BlackBook Magazine

This book's been out for a few months, but if you haven't already heard of Cover Story -- a book of gorgeous, bizarre, and/or erogenous album compiled by Brooklyn's Wax Poetics magazine -- time to correct that oversight. To help get you in the mood, check out our sample gallery of pics from the book.

"When Hermione from the Harry Potter movies gets old enough, I will have sexual intercourse with her." We laughed a little. "Racism. It's otay!" At this point, we can appreciate that poster art creator Jayson Scott Musson is skewering pop culture for its stereotypical representations of race. By the time we get to, "Suck my dick you two dollar Noam Chomsky stunt double," we're a bit tired of the whole thing. The intellectual who postures himself as edgy artiste because he's willing to appeal to the lowest common denominator has been done before. Even with a peppering of spot-on satire—Katrinaland signals some depth amid this decidedly controversial offal—Musson's Too Black For B.E.T.: Episodes I & II seems inauthentically juvenile.

It’s always a little strange -- even jarring -- to attend a gala at the New York Public Library. First, literary types with money seem like an oxymoron. And second, you walk though the hallowed echoey halls filled with intimate lives bound in leather covers, only enter the party and have some lady with glasses (‘cause she reads a lot) and Louboutins step on your foot and spill her pinot noir on you. But a couple of nights ago at the NYPL, there was no wine-spilling and no drunken recitations of Proust (which, frankly, was a bit of a disappointment).

May is for horses (and a stable of great design books).

Walking into Ralph Lauren’s massive, incomparably opulent Polo flagship on Madison Avenue is like time-traveling back to the last gasp of the Gilded Age, a Gatsby-esque glimpse into how the other half died. The Rhinelander Mansion, as it’s properly called, has not been (as many suppose) preserved in aspic from the Vanderbilt Era. In fact, the place was basically gutted when Ralph bought it; interior designer Naomi Leff did the rest, articulating Lauren’s vision so magnificently that he barely blinked at the multimillion-dollar tab. That’s just one of the many projects picturesquely presented in Naomi Leff (Monacelli Press, $60) by Kimberly Williams, the first of the decorous design-oriented offerings this month.

Freeze Frame: Tom Palumbo sizing up Tania Mallet, 1962.

We love France in the springtime, and Paris 1962: Yves Saint Laurent and Dior, The Early Collections—out in May from Rizzoli (176 pages, $75)—offers an insider’s view of just such a season in fashion history. On assignment for Esquire during Paris Fashion Week, Jerry Schatzberg captured moments of glamour and drama—including candids of Diana Vreeland, Helmut Newton, and Hiro—providing a vivid portrait of a bygone sartorial era.

Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, two of the world's most well-respected sniffers, are days away from the release of their illuminating and entertaining new book, Perfumes: The Guide. Below, they sound off on Tom Ford's cocaine-and-crotch controversy, slathering George Clooney in rancid butter, and how to decode fragrance-speak. What's "fresh" actually mean? God only nose.

Luca Turin is a biophysicist who specializes in the art of fragrance. In 1992, he wrote his first book on scent, which was the best-selling tome of its kind in France. (Mostly because it was the only book of its kind in France, jokes Turin.) Tania Sanchez is a successful writer and poet, the sour to Turin's sweet, who has traded editorial advice for free perfume. Together, they've written Perfumes: The Guide, a comprehensive, lighthearted, hilarious look at, well, almost every perfume and cologne ever made. It's at once illuminating and silly, but make no mistake, these two take their noses very seriously. Says Turin of the book's imminent release, "I don't have a lot of perfumer friends, but I think that number is going to go down, not up." After the jump, their scents and sensibilities.

Dave Stewart, one-half of Brit duo Eurythmics, has been producing sweet sonic dreams for the past two decades. Now, with the release of his new comic book, Zombie Broadway, Stewart plans to try his hand at nightmares. Well, not really. In his “horror-comedy-musical graphic novel,” Stewart’s zombies are “Just Like Us!"—they eat candy, Broadway musicals put them to sleep—only deader. Says Stewart, “[The comic] has helped me focus my songwriting and set designs for the Broadway musical that this story is destined to become.” The book, 56 blood-red pages of gore and Gypsy, is accompanied by an animated trailer. Sing along after the jump!

Bringing to light the curatorial practices—and bad-hair days, of which there were many—of American art collector Colin de Land is Colin De Land: American Fine Arts, a book showcasing the art dealer’s life through snapshots, photographs, and personal anecdotes from some of the artists and writers and John Waters involved with de Land and his gallery over the years. The gallery, notorious for its anti-commercialism and unusual shows, was a landmark in the SoHo art scene in the late 1980s. The book pays homage to the legacy left by a man responsible not only for his influence, but for his precedence in New York’s art scene.

“I Will Not Sodomize the Teacher on Fridays”

In the ‘80s, John Lurie starred in a number of Jim Jarmusch cult favorites. In the ‘90s, the onetime downtown New York actor, musician, and painter hosted “Fishing With John,” a TV series that featured the likes of Tom Waits, Dennis Hopper, and Willem Defoe. Inappropriately (and yet not), Lurie didn’t know how to fish. Since the mid-’90s, he’s ceased acting or performing and turned to painting as a result of reportedly undiagnosed symptoms that Lurie likens to Lyme disease.

(Click the jump for images!)

We love us some Stanley Kubrick nostalgia waxing, and Taschen’s new book, succinctly titled Stanley Kubrick: The Complete Films, doesn’t disappoint. Edited by Paul Duncan, the work features candid photos of the enigmatic director, 100 stills from his movies, and Kubrick’s history from, well, Killer’s Kiss to Tom Cruise. And unlike the Diego Rivera tome, this one will only set readers back $10. It’s money well wasted, you know, like what they did with Eyes Wide Shut…