We needed a distraction from discrimination and war and all that ugly junk, so we headed on over to publisher Taschen's website to check out some pictures from David LaChapelle's new book, From Heaven To Hell.

Completing a trilogy of the photographer turned cultural icon's work, From Heaven To Hell promises to be his most emotive, color-saturated, tantalizing offering yet. Not only that, but it's the biggest. According to Taschen, the book contains twice as many images than his other books, Hotel LaChapelle and LaChapelle Land. What does that mean? 344 pages of photographic splendor, that's what.

The famed publishing company - which also printed The BUTT Book - has written a handy three-sentence description of Chapelle's book. We think it's so clever, that we've selected images that we feel correspond with each of those sentences to create an illustrated version.

Where? After the jump, of course...

LaChapelle’s images — of the most famous faces on the planet, and marginalized figures like transsexual Amanda Lepore or the cast of his critically acclaimed social documentary Rize — call into question our relationship with gender, glamour, and status.

Using his trademark baroque excess, LaChapelle inverts the consumption he appears to celebrate, pointing instead to apocalyptic consequences for humanity itself.

While referencing and acknowledging diverse sources such as the Renaissance, art history, cinema, The Bible, pornography, and the new globalized pop culture, LaChapelle has fashioned a deeply personal and epoch-defining visual language that holds up a mirror to our times.