About this item
**Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year 2013****NPR's Best Books of the Year 2013**WITH BEAUTIFUL FULL-COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUTFrom one of the most original and imaginative American cartoonists at work today comes a collection of graphic narratives on the subjects of urban planning, product design, and architecture—a surrealist handbook for the rebuilding of society in the twenty-first century.Ben Katchor, a master at twisting mundane commodities into surreal objects of social significance, now takes on the many ways our property influences and reflects cultural values. Here are window-ledge pillows designed expressly for people-watching and a forest of artificial trees for sufferers of hay fever. The Brotherhood of Immaculate Consumption deals with the matter of products that outlive their owners; a school of dance is based upon the choreographic motion of paying with cash; high-visibility construction vests are marketed to lonely people as a method of getting noticed.
About the Author
Ben Katchor's picture-stories and drawings have appeared in the Forward, Metropolis Magazine, and The New Yorker. His weekly strips include: Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, The Jew of New York, The Cardboard Valise, Hotel & Farm and most recently Shoehorn Technique. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, was a fellow at The American Academy in Berlin and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Katchor's libretto and drawings for The Carbon Copy Building, a collaboration with Bang on a Can, received an Obie Award for Best New American Work.More recently, he has collaborated with musician Mark Mulcahy on "The Rosenbach Company," a sung-through musical biography of Abe Rosenbach, the preeminent rare-book dealer of the 20th century, "The Slugbearers of Kayrol Island," which won an Obie Award in 2008, "A Checkroom Romance," a love story about the culture and architecture of the coat-check room and most recently, "Up From the Stacks," the story of a page retrieving books from the stacks of The New York Public c. 1970.He is an Associate Professor at Parsons, The New School for Design in New York City.For more information visit www.katchor.com
