Chanel in Vogue by Susanna Brown, Rebecca C. Tuite (Thames & Hudson) Massive in scale and ambition, this two-volume slipcased set chronicles Chanel as seen through the pages of Vogue. Spanning more than a century of editorials from Gabrielle Chanel’s early innovations to the reinventions of Karl Lagerfeld and Virginie Viard, the book gathers landmark photography and illustration alongside rarer archival discoveries. Images by Steichen, Penn, Newton, Lindbergh, Leibovitz, and others trace how the house evolved in dialogue with fashion’s most influential image-makers. With 400 color illustrations, the result is less a survey than a visual monument to Chanel’s enduring myth. https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/

Thomas Hoepker: Stories of Humanity by Thomas Hoepker (teNeues) This handsome retrospective revisits the quietly powerful career of Thomas Hoepker, whose images helped define postwar photojournalism. A longtime contributor to magazines such as Stern and a member of Magnum Photos, Hoepker practiced what has often been called “concerned photography,” pairing formal clarity with deep human empathy. The selection moves from early black-and-white reportage to later color work, including his celebrated series on Muhammad Ali and his haunting photograph from September 11, 2001. Together the images reveal a photographer attuned to both the drama of history and the quiet truths of everyday life. https://us.gestalten.com/

Creating A New Home In Mallorca by Malene Birger (teNeues) This lushly illustrated volume follows Birger as she breathes new life into a long-abandoned 600-square-meter house in Felanitx, Mallorca. Documented in collaboration with photographer Jean Marie Del Moral, the book traces the two-year transformation of a crumbling structure into a serene Mediterranean home. Images of sunlit rooms, textured materials, and carefully chosen artworks reveal Birger’s instinct for balancing tradition with contemporary ease. More than a renovation diary, the project reads as a meditation on place, patience, and creative reinvention. The result is both intimate portrait and design inspiration. https://us.gestalten.com/

The Landscape of Man–Revised & Updated Edition by Geoffrey & Susan Jellicoe (Thames & Hudson) First published in 1975, The Landscape of Man remains one of the most ambitious attempts to read human history through the spaces we shape. Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe trace a continuous thread from ancient gardens to modern megacities, arguing that landscapes express enduring ideas about power, harmony, and meaning. This updated edition, with new material by critic Tim Richardson, extends the narrative into contemporary urbanism and ecological design. Illustrated with more than 600 color images, it stands as both a foundational text and a sweeping visual atlas of humanity’s built environments. https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/

The Roman World War: From the Ides of March to Cleopatra’s Suicide by Giusto Traina, Malcolm DeBevoise (Translator) (Princeton University Press) Traina reframes the final decades of the Roman Republic as a far-reaching geopolitical conflict rather than a series of internal power struggles. Moving beyond familiar rivalries—Caesar and Pompey, Octavian and Antony—the book foregrounds the regional rulers and non-Roman societies drawn into the upheaval that followed Caesar’s assassination. From Iberia to Mesopotamia, Traina traces how expansion, alliance, and opportunism entangled diverse peoples in a shared crisis. The result is a compelling “connected history” that restores agency to Rome’s periphery and recasts the Republic’s collapse as a global war with truly international stakes. https://press.princeton.edu/

Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal: The Life and Times of a Female Impersonator (The Pride List) by Sandip Roy (Seagull Books) Roy’s intimate portrait of Chapal Bhaduri captures a performer caught between eras. Once celebrated as Chapal Rani, the preeminent female impersonator of Bengal’s jatra stage, Bhaduri saw his world recede as women began to claim those roles for themselves. Roy blends biography with imagined vignettes, allowing Chapal’s voice to emerge with candor and poignancy. The result is both a vivid reconstruction of Kolkata’s theatrical past and a meditation on identity, performance, and displacement, anchored by a figure who refused to relinquish his sense of self. https://seagullbooks.org/

The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape the Books We Love by Katie da Cunha Lewin (Princeton University Press) Katie da Cunha Lewin reconsiders the mythology of the writer’s workspace, treating desks, rooms, and borrowed corners as active participants in literary creation. Moving from Virginia Woolf’s garden retreat to Maya Angelou’s hotel rooms and the café tables of Ernest Hemingway, she reveals how writing is shaped as much by environment as by imagination. The portraits are both intimate and expansive, spanning figures from the Brontës to James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. Lyrical without sentimentality, the book invites readers to see creative spaces not as backdrops, but as catalysts for thought and transformation. https://press.princeton.edu/