No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980.


Thurston Moore - 2008
    This in depth look at punk rock, new wave, experimental music, and the avant-garde art movement of the 70s and 80s focuses on the true architects of No Wave from James Chance to Lydia Lunch to Glenn Branca, as well as the luminaries that intersected the scene, such as David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, and Richard Hell.This rarely documented scene was the creative stomping ground of young artists and filmmakers from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Jim Jarmusch as well as the musical genesis for the post-punk explosions of Sonic Youth and is here revealed for a new generation of fans and collectors.Thurston Moore and Byron Coley have selected 150 unforgettable images, most of which have never been published previously, and compiled hundreds of hours of personal interviews to create an oral history of the movement, providing a never-seen-before exploration and celebration of No Wave.

Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light


Jane Brox - 2010
    She convincingly portrays the hell-bent pursuit of whale oil as the first time the human desire for light thrust us toward an environmental tipping point. Only decades later, gas street lights opened up the evening hours to leisure, which changed the ways we live and sleep and the world’s ecosystems.Edison’s “tiny strip of paper that a breath would blow away” produced a light that seemed to its users all but divorced from human effort or cost. And yet, as Brox’s informative and hair-raising portrait of our current grid system shows, the cost is ever with us.Brilliant is infused with human voices, startling insights, and—only a few years before it becomes illegal to sell most incandescent light bulbs in the United States—timely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light.

I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution


Craig Marks - 2011
    It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business. Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.

Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt


Arthur T. Vanderbilt II - 1989
    The family patriarch, "the Commodore," built up a fortune that made him the world's richest man by 1877. Yet, less than fifty years after the Commodore's death, one of his direct descendants died penniless, and no Vanderbilt was counted among the world's richest people. "Fortune's Children" tells the dramatic story of all the amazingly colorful spenders who dissipated such a vast inheritance.

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change


Victor Papanek - 1972
    Translated into twenty-three languages, it is one of the world's most widely read books on design. In this edition, Victor Papanek examines the attempts by designers to combat the tawdry, the unsafe, the frivolous, the useless product, once again providing a blueprint for sensible, responsible design in this world which is deficient in resources and energy.

The Book You Were Born to Write: Everything You Need to (Finally) Get Your Wisdom onto the Page and into the World


Kelly Notaras - 2018
    Life coaches with new methodologies for living on purpose . . . energy workers who've discovered new ways to prevent disease and teach self-healing . . . everyday heroes and heroines who have made it through difficult circumstances and want to inspire others to do the same. In today's tumultuous world, we need these voices in the marketplace. Moreover, publishing a book has never been so simple, accessible, or affordable as it is today. So why are so many thought leaders, healers, and change-agents stuck at the starting line?This book will light the way--offering a simple, step-by-step path that takes authors from concept to finished book. In it, publishing veteran Kelly Notaras demystifies the publishing process and gives writers the tools, insider information, and inspiration to start strong, keep going, and get across the finish line as quickly as possible.

Leonardo Da Vinci - the First Scientist


Michael White - 2000
    But few guessed at the extent of his scientific investigations and experiments. In a vast collection of notebooks (over 5,000 pages), Leonardo meticulously detailed his research on optics, mechanics, astronomy, and anatomy. He kept his findings hidden for fear his ideas would be stolen. Had they been shared or published, they might well have changed the course of scientific discovery, for they prefigured the work of Newton, Galileo, and Kepler. Instead, after Leonardo's death, his papers were lost to the world for nearly 200 years; some were never recovered. Using newly available documents, Michael White illuminates Leonardo's groundbreaking achievements and weaves together the elements of his life and times-his unhappy childhood, his homosexuality, his relationship with everyone from Machiavelli to Cesare Borgia to Michelangelo. Leonardo: The First Scientist restores to this Renaissance genius the place he deserves in the pantheon of modern discovery About The Author: Michael White is the author of the international best-seller Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science (with John Gribbin), the award-winning Isaac Newton: the Last Sorcerer, Life Out There, and Weird Science . He is currently working on a book about scientific rivalry from Newton to Bill Gates. White lives with his wife and family near London.

Saved by the Wolf


Mirajane - 2019
    She’s in danger because of me, and I need to save her before it’s too late!  I used to be Alpha wolf of my pack.Now, all I long for is a perfect mate. Rose is the woman for me. She’s my client but I don’t care about breaking the rules just this once.Her gorgeous eyes and luscious lips drive me crazy. But she’s been bitten by another wolf who’s eyeing her. The bite is turning her into one of us. It’s my job to keep her safe.To keep our family together. Rose is carrying my baby……and there’s no force in world that could snatch her away from me.

James Joyces the Dubliners


John Wyse Jackson - 2000
    

A Field Guide to American Houses


Virginia McAlester - 1984
    17th century to the present. Book was reprinted in 2006

History of Beauty


Umberto Eco - 2004
    What is beauty? Umberto Eco, among Italy’s finest and most important contemporary thinkers, explores the nature, the meaning, and the very history of the idea of beauty in Western culture. The profound and subtle text is lavishly illustrated with abundant examples of sublime painting and sculpture and lengthy quotations from writers and philosophers. This is the first paperback edition of History of Beauty, making this intellectual and philosophical journey with one of the world’s most acclaimed thinkers available in a more compact and affordable format.From the Trade Paperback edition

A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life


Greg Jenner - 2015
    In this gloriously entertaining romp through human history, peppered with amusing pop culture references, Greg Jenner explores the gradual and often unexpected evolution of our daily routines.This is not a story of politics, wars or great events, instead Greg Jenner has scoured Roman rubbish bins, Egyptian tombs and Victorian sewers to bring us the most intriguing, surprising and sometimes downright silly nuggets from our past. Drawn from across the world, spanning a million years of humanity, this book is a smorgasbord of historical delights. It is a history of all those things you always wondered - and many you have never considered. It is the story of your life, one million years in the making.The UK paperback edition (2016) is revised and updated with extra facts.OTHER REVIEWS:"If you find yourself secretly relishing your children's Horrible Histories books, you will love Greg Jenner's jolly account of how we have more in common with our ancestors than we might think ... all human life is here, amusingly conveyed in intriguing nuggets of gossipy historical anecdote" (DAILY MAIL)"A wonderful idea, gloriously put into practice, Greg Jenner is as witty as he is knowledgeable" (TOM HOLLAND)"Delightful, surprising and hilarious, this is a fascinating history of the everyday objects and inventions we take for granted" (LAUREN LAVERNE)"Greg Jenner's magpie mind takes you through the history of who we are and what we do, answering tons of questions you never thought to ask" (AL MURRAY)"Like visiting the most wonderful and cluttered museum, each chapter like another room teetering with illuminating ideas and information" (ROBIN INCE)"Hugely entertaining...full of astonishing insights" (HISTORY REVEALED MAGAZINE)"Jenner has a vivid, colloquial turn of phrase...lively, funny and completely absorbing" (CURRENT ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE)

When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends


Mary McAuliffe - 2016
    Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior. The epicenter of all this creativity, as well as of the era's good times, was Montparnasse, where impoverished artists and writers found colleagues and cafes, and tourists discovered the Paris of their dreams. Major figures on the Paris scene--such as Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Picasso, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Proust--continued to hold sway, while others now came to prominence--including Ernest Hemingway, Coco Chanel, Cole Porter, and Josephine Baker, as well as Andre Citroen, Le Corbusier, Man Ray, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, and the irrepressible Kiki of Montparnasse. Paris of the 1920s unquestionably sizzled. Yet rather than being a decade of unmitigated bliss, les Annees folles also saw an undercurrent of despair as well as the rise of ruthless organizations of the extreme right, aimed at annihilating whatever threatened tradition and order--a struggle that would escalate in the years ahead. Through rich illustrations and evocative narrative, Mary McAuliffe brings this vibrant era to life.

Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved


Russell Martin - 2000
    For a century, the lock of hair was a treasured Hiller family relic, until it somehow found its way to the town of Gilleleje, in Nazi-occupied Denmark. There, it was given to a local doctor, Kay Fremming, who was deeply involved in the effort to help save hundreds of hunted and frightened Jews.After Fremming's death, his daughter assumed ownership of the lock, and eventually consigned it for sale at Sotheby's, where two American Beethoven enthusiasts, Ira Brilliant and Che Guevara, purchased it in 1994. Subsequently, they and others instituted a series of complex forensic tests in the hope of finding the probable causes of the composer's chronically bad health, his deafness, and the final demise that Ferdinand Hiller had witnessed all those years ago. The results, revealed for the first time here, are the most compelling explanation yet offered for why one of the foremost musicians the world has ever known was forced to spend much of his life in silence.In Beethoven's Hair, Russell Martin has created a rich historical treasure hunt, a tale of false leads, amazing breakthroughs, and incredible revelations. This unique and fascinating book is a moving testament to the power of music, the lure of relics, the heroism of the Resistance movement, and the brilliance of molecular science.

The Way the Future Was: A Memoir


Frederik Pohl - 1978
    . .* What Isaac Asimov was like at 19.* The truth behind the great World SF Convention War of 1939.* How a teenager became a mover and shaker in the bizarre world of the pulp magazines.* The strange mating rites of the sf community.* How to represent most of the best sf writers and go broke.* The dreams of new worlds and universes behind a body of completely original writing that has enlarged the horizons of three generations of readers . . . and netted the writers ½¢ to 3¢ a word.From the moment he attended the first meeting of the Brooklyn chapter of the Science Fiction League, Fred Pohl was hooked. He and his friends founded and disbanded fan clubs with dizzying speed, then organized the fabled Futurians. At 19, he became editor of Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories, and, except for the war and a brief fling in the advertising business, has been almost totally involved in science fiction ever since.As an agent, he created the market for hardcover sf; as editor of Galaxy in the 60s, he shaped the field for most of a decade; his Star Science Fiction series pioneered the concept of original anthologies; and along with all that he produced a number of truly outstanding works of sf, including: The Space Merchants (with Cyril Kornbluth) and, most recently Man Plus and Gateway, voted the Best Novels of 1976 and 1977, respectively.It's been a long road, from the scruffy Ivory Tower where the Futurians denned to a time when much that was science fiction is now reality—and Fred Pohl retraces it with candor, wit, and abiding love.