isbn world rights / special projects
Lori Sammartino
ITALIAN SUNDAYS / La domenica degli italiani
Photographic book / hardback
230 pages | 2009
With a preface by Ennio Flaiano and a note by Maurizio Costanzo
“A fascinating story where the images talk about our cities and the thin extravagance of their citizens” – IL MESSAGGERO
These pages by Lori Sammartino form a long story in which images from Italian cities and their inhabitants’ subtle and ever-amazing extravagance take a leading role. Sammartino’s look is that of a writer at rest: he is attracted by the minor details of life in the streets, those details that inspirit a city and comfort the voluntarily unemployed. The photos collected in this book have the quality of happy moments captured with the self-confidence of young people craving for memories and loving life, which consumes itself before their eyes the very moment it happens. Capturing that fleeting moment is the secret. But only affectionate irony, only true love for one’s neighbor can help an artist harbor those - ultimately desperate - memories. (From Ennio Flaiano’s preface)
Lori Sammartino (1924-1971) was a photographer and an artist. Her pictures appeared on many illustrated books.
Ennio Flaiano (1910-1972) was a screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist and drama critic. He is best known for his work with Federico Fellini.
All pictures available
Alessandro Scotti
CHASING THE DRAGON / Narcotica
essay
416 pages | 2007
“His talent has transformed the tragic plight of a few into a global campaign against narco-trafficking. He shows us the face of addiction, exploitation and physical suffering, and challenges us to respond” – UN DRUGS AND CRIME EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Clandestine worlds, meetings, corruption and violence on the drug traffic routes, in the most global of the markets. Six years were spent Chasing the Dragon among opium growers and crack houses in Bogotà; on the airplanes of the anti-drug police who spend every night controlling the Carribbean sea as well as under the burqua of an elderly female Afghani heroin addict. From Tagikistan to Colombia, from Pakistan to Liberia, from Guinea Bissau to Myanmar. A long report which raccounts with precision and humanity how drugs are simultaneously tools of survival, an obsession, a motive for living, goods for exchange, and the tipping point on the scale of delicate geopolitical equilibria. Without the moralism and the heroism of a frontline journalist, Scotti’s story and pictures form an extraordinary, exciting, painful and sincere action movie.
English sample available
Alessandro Scotti
CHASING THE DRAGON XL / Narcotica XL
photographic book / hardback
180 pages | 230 pictures
Clandestine worlds, meetings, corruption and violence on the drug traffic routes, in the most global of markets. Six years were spent «chasing the dragon» among opium growers and crack houses in Bogotà; on the airplanes of the anti-drug police who spend every night controlling the Carribbean sea as well as under the burqua of an elderly female Afghani heroin addict. From Tagikistan to Colombia, from Pakistan to Liberia, from Guinea Bissau to Myanmar. Alessandro Scotti’s pictures form an extraordinary, exciting, painful and sincere action movie.
Alessandro Scotti (1971), journalist and photographer. He was recently appointed Goodwill Ambassador to the U.N.. He has worked in more than 20 countries. His articles and his images were published in many magazines in Italy and abroad.
Pietro Adamo, Stefano Benzoni
PSYCHOFARMERS®
non fiction / illustrated
304 pages | 2006
“Brilliant… a perfect alchemy of witty erudition and focused enthusiasm” – LA STAMPA
“Psychofarmers® is a precious and unique book” – IL SOLE 24 ORE
A complete history of psychopharmaceuticals from when they appeared to their recent explosion. Each day, four million Italians consume the "happiness pills", a mass phenomenon not yet described adequately. A story that moves forward on a double plane: on one side there are the theories on psycofarmacology’s influence on the collective imagination (from Marilyn Monroe to President Cossiga). On the other side, it’s a real guide to the (non)-use of psychotropic drugs and which contains a series of useful and clear pieces of information for everybody: the mechanisms of drug action, the collateral effects, and the dangers, positioned under a more general reflection on the psychiatric question and its role in the modern times.
Pietro Adamo (1959), is a professor of Modern History. His books include Il Dio dei blasfemi and Il porno di massa. (The God of the Blasphemers and Mass Porn). Stefano Benzoni (1972), a children’s neuropsychiatrist and psychotherapist, he is author of Nove domande sulla coscienza and Il presente discontinuo.
English sample available
Carlo Antonelli e Fabio De Luca
DISCOINFERNO History of Dancing in Italy 1946-2006
non fiction
256 pages | 2006
“This is the history of the italian way of having fun from the postwar period until today seen through the changements in the way of dancing” – LA REPUBBLICA
Sixty years of Italian history and customs as seen through the litmus test of "dance music." A journey that starts from the village fairs of the fifties and ends up at the beach resorts with DJs in the summer of 2005. It is told through the testimony of those who - minute by minute- experienced it: Claudio Cecchetto, Primo Moroni, Helium Fiorucci, Amanda Lear, Gianni Boncompagni, the Krismas, Charles Freccero and many others.
Carlo Antonelli is the editorial director of Rolling Stone’s Italian edition. In 1996, together with Fabio De Luca and Marco Delogu, he published Fuori Tutti. Una generazione in camera sua.
Fabio De Luca writes for la Repubblica XL and Io Donna and hosts programs on RadioRai. He is the author of Mamma, mamma, voglio fare il dj (2004).
BIANCIARDI! / Bianciardi!
book + DVD 80 pages | 2008 English sample available
“A sober but alive reconstruction, a trip through Italy between the Fifties and the Seventies which shows without any nostalgia the weft of «how we were»” – VANITY FAIR
Inside an old Fiat, along the streets of Milan during the boom. Amidst the rubble of Ribolla, in Grosseto, Tuscany. Along the seaside in Rapallo, Liguria, amidst the retired folks. Bianciardi! looks into the Tuscan’s writers real «bitter life» through the voices of his friends and family. Maria Jatosti, Enrico Vaime, Sergio Pautasso, Luciana Bianciardi, Mario Dondero, Carlo Ripa di Meana, Carlo Lizzani and others who reveal the hope, the rage, and the affections of an intellectual who left the provinces to change the world, or at least the bigoted Italy of his time. After the two volumes of L’antimeridiano (Isbn Edizioni - Ex- Cogita), Bianciardi! (presented at the Venice Festival in 2007) is the story of this writer’s life told through images.
Massimo Coppola (1972) He writes for television: Brand:New, Pavlov, Avere Ventanni. Filmmaker: La regola del contemporaneamente, Politica Zero, Parafernalia.
Giacomo Papi
UNDER ARREST The XIX History in 366 Mug Shots
non fiction / illustrated
208 pages | 2005
Rights sold to: Alba Editorial (SPAIN) Seven Stories Press (USA) Granta (UK) Denoël (FRANCE)
“A rogue’s gallery of the great, the good and Ozzy” – THE OBSERVER
“In a world obsessed with celebrity, Under Arrest is an irresistible who’s who of iconic lawbreakers” – NEW STATEMENT
Looking history in the face. Hundreds of famous people arrested tell the story of the short twentieth century. Singers and actors, revolutionary and mafia guys, serial killers and spies, heads of State, groups of thieves, and whores are on display. Frank Sinatra was arrested for having seduced a married woman, a young Bill Gates for drinking and driving, Martin Luther King for inciting racial hatred. And then, among others, Stalin, Lenin, Jane Fonda, Al Pacino, Al Capone, Vallanzasca, Hugh Grant, Gramsci, Pavese, Fidel Castro, Sacco & Vanzetti, Gaetano Bresci who killed the king of Italy, Aldo Moro put on police record in his "people’s jail". Each remarkable historical event remains entangled in the net of the mug shot.
Giacomo Papi (1968) is a journalist and writer. He founded Isbn Edizioni in 2004 together with Massimo Coppola.
Read an excerpt of the American Edition
Tobor Experiment
TECH STUFF. Video manual of electronic music
book + DVD
192 pages | 2007
“The history of electronic music in a tiny and cool book” – VANITY FAIR
Tech Stuff is the DVD of the first complete production of QOOB.TV. Ten mini-documentaries which, in short clips, show us the techniques, artists, and the weirdest tools that make up the History of electronic music: from theremin to the concrete music of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, from Luciano Berio’s experimentations to Pan Sonic and the digitalization of sound. Besides the ten episodes in the series, there’s an interview with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Generator X1 as well as a «do-it- yourself » software tutorial to learn how to synthesize sound. Tech Stuff Insider is the book that delves deeper into and is supplementary to the subjects coverei in the documentaries. The technical secrets, the philosophical questions, the projects, and the brilliant intuitions of the protagonists who made the History of electronic music, from Moog to MIDI language.
Tobor Experiment (aka Giorgio Sancristoforo) Sound designer, sound technician and professor of Synthesis at SAE, has composed music for movies and TV and has participated in a long series of soundart project collaborations around the world.
English version available
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