A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful


Edmund Burke - 1757
    However, Burke's analysis of the relationship between emotion, beauty, and art form is now recognized as not only an important and influential work of aesthetic theory, but also one of the first major works in European literature on the Sublime, a subject that has fascinated thinkers from Kant and Coleridge to the philosophers and critics of today.

Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art


Camille Paglia - 1995
    With her brilliant bestsellers Sexual Pcrsonae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson and Sex, Art and American Culture she became America's first internationally recognized public thinker since the 1960s. Her new collection, Vamps and Tramps, is forthcoming in Penguin and covers subjects from pop to politics to pagan sexuality.

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth


R. Buckminster Fuller - 1969
    Fuller expresses what may well be his penultimate view of the human condition. Here, in a mood at once philosophical and involved, Mr. Fuller traces man's intellectual evolution and weighs his capability for survival on this magnificent craft, this Spaceship Earth, this superbly designed sphere of almost negligible dimension in the great vastness of space.Mr. Fuller is optimistic that man will survive and, through research and development and increased industrialization, generate wealth so rapidly that he can do very great things. But, he notes, there must be an enormous educational task successfully accomplished right now to convert man's tendency toward oblivion into a realization of his potential, to a universe-exploring advantage from this Spaceship Earth.It has been noted that Mr. Fuller spins ideas in clusters, and clusters of his ideas generate still other clusters. The concept spaceship earth is Mr. Fuller's, and though used by Barbara Ward as the title of a work of her own the idea was acknowledged by her there as deriving from Mr. Fuller. The brilliant syntheses of some fundamental Fuller principles given here makes of this book a microcosm of the Fuller system.

Happiness: Ten Years of n+1


n+1 - 2014
    n+1 appeared in the fall of 2004, the brainchild of a group of writers working out of a small apartment. Intended to revive the leftist social criticism and innovative literary analysis that was the hallmark of the Partisan Review and other midcentury magazines, n+1 was a rejoinder to the consumerism and complacency of the Bush years. It hasn't slowed down since. n+1 has given us the most clear-eyed reporting on the 2008 crash and the Occupy movement, the best criticism of publishing culture, and the first sociological report on the hipster. No media, new or old, has escaped its ire as n+1's outspoken contributors have taken on reality TV, Twitter, credentialism, drone strikes, and Internet porn.Happiness, released on the occasion of n+1's tenth anniversary, collects the best of the magazine as selected by its editors. These essays are fiercely contentious, disconcertingly astute, and screamingly funny. They explore our modern pursuits of happiness and take a searching moral inventory of the strange times we live in. Founding lights Chad Harbach, Keith Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel, Marco Roth, and Mark Greif are featured alongside Elif Batuman, Rebecca Curtis, Emily Witt, and other young talents launched by n+1. This n+1 anthology is the definitive work of the definitive twenty-first century intellectual magazine.

Burning Man: Art on Fire


Jennifer Raiser - 2014
    This vastly inhospitable location, called the playa, is the site of Burning Man, where, within a 9-mile fence, artists called Burners create a temporary city devoted to art and participation. Braving extreme elements, over two hundred wildly ambitious works of art are created and intended to delight, provoke, involve, or amaze. In 2013, over 68,000 people attended – the highest number ever allowed on the playa. As Burning Man has created new context, new categories of art have emerged since its inception, including Art to Ride, Collaborative Art, Art for Social Change, and of course, Art to Burn.The Art of Burning Man is an authorized collection of the best of Burning Man art from 1986 through today. Experience the amazing sculptures, art, stories, and interviews from the world’s greatest gathering of artists. Get lost in a rich gallery of images showcasing the best examples of playa art with over 200 photos. Interviews with the artists reveal not only their motivation to create art specifically for Burning Man, but they also illuminate the dramatic efforts it took to create their pieces. Featuring the incredible photography of long-time Burning Man photographers, Sidney Erthal and Scott London, an introduction from Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, and a preface from artist Leo Villareal, this stunning gift book allows Burners and enthusiasts alike to have a piece of Burning Man with them all year around.

Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It


Mike Monteiro - 2019
    Guns, which lead to so much death, work exactly as they’re designed to work. And every time we “improve” their design, they get better at killing. Facebook’s privacy settings, which have outed gay teens to their conservative parents, are working exactly as designed. Their “real names” iniative, which makes it easier for stalkers to re-find their victims, is working exactly as designed. Twitter’s toxicity and lack of civil discourse is working exactly as it’s designed to work.The world is working exactly as designed. And it’s not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it. Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. As designers, we need to see ourselves as gatekeepers of what we are bringing into the world, and what we choose not to bring into the world. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all.Design is also a craft with a lot of blood on its hands. Every cigarette ad is on us. Every gun is on us. Every ballot that a voter cannot understand is on us. Every time social network’s interface allows a stalker to find their victim, that’s on us. The monsters we unleash into the world will carry your name.This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we’ve excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we’ve made as a society.If you’re a designer, this book might make you angry. It should make you angry. But it will also give you the tools you need to make better decisions. You will learn how to evaluate the potential benefits and harm of what you’re working on. You’ll learn how to present your concerns. You’ll learn the importance of building and working with diverse teams who can approach problems from multiple points-of-view. You’ll learn how to make a case using data and good storytelling. You’ll learn to say NO in a way that’ll make people listen. But mostly, this book will fill you with the confidence to do the job the way you always wanted to be able to do it. This book will help you understand your responsibilities.

Unnatural Talent: Creating, Printing and Selling Your Comic in the Digital Age


Jason Brubaker - 2013
    While the publishing industry struggles to adapt to the rapidly changing digital world, independent artists now have the ability to build a successful and lucrative brand completely on their own with a little hard work and some Internet savvy. Now there's nothing stopping you from getting your book in front of thousands or even millions of people. Suddenly you can't blame anyone for not giving you a chance. You can only blame yourself for not trying. So roll up your sleeves, sharpen your pencils and fire up your Internet because we are about to make and sell comics! Jason Brubaker's graphic novel reMIND raised over $125,000 in pre-order sales on Kickstarter, won the Xeric Award and made ALA's Great Graphic Novels for Teens List. This book is a collection of his thoughts, strategies and practical lessons developed during his experience writing, drawing and self-publishing reMIND.

Museum Without Walls


Jonathan Meades - 2012
    Places" Jonathan Meades has an obsessive preoccupation with places. He has spent thirty years constructing sixty films, two novels and hundreds of pieces of journalism that explore an extraordinary range of them, from natural landscapes to man-made buildings and 'the gaps between them', drawing attention to what he calls 'the rich oddness of what we take for granted'. This book collects 54 pieces and six film scripts that dissolve the barriers between high and low culture, good and bad taste, deep seriousness and black comedy. Meades delivers 'heavy entertainment' - strong opinions backed up by an astonishing depth of knowledge. To read Meades on places, buildings, politics, or cultural history is an exhilarating workout for the mind. He leaves you better informed, more alert, less gullible. "Everything is fantastical if you stare at it for long enough. Everything is interesting."

Dissolve


Nikki Gemmell
    Decades later she has written a deeply personal, profoundly intimate reflection on love and female creativity, and what happens when the two collide in a man's world.Dissolve is a conversation. A conversation with the young women of Gemmell's teenage daughter's generation, and of course with men.'Reading this memoir is like therapy for the soul' ArtsHub'one of the most enriching, yet debilitating reads I've experienced... tremendous, moving writing' Jessie Tu, Women's Agenda'Nikki Gemmell wrote this book for me, and I suspect there will be many women who feel the same way... Each page is imbued with startling self-awareness and profound wisdom... Vulnerable, honest and raw' Better Reading

Subculture: The Meaning of Style


Dick Hebdige - 1979
    Hebdige [...] is concerned with the UK's postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.' - Rolling StoneWith enviable precision and wit Hebdige has addressed himself to a complex topic - the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures - approaching them with a sophisticated theoretical apparatus that combines semiotics, the sociology of devience and Marxism and come up with a very stimulating short book - Time OutThis book is an attempt to subject the various youth-protest movements of Britain in the last 15 years to the sort of Marxist, structuralist, semiotic analytical techniques propagated by, above all, Roland Barthes. The book is recommended whole-heartedly to anyone who would like fresh ideas about some of the most stimulating music of the rock era - The New York Times

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity


Marshall Berman - 1982
    In this unparalleled book, Marshall Berman takes account of the social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world and the impact of modernism on art, literature and architecture. This new edition contains an updated preface addressing the critical role the onset of modernism played in popular democratic upheavals in the late 1920s.

The Ultimate All-New Kindle Paperwhite Guide Book (Your Complete Manual for the All-New Kindle Paperwhite E-reader)


Bohner, Carl - 2013
    

The Wonderful World of Books (Rupa Quick Reads)


A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - 2016
    See the books that made APJ Abdul Kalam

Letters to Sarah - A Child Lost Forever, A Mother's Grief and a Love That Will Never Die


Sara Payne - 2017
    It has been twenty-five years since you were born. There have been too many Christmases without you . . . 'In the summer of 2000, schoolgirl Sarah Payne went missing from a beach where she played with her siblings. The nation waited with her whole family as the search for the little girl touched the hearts of everyone in the country. After Sarah's body was found, abducted and murdered by convicted paedophile Roy Whiting, her mother, Sara, spoke of how she had survived those terrible times.Now, seventeen years later, Sara wants to tell the full story of how she coped then, and how she has survived. Through a series of letters to her beloved daughter, she takes the reader on a heart-breaking but uplifting journey through every parent's worst nightmare in a moving account of the ultimate emotional survival. It is a story for the little girl who was taken, but a reminder to us all that hope never dies – and love never ends.

Three Women, Three Ponds (Penguin Petit)


Sudha Murty - 2017
    Each woman knows the struggles they face to find water every day. Each woman knows that the power to bring water to homes lies only in the hands of powerful men. Each woman does what is needed to make sure that happens anyway. The struggle and pain of being a good woman in rural India is brought to life beautifully by Sudha Murty.