Gallery: Outcasts and Visionaries Populate Fall's Hottest New Books
01tim-burton
A New Jersey kid turns his Batman comic book addiction into a grown-up gig as producer of *The Dark Knight Rising*. A Scottish misfit keeps his eye firmly on a weird prize as he travels 2,000 miles to gather parts so he can build a toaster by hand. Orville and Wilbur Wright sound like drunken frat brothers as they post alt-universe status updates on Facebook. And Tim Burton muses about how his miserable, outcast youth informed one of filmdom's most distinctive bodies of ghoulish work. These are just a few of the stories that are piling up fast as falling leaves this autumn in a new batch of eccentric books. Check the gallery above for 10 reasons to take a break from the computer screen and curl up with humanity's most enduring handheld information-delivery system. *Images courtesy participating publishers.* __Above:__ Tim Burton ---------- __Author:__ Antoine de Baecque __Big idea:__ Filmmaker Burton sits down with de Baecque, former editor in chief of France's prestigious *Cahiers du Cinema*, to dissect the back story behind each of his movies. __Sample text:__ "Humour is the essential basis of my work. And yet I've never been very good at making people laugh. As a child, I was much too self-effacing for that. I tried to do funny drawings or little comic films in Super 8, but they didn't make anyone laugh. My humour was rather twisted, and the deep incomprehension with which it was met gradually made it even more weird and offbeat." __Publisher:__ [Cahiers du cinema](http://www.phaidon.com/store/cahiers-du-cinema/tim-burton-9782866425685/) (November)
02let-there-be-facebook
Let There Be Facebook --------------------- __Author:__ Travis Harmon and Jonathan Shockley __Big idea:__ Profound events are rendered inane by humorists Harmon and Shockley via puerile Facebook posts attributed to famous historic figures including Joan of Arc, Jack the Ripper, Albert Einstein and God. __Sample text:__ Marie Antoinette: Let them eat cake. Bourgeoise: WTF Peasantry: B\*tch you goin' down! Mary Antoinette: You guys, I totally never said that. Peasantry: It's right up there dumbass. We got eyes. Poor, breadless eyes. Marie Antoinette: please ignore all posts from me. I got hacked! Peasantry: You gonna get hacked, all right. __Publisher:__ [Simon and Schuster/Touchstone](http://books.simonandschuster.com/Let-There-Be-Facebook/Travis-Harmon/9781451659436) (November)
03the-boy-who-loved-batman
The Boy Who Loved Batman ------------------------ __Author:__ Michael E. Uslan __Big idea:__ Illustrated memoir chronicles how Uslan turned his childhood love for Batman into a lucrative Hollywood gig as producer for all the Batman films, up to and including *The Dark Knight Rise*. __Sample text:__ *When college grad Uslan sent out 370 resumes to unanimous rejection, he found inspiration in an old Batman comic book.* "I had read all about Batman's emergency Plan B in *Batman Annual # 1*.... If something terrible happened to Batman, Robin was to slip into a strange big costume so he could pass himself off as the real adult Batman. My version of that emergency plan was devoid of costumes, Robin or Batman. My plan B: I would go to law school." __Publisher:__ [Chronicle Books](http://www.chroniclebooks.com/titles/the-boy-who-loved-batman.html/) (September)
04zombies-zombies-zombies
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! -------------------------- __Editor:__ Otto Penzler __Big idea:__ Editor Penzler offers historic literary context for pop culture's current fascination with flesh-eating ghouls, presenting more than 50 classic zombie tales penned by chill-meisters including Stephen King, Harlan Ellison Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. __Sample text:__ *W. B. Seabrook claimed his 1929 short story* Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields *was based on fact.* "\[The farmer\] was interested in helping me toward an understanding of the tangled Haitian folk-lore.... He had been telling me of fire-hags who left their skins at home and set the cane fields blazing; of the vampire, a woman sometimes living, sometimes dead, who sucked the blood of children and who could be distinguished because her hair always turned an ugly red; of the werewolf-chauché, in Creole -- a man or woman who took the form of some animal, usually a dog, and went killing lambs, young goats, sometimes babies." " __Publisher:__ [Random House/Vintage](http://www.randomhouse.com/book/204705/zombies-zombies-zombies-by-otto-penzler) (September)
05the-toaster-project
The Toaster Project ------------------- __Author:__ Thomas Thwaites __Big idea:__ As a DIY exercise, Thwaites details his 20-month mission to build an ordinary toaster, which, in the end, costs 250 times more than a store-bought version of the household appliance. __Sample text:__ "I poked through the furnace with a stick and pulled out a blobby black mass of something heavy.... Using a blowtorch, I heated it up until it turned bright red and hit it gently with a hammer. My iron shattered on impact along with my dream of making a toaster." __Publisher:__ [Princeton Architectural Press](http://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781568989976) (October)
06hardware-the-definitive-sf-works-of-chris-foss
Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss ----------------------------------------------- __Author:__ Brian Hughes and Imogene Foss with Alejandro Jodorowsky __Big idea:__ Spectacular pictures tell the story of the [Chris Foss](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Foss), the British artist whose cover illustrations for 1970s-era sci-fi paperbacks exerted enormous influence on future renderings of alien technology. __Sample text:__ "The soft curves of his spaceships are broken up by antennas, solar panels and observation decks -- his creations are real machines, not just an artist's dreams. They combine the two elements so essential to science fiction: realism and a sense of wonder." __Publisher:__ [Titan Books](http://titanbooks.com/hardware-the-definitive-sf-works-of-chris-foss-4779/) (September)
07metamaus-a-look-inside-a-modern-classic-maus
Metamaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus ---------------------------------------------- __Author:__ Art Spiegelman __Big idea:__ Twenty-five years after Art Spiegelman commandeered the attention of high-brow critics with his Holocaust-themed graphic novel *Maus*, the author reveals the research and artistic influences behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Metamaus includes a DVD linking to archival audio interviews, historical documents and private notebooks. __Sample text:__ "The shock of becoming celebrated, rewarded for depicting so much death, left me trying to burrow into a mouse hole and disappear. It's a very natural desire: to look away. It's what has people looking at the cover of *Maus* and saying, "Ew. It has a swastika on it. I don't wanna read it." __Publisher:__ [Pantheon](http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375423949) (October)
08everybody-loves-our-town-an-oral-history-of-grunge
Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge --------------------------------------------------- __Author:__ Mark Yarm __Big idea:__ More than 250 key players from Seattle's gritty music scene chime in with tart insights about creative life before, during and after Nirvana inadvertently transformed angst into a pop culture marketing concept. __Sample text:__ "Hole manager Janet Billig: 'I lived in a 300-square-foot apartment. Tons of people crashed there on tour. Mudhoney ... Hole, Nirvana, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, Skin Yard. L7 once stayed at my house and called Alaska and ran up my phone bill; there was blood all over my sheets --I have no idea what they did up there.'" __Publisher:__ [Crown Archetype](http://www.randomhouse.com/book/194782/everybody-loves-our-town-by-mark-yarm) (September)
09geek-girls-unite
Geek Girls Unite ---------------- __Author:__ Leslie Simon __Big idea:__ Tina Fey worshipper Leslie Simon crowdsources media obsessions from a "guild" of like-minded women to assemble this peppy survey of comedy, literary, film and music icons, all the while evangelizing on behalf of misfit females. __Sample text:__ "Beta males are the opposite of alpha males. They tend to be intelligent, quiet and nonconfrontational," writes Simon, describing a guy like Neil Gaiman, Nathan Fillion or David Tennant as "the perfect match for a fangirl geek." __Publisher:__ [HarperCollins](http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Geek-Girls-Unite-Leslie-Simon/?isbn=9780062002730) (October)
10banksy-myths-and-legends
Banksy: Myths and Legends ------------------------- __Author:__ Marc Leverton __Big idea:__ This illustrated paperback showcases cryptic street murals produced on the sly by subversive Brit trickster Banksy. Author Leverton assembles anecdotes that blur the line between fact and fairy tale to offer a composite glimpse of the world's most famous anonymous source of public art. __Sample text:__ "Some of Banksy's work \[at the Bristol Museum\] changes overnight. This is done without any of the local traders seeing or hearing anyone arrive or leave the museum. Rumours abound that Banksy has his own key to the museum and accesses the show in the dead of night. Even better is the assertion that he uses ancient tunnels that supposedly underlie the city and are controlled by a secret Masonic-like group of Bristol businesspeople." __Publisher:__ [Gingko Press](http://www.ginkopress.com/) (September)
