The cover of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice features a dramatic picture of a burning bus and the mug shots of Freedom Riders who’d been jailed in the notorious Parchman Mississippi State Prison. Most of us are familiar with these images. Ray Arsenault’s book provides the stories behind the pictures — and so much more.

Los Angeles art as we know it–and as it has been carried through to the rest of the country for the past 30 years–would not have been possible without the skill, genius and vision of Robert Williams. Williams’ work incorporates pop iconography, not just modern pop kitsch like hot rods and lusty ladies–though he executes those beautifully–but ancient symbols, gods, goddesses, historical figures, making each painting a learning experience. It’s eye candy that’s good for you, with enough information to make you think and learn and enough space for viewers to develop their own concepts and thoughts about the work and its meanings.

Tanem Davidson’s New Brow: Contemporary Underground Art presents a through line for the development of this uniquely American genre of painting which burst out of Abstract Expressionism through the Pop Art’s screened realism into a chrome flecked, hyper-sexualized, fuel-injected dream state. The icons of childhood–Rat Fink, hot rods, movie monsters, robots, toys, cartoons–conjoin in transgressive, illicit intercourse with tikis, animals, dead presidents, dollar signs, slogans, guns, girls, raw meat, and bombs; characters live in their own universes fraught with action and symbols, caught in moments just before, just after Something Happened.

Pop Surrealist Anthony Ausgang’s cover art for the Grammy award winning duo MGMT is stirring up some fan controversy.