The Rocking-Horse Catholic


Caryll Houselander - 1970
    

Spon: A Guide to Spoon Carving and the New Wood Culture


Barn The Spoon - 2017
    King of the whittlers.' Sunday Telegraph Barn The Spoon, as he’s affectionately known is a rare master craftsman in the art of spoon carving. In this book he generously shares his extraordinary skill, gentle philosophy and his life’s work – designing and carving beautiful spoons that are both a joy to use and hold.The simple, ordinary spoon is part of our everyday lives, intimately entwined with the acts of eating and socialising, from stirring our first cup of coffee to scraping the last bit of pudding from the bowl. And who doesn't like to spoon in bed? Barn’s spoons will take you on a journey into the new wood culture, from understanding the relationship between wood, the raw material and its majestic origins in our trees and woodland, to the workshop and the axe block, and into your own kitchen. Barn will show you how to use the axe and knife, from how they should feel in your hand to honing the perfect edge when carving your own spoons. Featuring sixteen unique designs in the four main categories of spoon – eating, serving, cooking and measuring spoons, Barn takes you through the nuances of their making, how each design is informed by its function at the table or in the kitchen, and the key skills you will learn – such as creating octagonal handles, manipulating grain patterns and mastering bent branches. Beautiful photography will inspire and act as a blue-print to help perfect your technique.

The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character


Samuel Noah Kramer - 1963
    This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them.Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm for his subject as he outlines the history of the Sumerian civilization and describes their cities, religion, literature, education, scientific achievements, social structure, and psychology. Finally, he considers the legacy of Sumer to the ancient and modern world.

Steve Jobs Graduation Speech


Steve Jobs - 2011
    Here, word for word is that amazing speech to inspire you to find what it is that you "Love".

An Intimate History of Humanity


Theodore Zeldin - 1994
    "An intellectually dazzling view of our past and future."--Time magazineContents1. How humans have repeatedly lost hope, and how new encounters, and a new pair of spectacles, revive them2. How men and women have slowly learned to have interesting conversations3. How people searching for their roots are only beginning to look far and deep enough4. How some people have acquired an immunity to loneliness5. How new forms of love have been invented6. Why there has been more progress in cooking than in sex7. How the desire that men feel for women, and for other men, has altered through the centuries8. How respect has become more desirable than power9. How those who want neither to give orders nor to receive them can become intermediaries10. How people have freed themselves from fear by finding new fears11. How curiosity has become the key to freedom12. Why it has become increasingly difficult to destroy one’s enemies13. How the art of escaping from one’s troubles has developed, but not the art of knowing where to escape to14. Why compassion has flowered even in stony ground15. Why toleration has never been enough16. Why even the privileged are often somewhat gloomy about life, even when they can have anything the consumer society offers, and even after sexual liberation17. How travellers are becoming the largest nation in the world, and how they have learned not to see only what they are looking for18. Why friendship between men and women has been so fragile19. How even astrologers resist their destiny20. Why people have not been able to find the time to lead several lives21. Why fathers and their children are changing their minds about what they want from each other22. Why the crisis in the family is only one stage in the evolution of generosity23. How people choose a way of life, and how it does not wholly satisfy them24. How humans become hospitable to each other25. What becomes possible when soul-mates meet

Shadows Bright as Glass: The Remarkable Story of One Man's Journey from Brain Trauma to Artistic Triumph


Amy Ellis Nutt - 2011
    As he bent down to pick up his golf ball, something strange and massive happened inside his head; part of his brain seemed to unhinge, to split apart and float away. For an utterly inexplicable reason, a tiny blood vessel, thin as a thread, deep inside the folds of his gray matter had suddenly shifted ever so slightly, rubbing up against his acoustic nerve. Any noise now caused him excruciating pain. After months of seeking treatment to no avail, in desperation Sarkin resorted to radical deep-brain surgery, which seemed to go well until during recovery his brain began to bleed and he suffered a major stroke. When he awoke, he was a different man. Before the stroke, he was a calm, disciplined chiropractor, a happily married husband and father of a newborn son. Now he was transformed into a volatile and wildly exuberant obsessive, seized by a manic desire to create art, devoting virtually all his waking hours to furiously drawing, painting, and writing poems and letters to himself, strangely detached from his wife and child, and unable to return to his normal working life. His sense of self had been shattered, his intellect intact but his way of being drastically altered. His art became a relentless quest for the right words and pictures to unlock the secrets of how to live this strange new life. And what was even stranger was that he remembered his former self. In a beautifully crafted narrative, award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Ellis Nutt interweaves Sarkin’s remarkable story with a fascinating tour of the history of and latest findings in neuroscience and evolution that illuminate how the brain produces, from its web of billions of neurons and chaos of liquid electrical pulses, the richness of human experience that makes us who we are. Nutt brings vividly to life pivotal moments of discovery in neuroscience, from the shocking “rebirth” of a young girl hanged in 1650 to the first autopsy of an autistic savant’s brain, and the extraordinary true stories of people whose personalities and cognitive abilities were dramatically altered by brain trauma, often in shocking ways. Probing recent revelations about the workings of creativity in the brain and the role of art in the evolution of human intelligence, she reveals how Jon Sarkin’s obsessive need to create mirrors the earliest function of art in the brain. Introducing major findings about how our sense of self transcends the bounds of our own bodies, she explores how it is that the brain generates an individual “self” and how, if damage to our brains can so alter who we are, we can nonetheless be said to have a soul. For Jon Sarkin, with his personality and sense of self permanently altered, making art became his bridge back to life, a means of reassembling from the shards of his former self a new man who could rejoin his family and fashion a viable life. He is now an acclaimed artist who exhibits at some of the country’s most prestigious venues, as well as a devoted husband to his wife, Kim, and father to their three children. At once wrenching and inspiring, this is a story of the remarkable human capacity to overcome the most daunting obstacles and of the extraordinary workings of the human mind.

DOODLE ART HANDBOOK: The Non-Artist's Guide in Creative Drawing


Lana Karr - 2015
     With the help of this precious book, Doodle Art Handbook, we will guide you to the place of creative drawing and help finding your inspiration. You don't have to be an artist to be able to draw and create your own masterpieces. The book contains: 25 original tangle patterns and many variations, divided into 5 section: from beginners to expert level. Various step by step lessons on how to start drawing while having little or no experience. Numerous original art works from Doodle Art collaborators. Step by step guidance on how to draw animals, flowers, trees and other objects in doodle art style. Some detailed instructions and advanced techniques for using shading, depth and drawing 3d objects. Ways to relieve stress and meditate with doodle art. The Doodle Art Handbook will be useful for all levels of artists. It gives easy and detailed instructions with many examples for beginners. It shares a lot of wonderful art works to bring more inspiration to experienced artists. And it provides results of detailed research of the history of doodle art and its modern trends. We are really glad to present the book after many months of collecting and processing of everything related to Doodle Art. Please enjoy!

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson


Camille Paglia - 1990
    It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.

Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music


Michael Bracewell - 2007
    Here was a group that looked as though it came not only from another era, but from another planet - a band in which art, fashion and music would combine to create, in Bryan Ferry's words, 'above all, a state of mind'. Written with the assistance, for the first time, of all those involved, including Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Andy Mackay, and Phil Manzanera, Re-make/Re-model tells how Pop Art, the 1960s underground, and Swinging London were transformed into a unique sound and look - theatrical, arch, literate. clever, sexy, thrilling. In the tradition of Jean Stein and George Plimpton's Edie, Re-make/Re-model is the story of extraordinary individuals and exceptional creativity - and nothing less than the history of an era in music and pop culture.""Exquisitely written...as much a work of art as its subject." - The Observer"Innovative and intelligent." - Publishers Weekly"Michael Bracewell is the most adroitly gifted writer of his generation." - Morrissey

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life


Erving Goffman - 1959
    This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

Nikon D3100: From Snapshots to Great Shots


Jeff Revell - 2010
    A guide to the Nikon D3100 camera provides information on the camera's scene modes, composition, focus, lighting, and composition to take successful portraits and sports and landscape photographs.

The Two Cultures


C.P. Snow - 1959
    But it was C. P. Snow's Rede lecture of 1959 that brought it to prominence and began a public debate that is still raging in the media today. This 50th anniversary printing of The Two Cultures and its successor piece, A Second Look (in which Snow responded to the controversy four years later) features an introduction by Stefan Collini, charting the history and context of the debate, its implications and its afterlife. The importance of science and technology in policy run largely by non-scientists, the future for education and research, and the problem of fragmentation threatening hopes for a common culture are just some of the subjects discussed.

Egon Schiele


Frank Whitford - 1981
    Rejected by his family, hounded by society for his interest in young girls, he expressed through his art a deep and bewildering loneliness and an obsession with sexuality, death and decay. He was only twenty-eight when he died, yet he left behind him a body of work that sustains a huge public reputation--and a myth. This book sets out to examine both. 151 illus., 20 in color.

American Blood


John Nichols - 1987
    American Blood is a timely and fiercely moral statement on violence and loss.

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences


Michel Foucault - 1966
    The result is nothing less than an archaeology of the sciences that unearths old patterns of meaning and reveals the shocking arbitrariness of our received truths.In the work that established him as the most important French thinker since Sartre, Michel Foucault offers startling evidence that “man”—man as a subject of scientific knowledge—is at best a recent invention, the result of a fundamental mutation in our culture.