Faces of Africa


Carol Beckwith - 2004
    Drawn from their work over the past thirty years, this book is an inclusive look at the people and cultures from across this broad continent.With their unique eye for Africa and its inhabitants, Beckwith and Fisher have brought forth a masterpiece in the genre—and a moving, personal tribute to some of the most beautiful people on Earth.

How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits


Anne Berest - 2014
    The authors--Anne Berest, Audrey Diwan, Caroline de Maigret, and Sophie Mas--unmarried but attached, with children--have been friends for years. Talented bohemian iconoclasts with careers in the worlds of music, film, fashion and publishing, they are untypically frank and outspoken as they debunk the myths about what it means to be a French woman today. Letting you in on their secrets and flaws, they also make fun of their complicated, often contradictory feelings and behavior. They admit to being snobs, a bit self-centered, unpredictable but not unreliable. Bossy and opinionated, they are also tender and romantic.You will be taken on a first date, to a party, to some favorite haunts in Paris, to the countryside, and to one of their dinners at home with recipes even you could do -- but to be out with them is to be in for some mischief and surprises. They will tell you how to be mysterious and sensual, look natural, make your boyfriend jealous, and how they feel about children, weddings and going to the gym. And they will share their address book in Paris for where to go: At the End of the Night, for A Birthday, for a Smart Date, for a A Hangover, for Vintage Finds and much more. How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are will make you laugh as you slip into their shoes to become bold and free and tap into your inner cool.

City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City


Ian Lambot - 1993
    With over 320 photographs, 32 extended interviews, and essays on the City's history and character, this reprint is not only an informative glimpse of a now vanished landmark but a sensitive and penetrating portrait of a unique community.

The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910


Esther Crain - 2016
    In Manhattan, more than a million poor immigrants crammed into tenements, while the half of the millionaires in the entire country lined Fifth Avenue with their opulent mansions. The Gilded Age in New York captures what is was like to live in Gotham then, to be a daily witness to the city's rapid evolution.Newspapers, autobiographies, and personal diaries offer fascinating glimpses into daily life among the rich, the poor, and the surprisingly large middle class.The use of photography and illustrated periodicals provides astonishing images that document the bigness of New York: the construction of the Statue of Liberty; the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge; the shimmering lights of Luna Park in Coney Island; the mansions of Millionaire's Row.Sidebars detail smaller, fleeting moments: Alice Vanderbilt posing proudly in her "Electric Light" ball gown at a society-changing masquerade ball; immigrants stepping off the boat at Ellis Island; a young Theodore Roosevelt witnessing Abraham Lincoln's funeral.The Gilded Age in New York is a rare illustrated look at this amazing time in both the city and the country as a whole. Author Esther Crain, the go-to authority on the era, weaves first-hand accounts and fascinating details into a vivid tapestry of American society at the turn of the century. Praise for New-York Historical Society New York City in 3D In The Gilded Age, also by Esther Crain: "Vividly captures the transformation from cityscape of horse carriages and gas lamps 'bursting with beauty, power and possibilities' as it staggered into a skyscraping Imperial City." -Sam Roberts, The New York Times"Get a glimpse of Edith Wharton's world." - Entertainment Weekly Must List"What better way to revisit this rich period . . ?" - Library Journal

How to Study Public Life


Jan Gehl - 2013
    Jan Gehl has been examining this question since the 1960s, when few urban designers or planners were thinking about designing cities for people. But given the unpredictable, complex and ephemeral nature of life in cities, how can we best design public infrastructure—vital to cities for getting from place to place, or staying in place—for human use? Studying city life and understanding the factors that encourage or discourage use is the key to designing inviting public space. In How to Study Public Life Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre draw from their combined experience of over 50 years to provide a history of public-life study as well as methods and tools necessary to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. This type of systematic study began in earnest in the 1960s, when several researchers and journalists on different continents criticized urban planning for having forgotten life in the city. City life studies provide knowledge about human behavior in the built environment in an attempt to put it on an equal footing with knowledge about urban elements such as buildings and transport systems. Studies can be used as input in the decision-making process,  as part of overall planning, or in designing individual projects such as streets, squares or parks. The original goal is still the goal today: to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. Anyone interested in improving city life will find inspiration, tools, and examples in this invaluable guide.

NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette


Nathan W. Pyle - 2013
    Nathan decided to draw his favorite tips and etiquette lessons and post them on the internet, where his 12 original panels went viral immediately and became the basis for this hilarious illustrated book (check out the fully animated ebook, too!).In NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette, Pyle reveals the secrets and unwritten rules for living in and visiting New York including the answers to such burning questions as, which cabs should I try to hail? What is a bodega? Which way is Uptown? Why are there so many doors in the sidewalk? How do I walk on an escalator? Do we need to be touching right now? Where should I inhale or exhale while passing sidewalk garbage? How long should I honk my horn? If New York were a game show, how would I win? What happens when I stand in the bike lane? Who should get the empty subway seats? How do I stay safe during a trash tornado? Each tip is a little story illustrated in simple black and white drawings.Visitors and newcomers to New York will love it because the advice is smart, funny, and not condescending. New Yorkers will love it for its strategic and humorous approach to mastering the daily chaos of the city.

La Vie En Rose: Notes From Rural France


Susie Kelly - 2017
    French ladies slender and chic, French men wearing berets and riding bicycles with baguettes clamped under their arms when they are not flirting outrageously, and all the while the sun shines down benevolently upon uniform rows of ripening vegetables. Dreams are strange and unpredictable, and sometime so is la vie en rose. A pick from some of the best bits of the popular travel author's blog diaries reveal the minutiae of expat day to day life in rural France. A must-read for Susie Kelly fans and anybody thinking of, or dreaming of, moving to France.

Humans of New York: Stories


Brandon Stanton - 2015
    The photos he took and the accompanying interviews became the blog Humans of New York. In the first three years, his audience steadily grew from a few hundred to over one million. In 2013, his book Humans of New York, based on that blog, was published and immediately catapulted to the top of the NY Times Bestseller List. It has appeared on that list for over twenty-five weeks to date. The appeal of HONY has been so great that in the course of the next year Brandon's following increased tenfold to, now, over 12 million followers on Facebook. In the summer of 2014, the UN chose him to travel around the world on a goodwill mission that had followers meeting people from Iraq to Ukraine to Mexico City via the photos he took.Now, Brandon is back with the follow up to Humans of New York that his loyal followers have been waiting for: Humans of New York: Stories. Ever since Brandon began interviewing people on the streets of NY, the dialogue he's had with them has increasingly become as in-depth, intriguing, and moving as the photos themselves. Humans of New York: Stories presents a whole new group of humans, complete with stories that delve deeper and surprise with greater candour.

Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel


Yvon Chouinard - 2014
    This book reveals that the best way to catch trout is simply, with a rod and a fly and not much else. The wisdom in this book comes from a simpler time, when the premise was: the more you know, the less you need. It teaches the reader how to discover where the fish are, at what depth, and what they are feeding on. Then it describes the techniques needed to present a fly at that depth, make it look lifelike, and hook the fish. With chapters on wet flies, nymphs, and dry flies, its authors employ both the tenkara rod as well as regular fly fishing gear to cover all the bases. Illustrated by renowned fish artist James Prosek, with inspiring photographs and stories throughout, Simple Fly Fishing reveals the secrets and the soul of this captivating sport. Winner, Guidebooks, Banff Mountain Book Competition 2014

Provence in Ten Easy Lessons: From Provence A-Z: A Francophile's Essential Handbook (Vintage Departures)


Peter Mayle - 2014
    Abandoning the well-trodden “best of” routes that can be found in any tourist guide, Mayle highlights local features vital to an authentic Provençal experience. From ruminations on the unique charms of each season to the art of the siesta, Mayle brings the warmth and beauty of the province vividly to life. And, of course, food and wine also get their due, as Mayle expounds the merits of pastis and a good rosé, explores the mystery of traditional market shopping, and more. Evocative and intimate, Provence in Ten Easy Lessons is charming yet practical reading for ticketed passengers and armchair travelers, alike.

The Adventure Capitalist: Camels, Carpets and Coffee: How Face-To-Face Trade Is the New Economics


Conor Woodman - 2009
    This text offers an exciting insight into the human story behind the money in our pockets, and reminds us that making a living is about exactly that - living.

Babble


Charles Saatchi - 2013
    From 'The hideousness of the art world', 'Being thick is no obstacle to being a successful artist' and 'Painting is a blind man's obsession'; to 'Socialising for party duds', 'Love may be blind, but marriage is an eye-opener' and 'If it can't be explained by science, try a seance'.

Walkscapes: El andar como práctica estética/Walking as an Aesthetic Practice


Francesco Careri - 2005
    Here, walking is seen as an autonomous form of art, a primary act in the symbolic transformation of the territory, an aesthetic instrument of knowledge and a physical transformation of the "negotiated" space, which is converted into an urban intervention. From primitive nomadism to Dada and Surrealism, from the Lettrist to the Situationist International, and from minimalism to Land Art, this book narrates the perception of landscape through a history of the traversed city.

Channel Shore: From the White Cliffs to Land's End


Tom Fort - 2015
    Ferries steam back and forth, trains thunder through the tunnel. The narrow sea has been crucial to our development and prosperity. It helps define our notion of Englishness, as an island people, a nation of seafarers. It is also our nearest, dearest playground where people have sought sun, sin and bracing breezes. Tom Fort takes us on a fascinating, discursive journey from east to west, to find out what this stretch of water means to us and what is so special about the English seaside, that edge between land and seawater. He dips his toe into Sandgate's waters, takes the air in Hastings and Bexhill, chews whelks in Brighton, builds a sandcastle in Sandbanks, sunbathes in sunny Sidmouth, catches prawns off the slipway at Salcombe and hunts a shark off Looe. Stories of smugglers and shipwreck robbers, of beachcombers and samphire gatherers, gold diggers and fossil hunters abound.

Palladian Days: Finding a New Life in a Venetian Country House


Sally Gable - 2005
    What she found and learned to love was a new life in a beautiful and celebrated Palladian villa in the countryside outside Venice. In Palladian Days, she takes us with her on a journey of discovery and transformation as she and her husband, Carl, become the bemused owners of Villa Cornaro, built in 1552 by the great Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio called by Town & Country one of the ten most influential buildings in the world.Sally Gable writes lovingly of the villa as she and Carl settle in and slowly uncover its history, the lives of its former inhabitants, and its architectural pleasures. She tells of her early days there, learning to speak Italian with the help of her engaging new neighbors in the tiny town that surrounds the villa, Piombino Dese, a place both traditional and busily modern with its old-fashioned street markets and its burgeoning economy.She writes with beguiling humor about learning to take care of a Renaissance palace with its 104 frescoes and 44 pairs of shutters (all of which have to be opened and closed daily). She tells of baffling encounters with the soprintendente di belle arti, who must give permission for even the smallest repair to the Italian national treasure Sally and Carl call home. And she describes the life she and her husband create for the villa itself, allowing it to be used for concerts, ballet performances, even as a movie set.In Palladian Days, we enter with Sally and Carl into their engrossing adventure, following along as they are woven ever more deeply into the fabric of small-town Italy and into its larger national history. Their story will delight travelers and would-be travelers; all who are fascinated by architecture, by art, by the powerful essence of place—and, especially, house-dreamers everywhere.