Why am I passionate about this?

I make prints and visual books. I founded Bridge Press, now in Kennebunk, Maine, 1989 to publish limited edition artist's books and etchings. The name of the press underscores the collaborative nature of book making. Visual books offered possibilities for the continuity, connection, and unfolding of images—each image is complete yet linked to every other through the structure of the book. Books seemed an ideal vehicle to assemble and connect my prints, to order and unfold a sequence of images, with defined and recurrent shapes, motifs, and composition, and to create a setting in which each image is complete yet linked to every other through the structure of the binding or enclosure.


I wrote

Bestiary: A Book of Animal Poems & Prints

By Brian D. Cohen, Chard deNiord,

Book cover of Bestiary: A Book of Animal Poems & Prints

What is my book about?

Printmaker Brian D. Cohen and poet Chard deNiord have maintained an ongoing dialogue about animals since their first collaboration on…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Affinities: A Journey Through Images from The Public Domain Review

Brian D. Cohen Why did I love this book?

An endlessly fascinating and extensive compendium of reproductions of photographs, diagrams, charts, maps, paintings bizarre, sublime, caustic, illuminating – from the ancients to the modern era. Each image retains something of its historical context, yet they are arrayed with a compelling visual logic by a brilliant visual editor.

By Adam Green,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Affinities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An exploration of echoes and resonances across two millennia of visual culture, celebrating ten years of The Public Domain Review.

Gathering a remarkable collection of over 500 public domain images, Affinities is a carefully curated visual journey illuminating connections across more than two thousand years of image-making. Drawing on a decade of archival immersion at The Public Domain Review, the book has been assembled from a vast array of sources: from manuscripts to museum catalogues, ship logs to primers on Victorian magic. The images are arranged in a single captivating sequence which unfurls according to a dreamlike logic, through a…


Book cover of The Book of Change: Images and Symbols to Inspire Revelations and Revolutions

Brian D. Cohen Why did I love this book?

Ellcock curated a remarkable selection of images that are provocative, transformative, and universal an anthology of archetypes, scanning the world’s vast catalog of visual images from cultures, religions, time periods, political viewpoints, and media. I don’t know a more comprehensive anthology of moral, political, environmental, social, and cultural images, all vivid, challenging, and eternally relevant. 

By Stephen Ellcock,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Book of Change as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Stephen Ellcock, one of the world's most beloved digital curators, presents a collection of radically beautiful and provocative images designed to inspire reflection, revelation, and transformation.

Stephen Ellcock pairs hundreds of images, icons, and symbols spanning three thousand years of artistic creation with quotes from activists and writers to provoke reflection, revelation, and transformation. This eye-opening compendium highlights the environmental challenges facing our planet and the social injustice rampant in our societies, while offering hope that a better world is within our grasp. The artwork includes archival images from prominent and obscure artists, Renaissance paintings, counter-cultural iconography, documentary photography, and…


Book cover of Cosmos: From Romanticism to the Avant-Garde

Brian D. Cohen Why did I love this book?

This book brilliantly revives the concept of cosmography, the visual depiction of the universe, from the beginnings of Romanticism to images from the Hubble telescope. By intermingling images from art and science, the book underscores the powerful visual parallels between the two disciplines, their discoveries equally strange, wondrous, and insightful. 

By Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Centre De Cultura Contemporania De Barcelona, Jean Clair (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cosmos as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From Galileo to Yves Klein the cosmos has been the inspiration for generations of artists, architects and designers. Their multifacetted cosmic visions are the subject of this original volume.


Book cover of Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

Brian D. Cohen Why did I love this book?

The advent of the exactly repeatable pictorial statement is arguably the most significant technological and cultural innovation in the history of humankind. This book examines in detail the contributions to scientific knowledge made by significant Renaissance artists, Hans Holbein, Albrecht Dürer, and Hendrick Goltzius principally among them. In addition to reproducing woodcuts, engravings, and etchings, the book depicts various complex forms of paper engineering from the Renaissance that acted as scientific instruments, maps, simulacra, or utile devices in themselves. 

By Susan Dackerman (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An unusual collaboration among distinguished art historians and historians of science, this book demonstrates how printmakers of the Northern Renaissance, far from merely illustrating the ideas of others, contributed to scientific investigations of their time. Hans Holbein, for instance, worked with cosmographers and instrument makers on some of the earliest sundial manuals published; Albrecht Durer produced the first printed maps of the constellations, which astronomers copied for over a century; and Hendrick Goltzius's depiction of the muscle-bound Hercules served as a study aid for students of anatomy. Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe features fascinating reproductions…


Book cover of The Art of the Print: Masterpieces, History, Techniques

Brian D. Cohen Why did I love this book?

As a printmaker and student of the history and techniques of printmaking, this is my “desert island” volume, the most comprehensive, literate, knowledgeable, and articulate statement on this influential, historically significant, and often overlooked art form. Eichenberg, himself a brilliant and trenchant wood engraver, book illustrator, and political commentator, shows himself to be an eloquent historian, scholar, and interpreter of various printmaking media, not only in Europe and the Americas, but throughout the world, in its long history. 

By Fritz Eichenberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Art of the Print as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With 654 black-and-white illustrations and 95 color plates.


Explore my book 😀

Bestiary: A Book of Animal Poems & Prints

By Brian D. Cohen, Chard deNiord,

Book cover of Bestiary: A Book of Animal Poems & Prints

What is my book about?

Printmaker Brian D. Cohen and poet Chard deNiord have maintained an ongoing dialogue about animals since their first collaboration on the theme in the artist’s book What the Animals Teach Us. Animals have never ceased calling to artist and poet in silent and strange languages that have beckoned them to listen, observe, and wonder. To Cohen and deNiord, animals offer “tokens of ourselves” (Walt Whitman, Song of Myself) as they continue to inspire and surprise. Bestiary pairs over thirty poems and prints of a range of animals in their natural environments.

Carolyn Forché has written an introduction to the book in which she places Bestiary in historical, mythological, moral, and scientific context, and exhorts readers to behold these animate wonders of the world with their full awareness and open hearts.

Book cover of Affinities: A Journey Through Images from The Public Domain Review
Book cover of The Book of Change: Images and Symbols to Inspire Revelations and Revolutions
Book cover of Cosmos: From Romanticism to the Avant-Garde

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Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS

By Amy Carney,

Book cover of Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historian Professor Curl up with a good book reader Traveler – Berlin is my happy place!

Amy's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more on topic, but it would be more accurate to say that I wrote a book about SS men as husbands and fathers.

From 1931 to 1945, leaders of the SS, a paramilitary group under the Nazi party, sought to transform their organization into a racially-elite family community that would serve…

Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS

By Amy Carney,

What is this book about?

From 1931 to 1945, leaders of the SS, a paramilitary group under the Nazi party, sought to transform their organization into a racially-elite family community that would serve as the Third Reich's new aristocracy. They utilized the science of eugenics to convince SS men to marry suitable wives and have many children.

Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS by Amy Carney is the first work to significantly assess the role of SS men as husbands and fathers during the Third Reich. The family community, and the place of men in this community, started with one simple order issued by…


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