Asia Grace [Hardcover]

Kevin Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002

From Afghanistan to Japan, this collection offers Kevin Kelly's vision of Asia from East to West.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Taschen (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3822816191
• ISBN-13: 978-3822816196
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 9.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,374,965 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 1999. He has just completed a book for Viking/Penguin publishers called "What Technology Wants," due out in the Fall 2010. He is also editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets half a million unique visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Genre, November 16, 2002

By 

Paul Hawken (Sausalito, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Asia Grace (Hardcover)

In recent years, photography books, whether travel or cultural, have become so designed, edited and digitally retouched that the images actually place you further from reality. You don't trust what is shown; you sense that you will never see what's on the page. Kevin Kelly has produced a very different book. The photographs could appear in any magazine in the world from National Geographic to Der Spiegel, but the book wasn't put together by an art director. There is no story, no copywriter. There are no white spaces. Every image bleeds to the margins. It is dense and rich like its subjects. The photographs pull you into a part of the world that is misunderstood, maligned and distorted every day in our press. The person behind the lens loved the places and people he encountered. From Afghanistan to Japan we journey.

Rarely do text and images work together. Asia Grace releases the images to the imagination. There are no words, no captions, no explanations. It works. It is all photographs, cover to cover. Some of the images are stunning, some are idyllic, some are inexplicable. Without sentiment, Asia Grace places you into a world that we don't understand, don't want to leave, and will never see the same again.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book but frustrating, August 1, 2007

By 

M. Floyd "traveler_mdf" (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Asia Grace (Hardcover)

This is an absolutely gorgeous book but I found it quite frustrating. I have it on my coffee table and love to look through it but am confused by why the publisher did not include a single description of where the pictures are taken. I travel a lot and many of the images appear to be of places that are 'trip-worthy'...however, there is no way to know where they are.

If you just love beautiful photos of exotic places and people, get this book. If you want to get a book to decide where to travel in Asia, look elsewhere.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Coffee Table Book And Even Better "Making Of" Story, July 23, 2008

By 

James Pine (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Asia Grace (Hardcover)

The photos in this book are beautiful (print quality wise, one must take into account that many were taken 30 years ago). The story of how they came about and what Kevin Kelly experienced while creating it are even more important/impressive. It's worth searching the Internet for "Asia Grace" and reading through the website.