manmade environment. Synthetic polymers have quite literally molded the modern world, transforming utopian dreams into three-dimensional realities. Indeed, the impact of plastics has been felt in every area of human life, from healthcare and food distribution to communications, transportation and financial transactions. Plastic Dreams: Synthetic Visions in Design tells the fascinating story of these truly wondrous materials, charting their evolution from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, across a huge range of landmark product types, from Wells Coates’ iconic AD 65 radio to Konstantin Grcic’s MYTO stacking chair, and from Bakelite in the 1920s to today’s latest techno-polymers.”

Pre-order now from Amazon.

More looks inside Plastic Dreams: Synthetic Visions in Design book after the click.

Flavorwire turns us onto a new “music” book which hits us directly in our obsessive collector souls.

“From Frank Sinatra to Foo Fighters, Five Hundred 45s: A Graphic History of the Seven-Inch Recordchronicles more than half a century of vinyl-single art, all reproduced at original size… Compiled and written by album designers Spencer Drate and Judith Salavetz, the book groups its 500 subjects thematically, rather than chronologically. Collectively, the images represent the best use of art, illustration, photography, and typography in the packaging of an analog format that has survived through the digital revolution.”

Available now from Amazon.

More looks inside Five Hundred 45s: A Graphic History of the Seven-Inch Record Book after the click.

Nothing beats a good drink in a fantastic setting.

21st Century Bars allows readers to saddle up at some of the world’s most innovative and well thought out establishments. The book covers a worthy range – getting insight about builds ranging from refined to retro. Family favorites (my brother reviews bars for a rather big magazine) like Apotheke, hidden in the bowels of New York’s Chinatown, are included along with pool-cum-lounge Skybar in Kuala Lumpur’s Traders Hotel. In total just over 60 bars find space in the compendium, edited by Andrew Hall and described by Images Publishing as a “globe-hopping tour.” Each gets a 4-page spread, heavy on images and with a brief two to three paragraph description. We get mention of the architect or designer, the lone complaint with the “tour” coming from a lack of provided addresses.

The images, however, are largely stunning and enough to keep pages turning – and perhaps transporting a home session into a true spot of casual opulence.

Available from Amazon.

A selection of favorite bars (Apotheke, Brisbane’s Libertine, Brooklyn’s Freak, London’s Avalon) after the jump.

You’d have to be under a rock (or more aptly have avoided the internet for a year or so) to be unaware of Take Ivy.

Originally published in 1965 in Japan, the book sparked a explosion of American “Ivy Style” in Tokyo. Photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida captured the spirit of 1960s student fashion with candid photographs taken in class, at the boathouse, and through the quads of Ivy League campuses. The photographer was joined in the book’s production by a trio of equally fashionable and savvy young men – Shosuke Ishizu, Toshiyuki Kuruso, and Hajime (Paul) Hasegawa. Their resulting work has gained wide recognition as the diffinitive document of the American prep style.

In September of 2010, powerHouse will issue their reprint, the first (there was a Japanese reprint in 2006) to be fully translated in English. The revival, clearly, comes at an opportune time – who can argue the current appeal of the styles contained within the books 142 pages and 145 photographs.

Pre-order now from Amazon.

A reminder of some of the great images after the jump. Credit: Take Ivy, published by powerHouse Books.

Originally published in 1986, Elliot J. Gorn’s The Manly Art: Bare-knuckle Prize Fighting in America was updated and re-released earlier this year. Gorn goes to great lengths to capture the history of the sport in America. By the 1860s, boxing began to receive considerable attention (mostly because bouts were illegal) and had given rise to a new breed of working class hero. These details figure in a finely tuned story that questions gender, class, and ethnicity while positioning the issue of masculinity within the economic constructs of industrialization.

Gorn has updated the bibliography, and also provides an afterward musing on his achievement and the changes to studies of sports and culture since his landmark publication first appeared. Gorn is professor of American Civilization at Brown University.

The Manly Art is published by Cornell University Press. Available now from Amazon.

Note – the above image shows the original cover.

What makes an American hero?

The above question drives Pulitzer Prize winning author Edmund S. Morgan’s newest book, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America. His take challenges the status quo, offering more than the typical founding father worship. What’s more impressive than the challenge is that Morgan is 93-years old and still hitting history hard.

Published by Norton. Available now from Amazon.

I’m not yet ready to call Spring 2010 the season of bicycle books, but a fair few have just landed or are on the horizon. Gestalten’s offering, Velo: Bicycle Culture and Design, covers an impressive swath of people – frame builders, professional cyclists, urban planners – and explores current trends in cycling from an aesthetic angle. As such the book is very much about cycling in the now – perhaps with a bit too much emphasis on trend.

Learn more at Gestalten. Pre-order now from Amazon.

Have a butcher’s at some page views after the jump.