Alex Seago's book has been inspired by his desire to understand and discover the origins of postmodern culture in Britain. One of the main points of his study is that it was art and design students who were among the first to be aware of and to articulate social implications of postmodernculture. Arguing that postwar art schools provided a vital crucible for the development of a particuarly English cultural sensibility, he focuses on cultural change at the Royal College of Art, London, during the 1950s and 1960s. The students' attack on the English 'box of beautiful things' - aterm used by a former student to describe the neo-Romantic, neo-Victorian, highly decorated tastes of some RCA tutors - took several forms which eventually resulted in the Pop Art produced by the 1959-62 generation (Boshier, Phillips, Jones, Hockney et al.)Alex Seago traces the emergence of English postmodernism through the pages of ARK: The Journal of the Royal College of Art, interviewing ARK's editors, art editors, and contributors including Len Deighton, novelist and art editor of ARK 10; Clifford Hatts, student at the RCA 1946-8 and later head ofthe Design Group, BBC; Peter Blake (RCA Painting School, 1953-6); Robyn Denny (RCA Painting School, 1954-7). ARK's object of enquiry remained 'the elusive but necessary relationships between the arts and the social context' throughout its twenty-five year history, making it a valuable archive forthe cultural historian: in its most memorable issues, ARK's layouts complemented the contents to produce distillations of the energy and enthusiasm of the period under review.

This is a lively and thought-provoking book about how to do creativity, unlock your potential, and make a difference. The artists, musicians, and writers we think of as ’very creative’ are just like us, except that they have spent time developing and realising ideas, and have found the confidence to share them with the world. None of this comes naturally. This wide-ranging book offers research, advice, and philosophy to fuel your understanding and passion for creativity. David Gauntlett draws on his own experiences of making music and experimenting with digital media alongside 25 years of researching creativity. Including insights from a diverse array of creators, this book highlights the vitality of the individual creative voice in a world where social media offers a weird mix of inspiration and suffocation, and our struggles for social justice are equally hopeful and upsetting. Creativity shows how vulnerability, experimentation, and courage can enable us to become bold and engaging creators.

In Working Class Heroes, David Simonelli explores the influence of rock and roll on British society in the 1960s and '70s. At a time when social distinctions were becoming harder to measure, rock musicians appeared to embody the mythical qualities of the idealized working class by perpetuating the image of rebellious, irreverent, and authentic musicians.

Lawrence Alloway (1926–90) was one of the most influential and widely respected art writers of the postwar years. A key interpreter of pop art, abstraction, and land art, he was also involved with the realist revival and the early feminist movement in art. Art and Pluralism provides close and critical readings of Alloway's writings and sets his work in the context of the London and New York art worlds from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Nigel Whiteley underlines the particular importance of pluralism and its relationship with the artistic value systems that bookended it—formalism and postmodernism—shedding new light on postwar visual culture as a whole.

Beyond Archigram is the first study of the prehistory of digital representation to focus on the magazine Archigram, the magazine published in London irregularly between 1961 and 1970 and the name of the group that created it. Archigram is among the most significant phenomena to emerge in post-war architectural culture. The wired environments first advertised on its pages formulated an architectural vocabulary of metamorphosis and obsolescence that cross-pollinated industrial and digital technology at the same time as complex systems were becoming commercially available. Through archival, theoretical and visual analysis, Hadas Steiner explores the process through which this model was envisaged and disseminated within an international network of practitioners and shows how the assimilation of Archigram imagery set the course for the visual output of what are now commonplace tools in architectural practice. This book will provide a foundation for further inquiry into the integration of digital technology at every level of design.

The scars. She'll never forgive her attacker. Seven years ago, a knife-wielding stranger left socialite Ava Camden for dead on the sidewalk of an upscale Atlanta restaurant. She survived, but her face was brutally scarred. The police, the courts, and the powerful Camden family pinned the assault on only one suspect: Joel Sapphire, a twenty-year-old star athlete on the cusp of a pro football career. Too drunk to remember any details, Joel was found over Ava's body, holding the bloody weapon. The letters. His brother is her only hope for the truth. Graham Sapphire grew up fighting on the city's tough southside, and he'll never let the Camdens crush his family. Now a wealthy hotelier, he's determined to clear his brother's name--and to find the monster responsible for Ava's scars. Graham started writing to Ava the day his brother entered prison, asking her to give him a chance and offering his help. She never answered--but she never stopped reading. The secrets. The truth may destroy them both. Now Joel has been paroled, only to vanish before Graham can reach him. Is he lurking in the shadows or on the run from death threats? Ava is the lure that will bring him back, but she's not alone in the fight. Graham will give his life--and even his brother's--to protect her. The bond between them is hot, tender, and almost as dangerous as the hunter who waits in the shadows of the city's darkest streets. Nicki Salcedo is a graduate of Stanford University with a degree in English and Creative Writing. She is a two-time recipient of the Maggie Award of Excellence and a Golden Heart Finalist. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and four kids.

The vibrant fine arts and mass culture that the United Stated exported to Britain in the postwar period had a powerful and far-reaching impact on many British artists, art students and critics. In a fascinating social and cultural history covering the period from the 1940s to the 1990s, but with emphasis on the 1950s and 1960s, John A. Walker offers a scholarly but accessible account of America's Cold War cultural offensive and the role played by American artists living in Britain.This is the first text to document in detail the variegated responses of British artists to postwar America and its art, criticism and mass media. Their reactions that ranged from Americanism - enthusiasm and compliance - to Anti-Americanism - criticism and resistance. Covering significant art movements such as Abstract Expressionism, the Independent Group and Pop Art, Walker synthesises information from hundreds of published sources and interviews to paint a vivid picture of a crucial period in British culture.Many of the critics, painters and sculptors featured - Lawrence Alloway, Peter Blake, Reyner Banham, Anthony Caro, Clement Greenberg, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, R.B. Kitaj, John Latham, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Herbert Read, Bridget Riley, Larry Rivers - are now internationally famous. The study is brought up to date with an overview of the decline in American influence during in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of Brit Art.

From the streets of Brooklyn and the horse trails of Saratoga Springs, Lew tells of the life he led as an Italian-American, becoming more aware of how his ethnic group with its values of family and hard work, made him into the successful man he became. Most autobiographies seek to find the meaning of one life as it passes through time, touched by the past, making sense of where this life began as it moves towards its destiny. Lew Elia's story has much more depth. Lew narrates his story to study how he and his ancestors became part of the fabric of American life. Lew Elia's story was to be a narrative for his children only; we should be very thankful that he shared his tale with all of us so that we, too could study the impact that Italian immigrants made on America's development. They put much more than the garlic in the melting pot.