A History of the World (in Dingbats): Drawings Words [Hardcover]

As featured inThe New York Times,T Magazine, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

The phenomenally creative musician and filmmaker David Byrne presents new artwork that explores daily life in surprising ways, with unique reflections on shared human experiences - a book for our time from a highly influential artist

Through striking and humorous figurative drawings, the iconic artist and musician David Byrne depicts daily life in intriguing ways. His illustrations, created while under quarantine, expand on the dingbat, a typographic ornament used to illuminate or break up blocks of text, to explore the nuances of life under lockdown and evoke the complex, global systems the pandemic cast in bright light. Edited and designed by Alex Kalman in close collaboration with Byrne, this unique book reflects on shared experiences and presents history as a story that is continually undergoing revision.

David Byrnespractice spans photography, performance, drawing, illustration, video, design, and publishing. In 1975 he cofounded the seminal group Talking Heads. Byrnes exuberant and radical creativity has challenged classifications of art for decades. HisBicycle Diarieswas aLos Angeles Timesbestseller and hisHow Music Workswas aNew York Timesbestseller as well as an Amazon Editors pick and a Best Book of the Month. His hit Tony Awardwinning theatrical concertAmerican Utopiawas adapted by Spike Lee into a concert film that premiered on HBO and received multiple Emmys.

Alex Kalmanis a curator, designer, editor, journalist, and filmmaker. He is the owner of What Studio? and director of Mmuseumm. His exhibitions have been shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. He is a contributor to theNew York Times, theAtlantic, and theNew Yorker.

'Quirky and moving.' Publishers Weekly