Revered throughout the animation world, his work serves as a foundation and reference point for the current generation of animators, story artists, and designers. Written by Noble's longtime friend and colleague Tod Polson and based on the draft manuscript Noble worked on in the years before his death, this illuminating book passes on his approach to animation design from concept to final frame, illustrated with sketches and stunning original artwork spanning the full breadth of his career.

      In The Coat Route, Noonan pieces together the creation of the coat in question, tracing its elements to their far-flung sources, from the remote mountains of Peru, where villagers shear vicunas—whose soft fleece is more coveted and rare than the finest cashmere—to the fabulous Florentine headquarters of Stefano Ricci, the world’s greatest silk designer; from the family-owned French fabric house Dormeuil, founded in 1842, which drapes kings, presidents, and movie stars to the 150-year-old English button-making firm that creates the ne plus ultra of fasteners out of Indian water-buffalo horn and the workshop of the master hand engraver who makes the eighteen-karat gold plaque that hangs inside the coat’s collar. We meet the dapper son-in-law of an Australian wine baron who commissions the coat’s creation, and we come to know John Cutler, one of the top bespoke tailors in the world, who works his magic with scissors and thread out of his Sydney shop, redolent of cedar and English wool.   Featuring a cast of offbeat, obsessed, and wildly entertaining characters, The Coat Route presents a rich tapestry of local masters, individual artisans, and family-owned companies that have stood against the tide of mass consumerism. As Noonan comes to realize, these craftsmen, some of whom find themselves on the brink of retirement with no obvious successors, have increasing reason to believe that their way is the best way—best for their customers, best for the environment, and best for the quality of life of all involved. The Coat Route is a love song to things of lasting value.Praise for The Coat Route “A spirited tour of fashion history . . . The Coat Route compels us to remember that behind every garment is a deep history and a pair of human hands—whether those hands stitched the dress’s hem or pulled a lever that stringed together that $30 must-have jacket.”—The Wall Street Journal   “Delightful . . . The Coat Route celebrates those who work with their hands, creating something beautiful and lasting.”—The Seattle Times   “[Meg Lukens Noonan’s] exploration of the business of fashion is fascinating and thorough, and her examination of bespoke goods redefines the words luxury and obsession.”—The Daily Beast  “Traditions of bespoke tailoring (and other related crafts) are skirting the edge of extinction. Noonan’s delightful story makes us hope they endure.”—Publishers Weekly“A fabulous story, brilliantly told . . . I couldn’t have enjoyed it more.”—Bill Bryson   “As captivating as any mystery or thriller, The Coat Route demystifies the rarefied universe of bespoke tailoring and provides a lens into the culture that covets it. It educates and inspires. I couldn’t put it down!”—Tim Gunn

    Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (†)--which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible--or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (¶) and everyday (&).From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs, figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W. Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (‽) and as divisive as the dash (--). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts.Richly illustrated, ranging across time, typographies, and countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life.

    Touching the Wild is the enchanting story about one man who has lived with a herd of mule deer in the Wind River mountains of Wyoming for almost seven years. Why, you may ask, would a person choose to do such a thing? His response: how could you not? For Joe Hutto, close proximity to wild things is irresistible. In Illumination in the Flatwoods he unveiled the secret lives of the wild turkey to great critical acclaim. In Touching the Wild he turns his acute sense of wonder and affinity to one of the West's quintessential big game animals: the mule deer, a species in peril due to environmental factors. Wily, thoughtful creatures, mule deer are not inclined to make foolish friendships with their primary predator-man. But due to the intense curiosity of one small doe, and the resulting introduction to an entire herd, Joe Hutto has been allowed unprecedented access and insight into the minds and behavior of this special animal.Spending every day among the herd, he develops uncanny connections with the deer, learning individual and group dynamics as well, unveiling just how much we have in common with these delicate beings. Each season brings new joy as fawns are born and heartache as matriarchs pass away, or hunting takes its toll, or a fawn is orphaned. But what overwhelmingly emerges from Touching the Wild is the enormous respect Hutto has for all wild things and the recognition that we have so much to learn from them about their world, ourselves, and the fragile planet we share. Throughout the book are gorgeous full-color photos.

    In the 1990s, as the tea's noble lineage and unique process of aging and fermentation were rediscovered, it achieved cult status both in China and internationally. The tea became a favorite among urban connoisseurs who analyzed it in language comparable to that used in wine appreciation and paid skyrocketing prices. In 2007, however, local events and the international economic crisis caused the Puer market to collapse.Puer Tea traces the rise, climax, and crash of this phenomenon. With ethnographic attention to the spaces in which Puer tea is harvested, processed, traded, and consumed, anthropologist Jinghong Zhang constructs a vivid account of the transformation of a cottage handicraft into a major industry--with predictable risks and unexpected consequences.Watch the associated videos at https: //archive.org/details/PUERTEADVD1.

    This book contextualizes the film within the longer history of drag balls, the practices of documentary, the fervor of the culture wars, and issues of gender, sexuality, race, and class.Lucas Hilderbrand is associate professor of film and media studies and queer studies at the University of California, Irvine.

    Participants are affiliated with a house, an alternative family structure typically named after haute couture designers and providing support to this diverse community. Marlon M. Bailey’s rich first-person performance ethnography of the Ballroom scene in Detroit examines Ballroom as a queer cultural formation that upsets dominant notions of gender, sexuality, kinship, and community.

    The creation of Comstock millionaire Adolph Sutro, the Baths opened in 1894 and ended in fire in 1966. Once the debris was cleared, little remained of Sutro’s ambitious structure, which he intended to outshine the baths of Rome. Today, visitors explore its concrete ruins and mysterious tunnels, which are protected by the National Park Service as part of the larger Lands End site. Sutro’s Glass Palace, the fascinating story of a vanished but enduring piece of San Francisco history, comprehensively answers the question, “What was this place?”

    But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics.In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians' genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a series of historical investigations stretching from Ivanthe Terrible through Vladimir Putin, Vodka Politics presents the secret history of the Russian state itself-a history that is drenched in liquor. Scrutinizing (rather than dismissing) the role of alcohol in Russian politics yields a more nuanced understanding of Russian history itself: from palaceintrigues under the tsars to the drunken antics of Soviet and post-Soviet leadership, vodka is there in abundance.Beyond vivid anecdotes, Schrad scours original documents and archival evidence to answer provocative historical questions. How have Russia's rulers used alcohol to solidify their autocratic rule? What role did alcohol play in tsarist coups? Was Nicholas II's ill-fated prohibition a catalyst for theBolshevik Revolution? Could the Soviet Union have become a world power without liquor? How did vodka politics contribute to the collapse of both communism and public health in the 1990s? How can the Kremlin overcome vodka's hurdles to produce greater social well-being, prosperity, and democracy intothe future?Viewing Russian history through the bottom of the vodka bottle helps us to understand why the liquor question remains important to Russian high politics even today-almost a century after the issue had been put to bed in most every other modern state. Indeed, recognizing and confronting vodka'sdevastating political legacies may be the greatest political challenge for this generation of Russia's leadership, as well as the next.

    As Bednarski points out, the story is important not so much for what it tells us about Margarida but for how it illuminates a past world. Through the depositions and accusations made in court, the reader learns much about medieval women, female agency, kin networks, solidarity, sex, sickness, medicine, and law. Unlike most histories, this book does not remove the author from the analysis. Rather, it lays bare the working methods of the historian. Throughout his tale, Bednarski skillfully weaves a second narrative about how historians "do" history, highlighting the rewards and pitfalls of working with primary sources.The book opens with a chapter on microhistory as a genre and explains its strengths, weaknesses, and inherent risks. Next is a narrative of Margarida's criminal trial, followed by chapters on the civil suits and appeal and Margarida's eventual fate. The book features a rough copy of a court notary, a notorial act, and a sample of a criminal inquest record in the original Latin. A timeline of Margarida's life, list of characters, and two family trees provide useful information on key people in the story. A map of late medieval Manosque is also provided.

    Including 21 thematic studies on topics such as writing systems, the ancient and the medieval book, and the economics of print, as well as 33 regional and national histories, offering a truly global survey of the book around the world, The Book: A Global History is the most comprehensive work of its kind. The three new articles, specially commissioned for this edition, cover censorship, copyright and intellectual property, and book history in the Caribbean and Bermuda. All essays are illustrated throughout with reproductions, diagrams, and examples of various typographical features. Beautifully produced and highly informative, this is a must-have for anyone with an interest in book history and the written word.

    Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon.From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used to exchange news across the Empire to the advent of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly sophisticated ways people shared information with each other, spontaneously and organically, down the centuries. With the rise of newspapers in the nineteenth century, then radio and television, “mass media” consolidated control of information in the hands of a few moguls. However, the Internet has brought information sharing full circle, and the spreading of news along social networks has reemerged in powerful new ways.A fresh, provocative exploration of social media over two millennia, Writing on the Wall reminds us how modern behavior echoes that of prior centuries-the Catholic Church, for example, faced similar dilemmas in deciding whether or how to respond to Martin Luther's attacks in the early sixteenth century to those that large institutions confront today in responding to public criticism on the Internet. Invoking the likes of Thomas Paine and Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, Standage explores themes that have long been debated: the tension between freedom of expression and censorship; whether social media trivializes, coarsens or enhances public discourse; and its role in spurring innovation, enabling self-promotion, and fomenting revolution. As engaging as it is visionary, Writing on the Wall draws on history to cast new light on today's social media and encourages debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.

    Bestselling author Clifford A. Pickover takes us on an unusual and historic journey through curious, amusing, and important topics related to "black." Beware: this wondrous panoply of subjects, stunning images, and entertaining and informative text can shift from sexy to cosmic with just the turn of a page!With entries short enough to read in just a few minutes — but pithy enough for endless pondering — The Book of Black features 100 captivating black-and-white and full-color images. The book roams far and wide through politics, popular culture, science, sociology, history, sports, religion, and superstition. A reference section offers suggestions for further explorations of Black Pudding, Black Velvet Paintings, Blackbeard, "Black Magic Woman," and other dark matters."This book is a delight from start to finish. Entertaining and accessible, but equally rigorous and scholarly, this is a volume to please everyone. It can be read cover-to-cover or picked up and read at random. The illustrations are impressive and there's one for every topic. Thoroughly enjoyable but also thoroughly informative." — newbooks magazine

    With humor and insight, Melissa Mohr takes readers on a journey to discover how "swearing" has come to include both testifying with your hand on the Bible and calling someone a *#$&!* when they cut you off on the highway. She explores obscenities in ancient Rome and unearths the history of religious oaths in the Middle Ages, when swearing (or not swearing) an oath was often a matter of life and death. Holy Sh*t also explains the advancement of civility and corresponding censorship of language in the 18th century, considers the rise of racial slurs after World War II, examines the physiological effects of swearing and answers a question that preoccupies the FCC, the US Senate, and anyone who has recently overheard little kids at a playground: are we swearing more now than people did in the past?A gem of lexicography and cultural history, Holy Sh*t is a serious exploration of obscenity.

    Rees traces the fascinating evolution of this demonization, considering how calling the ‘c-word' obscene both legitimates and perpetuates the fractured identities of women globally. Rees demonstrates how writers, artists, and filmmakers contend with the dilemma of the vagina's puzzlingly ‘covert visibility'.In our postmodern, porn-obsessed culture, vaginas appear to be everywhere, literally or symbolically but, crucially, they are as silenced as they are objectified. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History examines the paradox of female genitalia through five fields of artistic expression: literature, film, TV, visual, and performance art.There is a peculiar paradox – unlike any other – regarding female genitalia. Rees focuses on this paradox of what is termed the ‘covert visibility' of the vagina and on its monstrous manifestations. That is, what happens when the female body refuses to be pathologized, eroticized, or rendered subordinate to the will or intention of another? Common, and often offensive, slang terms for the vagina can be seen as an attempt to divert attention away from the reality of women's lived sexual experiences such that we don't ‘look' at the vagina itself – slang offers a convenient distraction to something so taboo. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History is an important contribution to the ongoing debate in understanding the feminine identity

    The book explores the innovation, history, economics, commerce, advertising, and marketing behind the toy's 50 year history.

    A boy with a rifle walks into a middle school, intent on carrying out Western-style vigilante justice. A wife and mother of four kisses her twelve-year-old student and forever changes our definition of student-teacher conferences. The world’s most famous serial killers put Washington on the map. A bathtub, a handgun, a meat grinder, and a burn barrel play a role in the murder of the captain of a freighter. New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen (“If Loving You Is Wrong,” “Starvation Heights”) and veteran journalist Rebecca Morris (“Ted and Ann – The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy”), take a new look at Washington’s most notorious crimes. Many of them made history. Two – Ted Bundy’s killings and Mary Kay Letourneau’s teacher sex scandal – made Time magazine’s list of the top crimes of the 20th century. Some are lesser known or have taken on new importance, including one of the country’s first school shootings, in Moses Lake. With a bonus essay by Washington native Gregg Olsen on growing up in the shadow of serial killers Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway, and Robert Lee Yates, Jr. Cases include: Barry Loukaitis – Before Sandy Hook and Columbine, there was Frontier Middle School in Moses Lake, Washington. Rosalina Misina Mendoza Dugeno Manthie Edmondson – She had many last names as she married and killed one husband after another. Ruth Neslund – Her husband thought captaining a huge freighter right into the West Seattle Bridge was the worst that could happen to him. It wasn’t. Mary Kay LeTourneau – She said they were “soul mates.” He made a bet with another student that he would sleep with her. Ted Bundy – He’s the one and only “Ted,” and remains a part of our lives. Now we’ve learned more about his. Kenneth Bianchi – Los Angeles’ most terrifying murders were finally solved 1,200 miles north in Bellingham, Washington. About the authors: GREGG OLSEN IS THE NEW YORK TIMES, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of twenty books, both true crime and fiction, including Abandoned Prayers, Closer than Blood, A Twisted Faith, Starvation Heights, and If Loving You Is Wrong. He appears frequently on Dateline NBC, NPR, Good Morning America, The Early Show, FOX News; CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition, Extra, Access Hollywood, Snapped, Deadly Women, and A&E's Biography.REBECCA MORRIS IS A VETERAN JOURNALIST and the author of Ted and Ann – The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy. Her writing has appeared in People, Entertainment Weekly, New York Newsday, The Seattle Times, The Oregonian and many other publications. She worked in broadcast journalism in New York. Olsen and Morris’s book about missing Utah mom Susan Powell, her husband Josh, and their boys Charlie and Braden, If I Can’t Have You – Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance and the Murder of Her Children, will be published by St. Martin’s in 2014. Also by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris The Girl and the Horrors of Howard Avenue (Notorious Oregon) The Stranger and the World’s Bravest Little Girl (Notorious Idaho) If there’s a notorious case you’d like us to write about – anywhere in the country – contact us. Gregg@GreggOlsen.com Rebecca@RebeccaTMorris.com

    When John Z. DeLorean and his cadre of enthusiastic rule benders took it upon themselves to bolt Pontiac's hottest engine into a mid-sized Tempest, disobeying orders from the top of General Motors food chain, they created something that should not have been, and will never be again: the muscle car. The resulting GTO spearheaded a new breed of performance car aimed at a new breed of buyer: the baby boom generation, tens of millions of young customers entering the market each year.The All-American Muscle Car: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Detroit's Greatest Performance Cars tells the story of these brutal performance machines through the words of muscle-car icons like Jim Wangers, the man who marketed DeLorean's thuggish invention, Joe Oldham, a legendary automotive journalist who tested these cars when they first came off the production line, often via illegal street racing, and classic-car broker Colin Comer, who has been instrumental in restoring some of the most iconic (and valuable) muscle cars. Top muscle car experts like Randy Leffingwell and David Newhardt tell other facets of the muscle-car story, like the pony-car wars between the Mustang, Camaro, 'Cuda, and Challenger; the ultra-high performance dealer specials; and the rebirth of the modern muscle car. All told, this book provides the ultimate hands-on history of these most American of cars.

    . . He makes clear that without paper, modern hygienic practice would be unimaginable; that as currency, people will do almost anything to possess it . . . that without it on which to draw designs and blueprints, the Industrial Revolution would never have happened. We see paper's crucial role in the unfolding of political scandals and sensational trials (the Dreyfus Affair and the forged memorandum known as the bordereau; Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers and Watergate). Basbanes writes of his travels to get to the source of the story--to China along the Burma Road . . . to Landover, Maryland, and the National Security Agency with its one hundred million secret documents pulped by cryptologists and recycled as pizza boxes . . . to the Crane Company paper mill of Dalton, MA, the exclusive supplier of paper for American currency since 1879; and much more . . .A masterly guide through paper's inseparability from human culture.

    Nameless Indignities is a true story, full of incredible twists and turns, and will hold you in its grip from beginning to end with multiple suspects, a lynch mob, perjury and bribery, failed kidnappings, broken family ties, cover-ups, financial devastation, and at least two suicides. When young schoolteacher Emma Bond was brutally gang-raped and left for dead in her rural Illinois schoolhouse in June 1882, an enduring mystery was born. Although she survived, her recovery was hindered by hysteria, amnesia, and some unusual physical complications. The story was covered by newspapers across the land, but some of the wounds inflicted upon the victim were so appalling that the press refused to print the ugliest details, referring to them only as “nameless indignities.” Eighteen months went by before three of the six suspects were brought to trial. After the verdict, however, the public’s unwavering support for the victim began to fade amid persistent theories and rumors that she had lied and that no crime had been committed. At the time, educators, editors, politicians, lawyers, and doctors eagerly weighed in on the case and its ramifications. But with Victorian doctors unable to agree on anything of a physical or a psychological nature, Emma’s life went into a tailspin from which she never recovered. The crime also took a heavy toll on local residents, pitting families and neighbors against one another. The fact that the case was never fully resolved gave it a certain staying power, with its many unanswered questions persisting well into the twentieth century. The author, whose great-great aunt was the victim, concludes with her own theory on the crime, based on some new evidence that she recently uncovered.

    Robert K. Wallace attended the final performance of the Dallas production and has written this book so readers can experience the process by which this contemporary masterpiece was created and performed on stage. Interviews with the creative team and draft revisions of the libretto and score show the opera in the process of being born. Interviews with the principal singers and the production staff follow the five-week rehearsal period into the world premiere production, each step of the way illustrated by more than two hundred color photographs by Karen Almond.Opera fans, lovers of Moby-Dick, and students of American and global culture will welcome this book as a highly readable and visually enthralling account of the creation of a remarkable new opera that does full justice to its celebrated literary source. Just as Heggie and Scheer’s opera is enjoyed by operagoers with no direct knowledge of Moby-Dick, so will this book be enjoyed by opera fans unaware of Melville and by Melville fans unaware of opera.