The Coffee-Table-Book Publisher Who Prints Whatever He Wants

Benedikt Taschen’s company puts out big, lush volumes on the likes of Picasso, Monet, Stanley Kubrick and Zaha Hadid, of course. But his projects range from The Big Book of Breasts (and its sequel, The Big Butt Book) to a glossy volume of raunchy gay comics by Tom of Finland to a facsimile of the 1534 Luther Bible to GOAT, a 20-inch-square, pink-leather-bound tribute to Muhammad Ali.

After 50 Years, Fantasticks Still Paying Off For Original Investors

“While these investors will never earn as many dollars as those who made much bigger bets on blockbuster musicals like “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Wicked” with much higher ticket prices, “Fantasticks” backers will still most likely enjoy a more sizable profit in percentage terms: accountants for the show estimated their total return at about 24,000 percent since 1960.”

So What’s Competing For This Year’s Tony Glory?

“No star presence on the order of Hugh Jackman, so majestically miscast as a thuggish Chicago cop in the sold-out autumn bore ‘A Steady Rain.’ No scandalous, headline-grabbing target, a la the wildly overproduced British import ‘Enron.’ And not a trace of the cynical, formulaic approach of the desperately unfunny musical version of ‘The Addams Family.'”

Oakland: Culture On The Surge

“There are now 30 arts festivals that take place in Oakland, up from 2 in the mid-’80s, and about 50 art galleries where there were only a handful a decade ago. Industrial-arts organizations like the Crucible, founded in 1999, have been instrumental in supplying the Burning Man Festival with eye-popping installations.”