It's refreshing to know design does matter—and that people still matter—to such design leaders as CCA Graphic Design faculty member and alum Michael Vanderbyl (BFA Graphic Design 1968), who has gained international prominence in the design field as a practitioner, educator, critic, and advocate.

A Road Divided
Nazraeli Press Press, 2010
Hardcover, 64 pages, $75

Nazraeli Press is pleased to announce Todd Hido's new book of landscape photographs. Driving lonely roads on the outskirts of cities, Hido creates poignant images filled with inexplicable gravity, often fully disintegrated, recalling impressionist painting. He often frames the compositions from inside his car, photographing straight through the windshield, using it as an additional lens and bringing a sense of timing and moment.

Select CCA Architecture Studio Series titles listed here can be purchased through William Stout Architectural Books. Select individual titles for specific ordering information.

5X2
CCA & University of California Berkeley College of Environmental Design
Executive Editor Balz Mueller and associate editor Mark Donohue
Paperback, 174 pages, $25

City in the River, City in the Forest
Hag's Head Press, 2010
Paperback, 128 pages, 12.99 Euros

In this new book by Melanie Westerberg (Writing 2004), Mary is a tour guide at a remote lodge in the Amazon. There she meets Hector, who sneaks into her hammock late at night and leaves tiny gifts at her door. But then she begins to see fires on uninhabited land, hear gunshots, encounter suspicious strangers in the dead of night. She doesn’t know if it’s the start of another undeclared civil war or retribution against the lodge owner, whose husband had fought with the rebels before disappearing for a decade.

Says Peter Orner, author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, "Melanie Westerberg has written a wondrous first book. The writing is unique and brave, and the story is as engaging as it is harrowing. It’s the sort of rare, completely original book I am always looking for and never finding."