Book picks similar to
The Writing of Stones by Roger Caillois
art
non-fiction
geology
science
The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
Walter Pater - 1873
Pater was shocked at the reaction his book inspired: 'I wish they would not call me a hedonist, it gives such a wrong impression to those who do not know Greek.'.The book had begun as a series of idiosyncratic, impressionistic critical essays on those artists that embodied for him the spirit of the Renaissance; by collecting them and adding his infamous Conclusion, Pater gained a reputation as a daring modern philosopher. But The Renaissance survives as one of the most innovative pieces of cultural criticism to emerge from the nineteenth century.
"A Voyage on the North Sea": Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition
Rosalind E. Krauss - 2000
Based on the 1999 Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture, this book uses the work of the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers to argue that the specifity of mediums, even modernist ones, can never be simply collapsed into the physicality of their support.
The Historian's Craft: Reflections on the Nature and Uses of History and the Techniques and Methods of Those Who Write It.
Marc Bloch - 1949
What is the value of history? What is the use of history? How do scholars attempt to unpack it and make connections in a responsible manner? While the topics of historiography and historical methodology have become increasingly popular, Bloch remains an authority. He argues that history is a whole; no period and no topic can be understood except in relation to other periods and topics. And what is unique about Bloch is that he puts his theories into practice; for example, calling upon both his experience serving in WWI as well as his many years spent in peaceful study and reflection. He also argues that written records are not enough; a historian must draw upon maps, place-names, ancient tools, aerial surveys, folklore, and everything that is available. This is a work that argues constantly for a wider, more human history. For a history that describes how and why people live and work together. There is a living, breathing connection between the past and the present and it is the historian’s responsibility to do it justice.
The Ant and the Ferrari
Kerry Spackman - 2012
this is one of those rare books that will change your beliefs - and in doing so will change your life. tHE ANt AND tHE FERRARI offers readers a clear, navigable path through the big questions that confront us all today. What is the meaning of life? Can we be ethical beings in today's world? Can we know if there is life after death? Is there such a thing as Absolute truth? What caused the Big Bang and why should you care?
Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space
Mark Cotta Vaz - 2014
Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space documents the making of Nolan's latest masterpiece in fascinating detail and features interviews with the acclaimed director, along with screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, producer Emma Thomas, and other key members of the production team. Delving into the science and philosophy behind the film, Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space dynamically showcases its incredible concept art, including costume designs, storyboards, and other fascinating preproduction elements. Also featuring interviews with the exceptional cast, including Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space tells the full story of the making of the film, with candid pictures illustrating its elaborate set pieces and reliance on classic special effects techniques. Visually enthralling and engrossing in its in-depth exploration of the themes and ideas at the heart of Interstellar, this book is the perfect accompaniment to one of the most anticipated films of 2014. Based on the film from Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures. From acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan ("The Dark Knight" films, "Inception"), "Interstellar" stars Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey ("Dallas Buyers Club"), Oscar winner Anne Hathaway ("Les Misébles"), Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain ("Zero Dark Thirty"), Bill Irwin ("Rachel Getting Married"), Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn ("Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"), and Oscar winner Michael Caine ("The Cider House Rules"). The main cast also includes Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, David Gyasi, Mackenzie Foy and Topher Grace. Christopher Nolan directed the film from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jonathan Nolan. Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan and Lynda Obst produced "Interstellar," with Jordan Goldberg, Jake Myers, Kip Thorne and Thomas Tull serving as executive producers. Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures present, in association with Legendary Pictures, a Syncopy/Lynda Obst Productions production, a film by Christopher Nolan, "Interstellar."
Satanism and Witchcraft: The Classic Study of Medieval Superstition
Jules Michelet - 1862
and the witches, hobgoblins and wizards of whom the masses lived in mortal fear.Michelet draws flaming word pictures of the witch hunts, the Black Masses, the reign of Satan, and the weird rites of the damned. Here is the age of unbridled pleasure and sensuality, of luxury beyond imagination and squalor beyond endurance. Here is the time when a girl might be accused of witchcraft merely if she were young and pretty and did not survive the test of immersion in water or boiling oil. Here is the day of beatings, floggings, tortures and summary decapitations.Encyclopedia Britannica called the book, "The most important work on medieval superstition yet written." It is indeed one of the great works on the Age of Darkness.
An Actor Prepares
Konstantin Stanislavski - 1938
Stanislavski's simple exercises fire the imagination, and help readers not only discover their own conception of reality but how to reproduce it as well.
The Left-Hander's Handbook: Four Books in One: The Left-Handed Book, the Natural Superiority of the Left-Hander, the World's Greatest Left-Handers, Left-Handed Kids
James Tertius de Kay - 1994
A great gift for any left-hander.
Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols: The Ultimate A-Z Guide from Alchemy to the Zodiac
Adele Nozedar - 2008
A book that has definitions & explanation about numerous signs & symbols
The Critic as Artist
Oscar Wilde - 1891
Published originally in 1881, The Critic As Artist is one of Oscar Wilde's major aesthetic statements.
What is Literature?
Jean-Paul Sartre - 1948
His writings had a potency that was irresistible to the intellectual scene that swept post-war Europe, and have left a vital inheritance to contemporary thought. The central tenet of the Existentialist movement which he helped to found, whereby God is replaced by an ethical self, proved hugely attractive to a generation that had seen the horrors of Nazism, and provoked a revolution in post-war thought and literature. In What is Literature? Sartre the novelist and Sartre the philosopher combine to address the phenomenon of literature, exploring why we read, and why we write.
On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes
Alexandra Horowitz - 2013
You are missing what is happening in the distance and right in front of you. In reading these words, you are ignoring an unthinkably large amount of information that continues to bombard all of your senses. The hum of the fluorescent lights; the ambient noise in the room; the feeling of the chair against your legs or back; your tongue touching the roof of your mouth; the tension you are holding in your shoulders or jaw; the constant hum of traffic or a distant lawnmower; the blurred view of your own shoulders and torso in your peripheral vision; a chirp of a bug or whine of a kitchen appliance.On Looking begins with inattention. It is not meant to help you focus on your reading of Tolstoy; it is not about how to multitask. Rather, it is about attending to the joys of the unattended, the perceived "ordinary." Horowitz encourages us to rediscover the extraordinary things that we are missing in our ordinary activities. Even when engaged in the simplest of activities - taking a walk around the block - we pay so little attention to most of what is right before us that we are sleepwalkers in our own lives. So turn off the phone and portable electronics and get into the real world, where you'll find there are worlds within worlds within worlds.
Tape Delay
Charles Neal - 1987
A virtual Who's Who of people who've done the most in the eighties to drag music out of commercial confinement."--NMEContributors: Marc Almond, Dave Ball, Cabaret Voltaire, Nick Cave, Chris & Cosey, Coil, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Fall, Diamanda Galas, Genesis P-Orridge, Michael Gira, The Hafler Trio, Matt Johnson (The The), Laibach, Lydia Lunch, New Order, Psychic TV, Boyd Rice, Henry Rollins, Clint Ruin, Silverstar Amoeba, Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Sonic Youth, Stevo, Mark Stewart, Swans, Test Dept, David Tibet (Current 93), Touch.
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Edward R. Tufte - 1983
Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relational graphics, data maps, multivariate designs. Detection of graphical deception: design variation vs. data variation. Sources of deception. Aesthetics and data graphical displays. This is the second edition of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Recently published, this new edition provides excellent color reproductions of the many graphics of William Playfair, adds color to other images, and includes all the changes and corrections accumulated during 17 printings of the first edition.
On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection
Susan Stewart - 1984
Originally published in 1984 (Johns Hopkins University Press), and now available in paperback for the first time, this highly original book draws on insights from semiotics and from psychoanalytic, feminist, and Marxist criticism. Addressing the relations of language to experience, the body to scale, and narratives to objects, Susan Stewart looks at the "miniature" as a metaphor for interiority and at the "gigantic" as an exaggeration of aspects of the exterior. In the final part of her essay Stewart examines the ways in which the "souvenir" and the "collection" are objects mediating experience in time and space.