When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put


Vivian Swift - 2008
    She spent the next decade quietly taking stock of her life, her immediate surroundings, and, finally, what it means to call a place a home. The result is When Wanderers Cease to Roam. Filled with watercolors of beautiful local landscapes, seasonal activities, and small, overlooked pleasures of easy living, each chapter chronicles the perks of remaining at home, including recipes, hobbies, and prized possessions of the small town lifestyle. At once gorgeously rendered and wholly original, this delightful and masterfully observed year of staying put conjures everything from youthful yearnings and romantic travels to lumpy, homemade sweaters and the gradations of March mud.

Hundred: What You Learn in a Lifetime


Heike Faller - 2019
    The breakthroughs that come with age and experience. The realizations we have about ourselves and the world as the number of candles on your cake creeps up. There is so much to learn. In this beautiful fully illustrated book, you’ll follow, page by page, year by year, the course of a lifetime as each of us learns the little things that together make up a whole life. A perfect gift for holidays, birthdays, graduations, and that special friend, HUNDRED, like Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go, is a book destined to become a perennial favorite.

Life's Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way


Fred Rogers - 2005
    Whether you're facing graduation, a new job, a new baby, marriage, any change in your life--expected or not--the wisdom that Mister Rogers offers can contribute mightily to the grace with which you handle the change.With sections titled Who You Are Right Now, Loving and Being Loved, and Guided Drift, Fred addresses the scope of human transitions. It all comes down to knowing we're valuable, and that we're worthy of that value. As Fred would say, "You don't have to be anything more than who you are right now."In her Foreward, Joanne Rogers shares the Fred she knew. With stories from their life together, the joys as well as the struggles, Joanne shows how Fred looked at life as a journey--with the ups and downs and in-betweens.Known as "America's favorite neighbor," Fred Rogers dedicated his life to serving children through public television as creator, composer, writer, puppeteer, and host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Child Development and was ordained a Presbyterian minister, with the unique charge of working with children and families through television. Fred Rogers' relentless commitment to all that is best in people led to an astonishing array of honors, from induction into the Television Hall of Fame to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Fred Rogers passed away in February 2003.Family Communications, Inc. (FCI), founded by the late Fred Rogers in 1971 to produce Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and related projects, continues to expand its reach through early childhood trainings, publishing, and new technologies--perpetuating the values and philosophy of its founder.

The Book of Qualities


J. Ruth Gendler - 1984
    J. Ruth Gendler's evocative book has as its cast of familiar characters our own emotions, brought to life with a poet's wisdom and an artist's perceptive eye. In The Book of Qualities' magical community, Excitement wears orange socks, Faith lives in the same apartment building as Doubt, and Worry makes lists of everything that could go wrong while she is waiting for the train. In portraying the complexities of the psyche, Gendler uses the Qualities to bridge the distinctions between literature and psychology, and has created an original work that challenges us to look at our emotions in new and inspiring ways.

A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982


Nicholas Rombes - 2009
    It contains myriad critical-listening descriptions of the sounds of the time, but also places those sounds in the context of history. Drawing on hundreds of fanzines, magazines, and newspapers, the book is—in the spirit of punk—an obsessive, exhaustively researched, and sometimes deeply personal portrait of the many ways in which punk was an artistic, cultural, and political expression of defiance.A Cultural Dictionary of Punk is organized around scores of distinct entries, on everything from Lester Bangs to The Slits, from Jimmy Carter to Minimalism, from 'Dot Dash' to Bad Brains. Both highly informative and thrillingly idiosyncratic, the book takes a fresh look at how the malaise of the 1970s offered fertile ground for punk—as well as the new wave, post-punk, and hardcore—to emerge as a rejection of the easy platitudes of the dying counter-culture. The organization is accessible and entertaining: short bursts of meaning, in tune with the beat of punk itself.Rombes upends notions that the story of punk can be told in a chronological, linear fashion. Meant to be read straight through or opened up and experienced at random, A Cultural Dictionary of Punk covers not only many of the well-known, now-legendary punk bands, but the obscure, forgotten ones as well. Along the way, punk's secret codes are unraveled and a critical time in history is framed and exclaimed.Visit the Cultural Dictionaryof Punk blog here.

100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-by-Act Synopses


Henry W. Simon - 1989
    Written in a lively anecdotal style, entries include character descriptions, historical background, and much more.

Wabi Sabi Simple: Create beauty. Value imperfection. Live deeply.


Richard R. Powell - 2004
    By living the wabi sabi life, Westerners would be seeking to find peace and truth through nature, harmony and the little things. Readers can explore all aspects of this wondrous way of life: - Wabi sabi working - doing what one loves and not overdoing it; Wabi sabi eating - valuing the humble and familiar and savouring the exotic; Wabi sabi socializing - gleaning the lessons of the ancient tea ceremony; Wabi sabi creativity - enriching one's life by; valuing individual moments. The author serves as a highly eloquent guide on the reader's journey to a simpler, more fulfilling life

Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs


Ansel Adams - 2007
    Beautifully produced and presented in an attractive landscape trim, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs will appeal to a general gift-book audience as well as Adams' legions of dedicated fans and students. The photographs are arranged chronologically into five major periods, from his first photographs made in Yosemite and the High Sierra in 1916 to his work in the National Parks in the 1940s up to his last important photographs from the 1960s. An introduction and brief essays on selected images provide information about Adams' life, document the evolution of his technique, and give voice to his artistic vision. Few artists of any era can claim to have produced four hundred images of lasting beauty and significance. It is a testament to Adams' vision and lifetime of hard work that a book of this scale can be compiled. Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs is a must-have for anyone who appreciates photography and the allure of the natural world.

The Arts of China


Michael Sullivan - 1973
    The author concerns himself not only with art, but also with Chinese philosophy, religion, and the realm of ideas.

Information is Beautiful


David McCandless - 2001
    We need a brand new way to take it all in. 'Information is Beautiful' transforms the ideas surrounding and swamping us into graphs and maps that anyone can follow at a single glance.

Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music


Christoph Cox - 2004
    Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, Audio Culture traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composition and performance that have taken place in the past few decades and to provide a critical and theoretical language for this new audio culture. Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, Audio Culture explores the interconnections among such forms as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrète, free improvisation, experimental music, avant-rock, dub reggae, Ambient music, HipHop, and Techno. Instead of focusing on the putative "crossover" between "high art" and "popular culture," Audio Culture takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another. While cultural studies has tended to look at music (primarily popular music) from a sociological perspective, the concern here is philosophical, musical, and historical. Audio Culture includes writing by some of the most important musical thinkers of the past half-century, among them John Cage, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Jacques Attali, Simon Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, Paul D. Miller, David Toop, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. The book is divided into nine thematically-organized sections, each with its own introduction. Section headings include topics such as "Modes of Listening," "Minimalisms," and "DJ Culture." In addition, each essay has its own short introduction, helping the reader to place the essay within musical, historical, and conceptual contexts. The book concludes with a glossary, a timeline, and an extensive discography.

The Four Temperaments


Yona Zeldis McDonough - 2002
    Oscar Kornblatt has been a first violinist with the New York City Ballet for so many years that he scarcely notices the throngs of eager young dancers who fill the ranks of the corps de ballet. But Ginny Valentine catches his eye, and when he comes to know her he becomes utterly enchanted by her. One night when Ruth, his quietly independent wife, is away, he brings Ginny back to his Upper West Side apartment and the two become lovers.While the affair doesn’t last, Oscar’s attachment to Ginny continues to flourish. He invites her to join his family for Thanksgiving dinner, where she meets and falls in love with Oscar’s eldest son, Gabriel, home from San Francisco for the holiday. Gabriel, married to a beautiful, highly unstable woman, finds himself falling under Ginny’s spell. As the bonds of the family begin to erode, Ruth takes drastic and shocking measures to salvage what is most precious to her: her baby granddaughter, Isobel.Set against the glamorous, exciting world of the New York City Ballet, The Four Temperaments explores the ways in which love and marriage are tested. Through its unforgettable cast of characters, this novel reveals how the demands of the flesh can suddenly, almost inexplicably, turn lives upside down. With the assurance and virtuosity of a seasoned storyteller, Yona Zeldis McDonough presents the powerfully sexy story of two adulterous affairs and imbues them with an irresistible emotional undercurrent.From the Hardcover edition.

Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life


Shakti Gawain - 1978
    Now considered a classic, Creative Visualization teaches readers how to use their imaginations to manifest their deepest desires.

Tim Burton's Vincent


Tim Burton
    Young Vincent Malloy's vivid imagination takes him on a macabre journey into a fantastical and weird world in which his home is filled with spiders and bats, his aunt becomes an exhibit in his wax museum, and his beautiful wife is buried in his mother's flower bed.

Stand For Something: The Battle for America's Soul


John Kasich - 2006
    A former longtime U.S. congressman, a respected author and popular television host, Kasich has been around the neighborhood a few times. In his first book, Courage Is Contagious, he celebrated the under-the-radar accomplishments of ordinary people doing extraordinary things to change America. Now, in Stand for Something, he tackles-head-on-the erosion of long-standing, hard-earned values upon which our nation is built. "Honesty, integrity, personal responsibility, faith, humility, accountability, compassion, forgiveness...These are our American values, our common denominators..." Drawing on his childhood growing up in blue-collar McKees Rocks, PA, his college years, his Washington career, and his most recent turn in the private sector, Kasich reminds us of the fundamental principles that are our American legacy. In blunt, straight-shooting tones, he reveals new ways to hold our government officials accountable for their actions, and how to pressure sports figures to start living up to their role model status. He encourages us to have the gumption to be morally responsible business leaders who look beyond the bottom line, and shows us how courageous people of faith have helped transform their communities. He inspires parents to improve their children's schools, reminding us that our educational institutions need dollars and sense to compete on a global scale. And, saving the "best" for last, he takes on American popular culture, including the media, and asks us to use our wallets, the free press, and our own good judgment to protest all that is offensive in the current American way of life.Leadership starts with you, Kasich tells us. "We all share the power to grow and change and reimagine the world," he writes. "If you see something happening that sets you off, rise up and do something about it."John Kasich's book is a rallying cry for all Americans that will make us think and-most important-make us get out of our easy chairs and Stand for Something.