Best books … chosen by Mark Seliger

Photographer Mark Seliger has shot more than 100 covers for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and GQ. The Music Book, a collection of his portraits of musicians, has just been published by teNeues.

Moments Preserved by Irving Penn (out of print). This collection of eight essays in photo­graphs and words is Irving Penn’s tour de force of photo­graphy. It was also a very early influence in my own education.

New York 1954.55 by William Klein (out of print). One in a series of William Klein books that proves him to be at the vanguard in the world of street photography. Klein was a New York City native himself, and his ability to sequence images gives this book the sense of a real personal journey.

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The Decisive Moment by Henri Cartier-Bresson (out of print). Henri Cartier-Bresson was the grandfather of modern photojournalism.­ This book wonderfully illustrates the point at which art meets street photography. It is quite rare and a treasure to own.

Kamaitachi by Eikoh Hosoe (out of print). The Japanese ­artist Eikoh Hosoe created one of the most beautifully printed and designed books that you’ll ever experience in publishing. Every page folds out to poster size, which makes for an even more impressive and artful ­presentation.

Paris Trout by Pete Dexter (Penguin, $14). A powerful novel about race and a small Southern town’s hypocrisies. I admire Dexter’s ability to capture the darkest part of personality and hate and use it to create a riveting page-turner.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage, $15). A short but haunting post-apocalyptic tale of the last man standing. It became one of my favorites because of McCarthy’s mastery of the vernacular and his unorthodox method of writing.