The work made by artists in the latter half of the 1960s that came to be known as Conceptual Art rejected traditional modes of representation and embraced a de-materialized approach to art making. In their desire to elevate the Idea to the status of artwork, artists such as Sol LeWitt, Hanne Darboven, On Kawara, Stanley Brouwn, and Lawrence Weiner among others, employed strategies that emphasized the work of the mind over that of the hand. Using mapping systems, numerical systems, sequential and instructional systems, they proposed works of art that did not actually have to be realized to be understood or appreciated. An emphasis on language to convey these propositions inspired many conceptual artists to create books and pamphlets. These easily distributed works were themselves the only necessary venues for artists’ ideas, doing away – at least theoretically – with the need for galleries. The artists’ books on this list are accompanied by current critical literature that discusses Conceptual Art – the erstwhile radical critique of the art world – as a chapter in contemporary art history.