Book news: 10 new titles to flick through this month

Pastoral: Moscow's Suburbs
By Alexander Gronsky

The romance of the banal has become something of a cliché in contemporary photography, but Alexander Gronsky manages to bring a fresh eye to what could have been a familiar subject. Moscow's outskirts are liminal spaces that pair the vast, impersonal slab-sided blocks of Communist-era social housing with areas of apparently untouched countryside. What appear at first to be sylvan havens or secluded beaches are always interrupted by distant walls of concrete or overhead power lines, the sand bearing the imprint of bulldozer tracks and punctured by waste pipes. Yet in every picture, people play and relax, seemingly oblivious to the contradictions. Scattered litter often gives way to proper shanty towns, while tower cranes herald the coming of vast, slab-sided blocks of 'modern' apartments for sale, the architectural differences between ideologies confined to tiny changes of detail.

Published by Contrasto (opens in new tab), £30

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Eat, Drink, Nap
By Soho House

Since the first Soho House opened its doors 17 years ago, founder Nick Jones has been perfecting its signature 'House' hospitality. If you've ever wondered what makes its members club experience so sought after, some of the group's secrets have been revealed in a new lifestyle manual entitled 'Eat, Drink, Nap'. After years of advising guests on hosting parties, to serving cocktails and making comfortable beds, Jones decided to compile the 300-page compendium with help from leading food and interiors photographers Mark Seelen and Jean Cazals. From house recipes to decorating insights, the book offers tips and tidings on how to bring the House home.

Published by Preface Publishing (opens in new tab), £30

Writer: Mariel Reed

Show Time: The 50 Most Influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art
By Jens Hoffmann

Modern art has always loved spectacle, from the scandalous reception afforded the first exhibitions of Impressionist and Abstract work at the start of the modernist period through to more recent controversies over presentation, content and artistic intent. Show Time looks at the last two decades of art on show, focusing not just on the controversies but also on the art market's steady global creep, as it stakes out new territories through fairs, emerging collectors and producers.

Published by Thames & Hudson (opens in new tab), £29.95

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming
By Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby are designers on the fringes of artistic practice. The duo work and teach - most notably at the RCA's pioneering Design Interactions course - and this new book explores the use of design as an idea-making process, rather than a means of just creating new products and new desires. As a result, many of the illustrated projects, including many of their own, meander between irony and satire, optimistic vision and dystopic warning.

Published by The MIT Press (opens in new tab), £19.95

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Anders Petersen
By Anders Petersen

For over 30 years, Swedish photographer Anders Petersen has chronicled the after-dark culture of various cities, focusing on the most marginalised members of society - be they incarcerated or have simply fallen through the cracks. Working in stark black and white, this new monograph from Max Ström presents a galling selection of his best work.

Published by Max Ström (opens in new tab), £45

Writer: Jonathan Bell

David Chipperfield Architects
Introduction by David Chipperfield, text by Fulvio Irace

Chipperfield's star continues to ascend, even though his home country can be mysteriously antagonistic to the architect's approach. Regardless of these setbacks (largely usurped by the success of his two recent major cultural projects: The Hepworth Wakefield and Margate's Turner Contemporary), it's continental Europe and the US that has become the main stomping ground of this sophisticated talent. Chipperfield helms one of the few firms that can juggle the demands of a large commercial practice with a densely layered approach to history, context, texture and environment and this new monograph rounds up his latest work.

Published by Thames & Hudson (opens in new tab), £48.00

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Conversations on the Hudson
By Nick Hand

This Selby-esque travelogue manages to bring together several contemporary tropes - cycling, craft, crisp macro photography - to offer up a new perspective on the recent emergence of artists and makers in the very vogueish surroundings of the Hudson Valley. The subtitle offers up a tantalising taste of a Jerome K Jerome-style journey - An Englishman bicycles five hundred miles through the Hudson Valley, meeting artists and craftspeople along the way - but in practice author Nick Hand doesn't offer much in the way of a traveller's tale, preferring to let the cast of creatives do their own talking and offer themselves and their work up to his lens.

Published by Princeton Architectural Press (opens in new tab), £15.99; available from 1 February, pre-order here (opens in new tab)

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Bailey's Stardust
By David Bailey and Tim Marlow

A man in need of no introduction, David Bailey's contribution to photography - be it fashion, reportage or portrait - has been monumental. In Spring 2014 the photographers gets a major retrospective at London's National Portrait Gallery, sponsored by Hugo Boss, and this hefty publication chronicles not just the images but the stories behind the shoots.

Published by National Portrait Gallery (opens in new tab), £45

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Tony Fretton Architects: Buildings and their Territories
By Tony Fretton

Birkhäuser's handsome new monograph of the work of Tony Fretton Architects, 'Buildings and their Territories', is stark and sober but ultimately rewarding, much like the studio's architecture. Covering a career that runs all the way from offices for Mute Records through to major galleries, museums and the British Embassy in Warsaw, Fretton has always taken a slightly left field approach, making him the architect of choice for many major artists. Like his contemporary David Chipperfield - also in the frame with a new monograph - his studio has developed a form of minimalism that revels in material qualities and the inevitable idiosyncrasies of everyday life, rather than an impossible asceticism.

Published by Birkhäuser (opens in new tab), £64.95

Writer: Jonathan Bell

The Design of Everyday Things: revised and expanded edition
By Donald A Norman

Speak to many product designers of a certain generation and at some point they'll cite this influential 1988 work. The Design of Everyday Things introduced such concepts as human-centred design, and looked long and hard at how our interaction with the world around us could be guided by common sense and a spot of psychology. Donald A Norman's book has now been revised and updated for an era that's more likely to swipe a finger than to flick a switch. Nevertheless, the basic principles of intuitive design remain in place - perhaps even more so. Norman will guide you to a more functional and pleasing place.

Published by The MIT Press (opens in new tab), £12.95

Writer: Jonathan Bell