Tom Sachs has a cardboard box in his studio into which he throws miscellaneous screws, nuts and bolts after he has attempted, unsuccessfully, to use them in a project under production. Instead of wasting time categorizing and storing them, he throws them into the box until needed again. The box, labeled “Logjam,” exemplifies Sachs’ working method and his response to the world: he needs to make things; everything else just gets in the way.

Published to accompany the artist’s first one-person museum exhibition in the United States, which traveled from Des Moines, Iowa, to Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2007, this handy artist’s-book-cum-inventory-cum-exhibition-catalogue documents what may be Sach’s most personal show to date–focusing on two bodies of work that are actually about the process of art-making, Sachs’ “work” and “living” stations. Readers will enjoy the rounded edges of this small gem, the full-bleed photographs and the blunt, highly personal captions describing the artist’s “Essential Tools”