Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy


David Freddoso - 2011
    coercion ... intimidation. Sounds like a movie review of The Godfather, but unfortunately we're talking about your federal government. So says bestselling author David Freddoso. In Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy, Freddoso exposes how the Obama administration bears a closer resemblance to the mob than to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Laying bare the backdoor deals, threats, and pay-to-play schemes Obama uses to push his policies on unsuspecting voters, Gangster Government proves that Obama is more concerned with protecting his friends and punishing his enemies than doing right by the American public. In this shocking book, Freddoso reveals: who really benefited from the auto industry bailout and the stimulus package (it wasn't the car companies or the American people); how Obama and his EPA cronies are setting up a protection racket to control fossil fuels; why trial lawyers will benefit from Obamacare more than anyone else; and much more. Controversial and compelling, Gangster Government reveals an administration that is so corrupt, it would make Al Capone blush.

Advantage India: From Challenge to Opportunity


A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - 2016
    Even in this nondescript settlement, people receive money via mobile transfer from family members working in distant cities. There are computer training centres offering diploma courses in Bhojpuri, Hindi and English. Here is an example of India's numerous remote towns that have skipped the stage of basic learning and landed straight into digital literacy as they strive to keep up with the times.In his last book, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, writing with Srijan Pal Singh, draws upon examples ranging from entrepreneurship in places like Badshahpur to a sophisticated missile programme like Agni to show how it can be 'Advantage India' in the final lap of the journey to 2020--the landmark year by which he had envisioned the country could transform into an economic power. How can the new initiatives--such as Make in India, Swachh Bharat, smart cities and skill development for the youth--be used to unleash the country's vast potential?Advantage India offers the answer--a movement driven by every home and school to educate the new generation and give a fresh meaning to citizenship.

Notes on Camp


Susan Sontag - 1964
    Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Stevie Smith; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outerspace.

Design as Art


Bruno Munari - 1966
    Munari insisted that design be beautiful, functional and accessible, and this enlightening and highly entertaining book sets out his ideas about visual, graphic and industrial design and the role it plays in the objects we use everyday. Lamps, road signs, typography, posters, children's books, advertising, cars and chairs - these are just some of the subjects to which he turns his illuminating gaze.How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever.Bruno Munari (1907-1998), born in Milan, was the enfant terrible of Italian art and design for most of the twentieth century, contributing to many fields of both visual (paint, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphics) and non-visual arts (literature, poetry). He was twice awarded the Compasso d'Oro design prize for excellence in his field.If you enjoyed Design as Art, you might like John Berger's Ways of Seeing, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'One of the most influential designers of the twentieth century ... Munari has encouraged people to go beyond formal conventions and stereotypes by showing them how to widen their perceptual awareness'International Herald Tribune

Pocket Frida Kahlo Wisdom: Inspirational Quotes and Wise Words from a Legendary Icon


Hardie Grant - 2018
    From a young age, Kahlo forged her own path, overcoming polio as a child, and stoically battling the after-effects of a tragic road accident that left her with lifelong injuries. Pocket Frida Kahlo Wisdom is an inspiring collection of some of her best quotes on love, style, life, art and more, and celebrates the Mexican icon's immense legacy."Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light.""The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.""I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better."

The Age of Oversupply: Overcoming the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy


Daniel Alpert - 2013
    Economic and political forces are preventing markets from correcting themselves, and we're now living in an unprecedented age of oversupply.Governments and central banks across the developed world have tried every policy tool imaginable, yet our economies remain sluggish or worse. Howdid we get here, and how can advanced nations compete and prosper once more?In this bold call to arms, economic policy expert Daniel Alpert argues that a global labor glut, excess productive capacity, and a rising ocean of cheap capital have kept the economies of the first world, and notably the United States, mired in underemployment and anemic growth.Distracted by a technology boom and a massive debt bubble in the 1990s and early 2000s, advanced nations failed to assess the ultimate impact of the torrent of labor and capital unleashed by formerly socialist economies. After the financial crisis of 2008, the United States and Europe joined an already sclerotic Japan in dire economic straits. Today, as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and others poach jobs from Western Europe, the United States, and Japan, household incomes in the developed world continue to decline. Many policymakers believe in outdated supplyside economic remedies. They miss the connection between global oversupply and the lack of domestic investment and growth. But Alpert shows how they are intertwined: We cannot understand the housing bubble and the financial crisis without appreciating how the rise of the emerging nations distorted the economies of rich countries. And we can’t chart a path for growth in the developed world without recognizing that many of these distorting forces are still at work.The Age of Oversupply offers a bold, fresh approach to fixing the West’s economic woes through large-scale fiscal stimulus measures, investments in infrastructure, and an aggressive private debt reduction plan. It also delivers a vigorous challenge to proponents of austerity economics.

Germany: Memories of a Nation


Neil MacGregor - 2014
    Written and presented by Neil MacGregor, it is produced by BBC Radio 4, in partnership with the British Museum.Whilst Germany s past is too often seen through the prism of the two World Wars, this series investigates a wider six hundred-year-old history of the nation through its objects. It examines the key moments that have defined Germany s past its great, world-changing achievements and its devastating tragedies and it explores the profound influence that Germany s history, culture, and inventiveness have had across Europe.The objects featured in the radio series range from large sculptures to small individual artifacts and items that are prosaic, iconic, and symbolic. Each has a story to tell and a memory to invoke."

The Sixties


Richard Avedon - 1999
    Benjamin Spock, September 1969The connection between all the rhetoric and all the poetry, between the words of a Black Panther and those of a rock star or a pacifist, between the scars of a pop artist and those of a napalm victim, have haunted and informed the structuring of this book, with its own peculiar version of a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Paris Reborn: Napoléon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to Build a Modern City


Stephane Kirkland - 2013
    The Louvre Palace was expanded, Notre-Dame Cathedral was restored and the French masterpiece of the Second Empire, the Opéra Garnier, was built. A very large part of what we see when we visit Paris today originates from this short span of twenty-two years.The vision for the new Nineteenth Century Paris belonged to Napoleon III, who had led a long and difficult climb to absolute power. But his plans faltered until he brought in a civil servant, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, to take charge of the implementation. Heedless of controversy, at tremendous cost, Haussmann pressed ahead with the giant undertaking until, in 1870, his political enemies brought him down, just months before the collapse of the whole regime brought about the end of an era.Paris Reborn is a must-read for anyone who ever wondered how Paris, the city universally admired as a standard of urban beauty, became what it is.

The Big Butt Book


Dian Hanson - 2010
    Contemporary Italians touch it for luck before placing a bet. Americans are having it cosmetically enhanced at rates approaching breast enlargement surgery. The female butt, tush, culo, or derrière has always inspired awe, fantasy, and slavish devotion.Curiously, its primary purpose is functional rather than aesthetic: butts balance our bodies while running, according to biologists. But ask any pygophiliac—as fundament fans are clinically termed—and you'll get the same answer: female hindquarters exist to please the eye, the hands, and parts south. A pert posterior causes instant arousal, as Zora Neale Hurston observed in Their Eyes Were Watching God: "The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets." Or, as rapper Sir Mix-a-lot proclaimed, "My anaconda don't want none, unless you’ve got buns, hun."Having all but disappeared from western culture in the breast-obsessed second half of the 20th century, the fully formed fanny is currently enjoying a massive resurgence, attributed by some to American actress Jennifer Lopez, by others to the rise of booty-centric hip hop culture. Yet this rage for shapely butts is nothing new. The ancient Greeks worshipped at the temple of Aphrodite Kallipygos, Goddess of the Beautiful Buttocks, while a womanly rump has always been an object of worship in most of the southern hemisphere.The Big Butt Book explores this perennial fascination with female booty—from small and taut to large and sumptuous—in the fourth installment of Dian Hanson's critically acclaimed body parts series. Over 400 photos from 1900 to the present day are contextualized by interviews with porn icon John (Buttman) Stagliano, filmmaker Tinto Brass, artist Robert Crumb, bootylicious butt queens Buffie The Body, Coco and Brazil's Watermelon Woman, plus Eve Howard and her life-long spanking obsession.

Going South


Ella Yelich-O'Connor (Lorde) - 2021
    It documents her experience visiting the continent of Antarctica in January 2019 with photos taken by New Zealand photographer Harriet Were. Lorde expressed an interest in exploring the region of Antarctica since she was old enough to read. In January 2019, she visited Scott Base and McMurdo Station, Antarctica, travelling as an Antarctic Ambassador. During her visit, she observed microscopic species in environmental laboratories and spoke with scientists. Lorde described the book as "sort of a perfect precursor" to her upcoming third studio album. It will feature over 100 pages of images taken by New Zealand photographer Harriet Were and writings from Lorde. All proceeds will be used to fund a postgraduate scholarship created by Antarctica New Zealand, a government agency.

The Real Frank Zappa Book


Frank Zappa - 1989
    Along the way, Zappa offers his inimitable views on many things such as art, politics and beer.

Poetry, Language, Thought


Martin Heidegger - 1971
    Essential reading for students and anyone interested in the great philosophers, this book opens up appreciation of Heidegger beyond the study of philosophy to the reaches of poetry and our fundamental relationship to the world. Featuring "The Origin of the Work of Art," a milestone in Heidegger's canon, this enduring volume provides potent, accessible entry to one of the most brilliant thinkers of modern times.

The Medieval World Complete


Robert Bartlett - 2001
    Organized by topic and thoroughly cross-referenced, this comprehensive volume enables the reader to explore and understand every facet of the Middle Ages, an era of breathtaking artistic achievement and religious faith in a world where life was often coarse and cruel, cut short by war, famine, and disease. Framed by chapters that bracket the beginning and the end of this misunderstood period, The Medieval World Complete covers religion and the Church, nations and laws, daily life, art and architecture, scholarship and philosophy, and the world beyond Christendom. The book is completed by biographies of key personalities, from Charlemagne to Wycliffe, as well as timelines, maps, a glossary, a gazetteer, and a bibliography.

50 Keys To Better Photography!


Dan Eitreim - 2012
    This one is huge! Over 160 pages of easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to DO tips that will make you a better photographer!If you are tired of being the runner-up in all the local photography contests and want to start hearing "Ooohs" and "Aaahs" when people look at your photos, this one is for YOU!To give you an idea of what is included, here is the table of contents...Introduction:The Basics Of Photography:Key 1: Photography SimplifiedKey 2: Aperture And Shutter SpeedKey 3: Master Your Camera - Fast!Key 4: The Photographer's Secret WeaponKey 5: Creativity Can Be LearnedKey 6: A New Vantage PointKey 7: Put the "Wow" Factor In Your Photos!Key 8: Tell A StoryKey 9: Exposure - How Your Meter Works!Key 10: How To Shoot In Black And White Eliminate Camera Shake:Key 11: Your Shooting StanceKey 12: Tripod TipsKey 13: Use A Tripod Like A MonopodKey 14: How To Use A MonopodKey 15: Hands Off The Button!Key 16: Mirror, Mirror…Using On Camera FlashKey 17: The Ten Foot RuleKey 18: Intensify The Colors In Your PhotosKey 19: Eliminate "Red Eye!"Outdoors/Landscape PhotographyKey 20: Create Better Landscape PhotosKey 21: Shooting In Bad WeatherKey 22: Two Horizon Photo TipsKey 23: More On Level HorizonsKey 24: Stunning City Skyline PhotographyKey 25: Shoot Better sunset PhotosKey 26: How To Get Intense Sunset Photo ColorsKey 27: Filters To The RescueKey 28: The Indispensable Rubber BandKey 29: Recovering The GroundKey 30: Amazing WaterfallsKey 31: Making Clouds "POP!"Key 32: To Buy Or Not To Buy Colored FiltersKey 33: Storing Your FiltersKey 34: Using Kodak Yellow!Key 35: Fireworks And Lightning - Part 1Key 36: Fireworks And Lightning - Part 2Key 37: Flowers And Spider Webs - Part 1Key 38: Flowers And Spider Webs - Part 2Key 39: Turn AroundPet PortraitsKey 40: Pet Portraits - Great For Camera MasteryKey 41: Better Pet Portraits In 3 Easy StepsKey 42: In Pet Portraits The Ears Matter!Key 43: Problem AnimalsPortrait PhotographyKey 44: Tips For Improving Your PortraitsKey 45: 2 Easy Portrait Photography TipsKey 46: The "Photographic Ground Modification System!"Key 47: Visually Lose Weight!Key 48: The Ultimate Portrait Photography Tip!Key 49: Size MattersKey 50: Basics Of Lighting Portrait PhotographyAdditional Training: