Like Marilyn, Elvis, and JFK, Andy Warhol is one of those rare public personalities that keep generating fanatical obsession for years after they’re gone. When it was published three years ago, Phaidon’s Andy Warhol “Giant Size” offered an effectively literal reminder of the weight of Warhol’s career, tipping the scales at more than fifteen pounds and measuring seventeen inches by thirteen. While this grandiosity was appropriately Warholian, it also made the book difficult to read. But now Phaidon is reissuing the book in a more manageable, more portable format, with an eminently reasonable recession-era price to match ($49.95, down from the $125 original). Inspired by the artist’s taste for excess, “Giant Size” provides a chronological history of the major events, people, works, and moments in Warhol’s life in a manner that offers testament to their enormous influence on him. Warhol was an infamous pack rat who kept even the most trivial souvenirs, from restaurant receipts to postcards; for “Giant Size,” Phaidon’s editors were granted unprecedented access to his private collections, producing a dense, colorful, blurb-filled guide to his life. Often, the memorabilia provides hitherto-unseen visual explanations of the inspiration behind Warhol’s famous works: The layout for his iconic iconic “Mao” series, for example, also includes trinkets from his 1982 trip to China—passport, boarding pass, hotel souvenirs, etc. Also of note are written contributions by vaunted Warhol insiders, including Bruno Bischofberger (his gallerist and the cofounder of Interview magazine), fellow pop artist Ronnie Cutrone (famous for large-scale portraits of Felix the Cat, the Pink Panther, and Woody Woodpecker), and biographer David Dalton.

KEYWORDS: Andy Warhol, art, books, Phaidon