By combining handguns with traditional summer pleasures such as reading, swimming, biking, or baseball, Summer in the City takes the American obsession with packing heat to its logical and darkly humorous conclusion. Sadly, this work becomes more relevant each day. Summer in the City is a monograph of a series of paintings that apposes self-portraits as First Ladies with guns and fun-in-the-sun. In addition to reproductions of all thirty paintings, the monograph includes an essay by curator Yulia Tikhonova and foreward by Balinda Fiebiger of Enlightening Publishers, who conceived the book - I felt the need to publish this series of paintings in a monograph, so the work could be seen by more people than in just a fleeting gallery experience. Available through your local bookstore including East City Bookshop http: //www.eastcitybookshop.com/ and Upshur Street Books http: //upshurstreetbooks.com/ in Washington DC, Square Books http: //www.squarebooks.com/event/laura-elkins-summer-city in Oxford MS and on Amazon: http: //amazon.com/author/lauraelkins