Category Archives: Books

New Books: “Small But Smart – Design Solutions For Mini Homes”

Small but Smart Design Solutions for Mini Homes by Chris van Uffelen December 31 2019This volume presents a large variety of sophisticated solutions for mini houses in terms of architectural style, construction method and interior design. Whether portable or prefabricated, newly built or reused, rural or urban, they all meet the highest technological and sustainable standards to literally reduce their owners’ ecological footprint.

By living in a large ceramic tub, Ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes was one of the first people to promote a simple lifestyle as a protest against a corrupt society – one could call him an unwitting pioneer of the current tiny-house movement.

Small but Smart Design Solutions for Mini Homes by Chris van Uffelen December 31 2019

However, today small living is not necessarily connected to an alternative or even anarchic lifestyle – it simply makes things easier, more economic and eco-friendly to focus on what is really needed in life without compromising quality.

To read more and/or purchase: https://www.braun-publishing.ch/en/interior-design/small-but-smart.html

 

Biographies: “Shatner” By MICHAEL SETH STARR (2019)

Shatner by Michael Seth Starr December 2019Shatner takes a comprehensive look at this singular performer, using archival sources and information culled from interviews with friends and colleagues to transport readers through William Shatner’s remarkably bumpy career: his spectacular failures and triumphs; tragedies, including the shocking death of his third wife, Nerine; and, ultimately, the resilience Shatner has shown, time and again, in the face of overwhelming odds. Author Michael Seth Starr unravels the mystery of William Shatner, stripping away the many myths associated with his personal life and his relationships with fellow actors, presenting a no-holds-barred, unvarnished look at the unique career of an inimitable performer.

In the early months of 1966, a handsome, hardworking thirty-five-year-old Canadian-born actor named William Shatner was cast as Captain Kirk in Star Trek, a troubled, low-budget science-fiction television series set to premiere that fall on NBC. Star Trek struggled for viewers and lasted only three seasons, but it found a huge, rabidly dedicated audience when it premiered in syndication following its cancellation—turning Shatner into a pop-culture icon and launching him on a career path he never could have imagined after graduating from McGill University with an economics degree twenty years earlier. As he approaches his ninetieth year, he’s still working at a furious pace as a man of boundless contradictions: by turns one of the most dissected, disliked, revered, respected, mocked, imitated, and beloved stars in the show business firmament.

To read more or order book: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781493050659/Shatner

New Celebrity Books: “The Mighty Elvis – A Graphic Biography” By Seymour Chwast & Steven Brower

The Mighty Elvis is a commemoration of his life and times in the form of an art book, told through the unique vision of legendary designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast. Beautifully illustrated throughout, it presents an enhanced portrait of one of America’s greatest celebrities.

With text by author Steven Brower (Satchmo: The Life and Art of Louis Armstrong), The Mighty Elvis reminds us of the continuing stardom of one of the most popular American singers of all time. Through Chwast’s illustrations, cartoons and comics we get to relive his early life, his meteoric rise to fame and how he was affected by, and in turn, affected the world of music in the many genres he mastered. The book covers his first appearances on television, Graceland, his meeting with President Nixon, his wedding to Priscilla, and much more. Millions of fans loved him, purchased his records, attended his sold-out shows, and went to his 33 films. Death, 40 years ago, has not diminished his fame. “Elvis Lives!”

To read more and/or purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Elvis-Graphic-Biography/dp/1684055601/ref=sr_1_79?Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=39&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=15&field-datemod=12&field-dateop=During&field-dateyear=2019&qid=1576432769&refinements=p_n_feature_browse-bin%3A2656020011&rnid=618072011&s=books&sr=1-79&unfiltered=1

Top New Media Books: “Mag Men – Fifty Years Of Making Magazines”

Richly illustrated with the covers and interiors that defined their careers, Mag Men is bursting with vivid examples of Bernard and Glaser’s work, designed to encapsulate their distinctive approach to visual storytelling and capture the major events and trends of the past half century.

Columbia University Press logoFor more than fifty years, Walter Bernard and Milton Glaser have revolutionized the look of magazine journalism. In Mag Men, Bernard and Glaser recount their storied careers, offering insiders’ perspective on some of the most iconic design work of the twentieth century. The authors look back on and analyze some of their most important and compelling projects, from the creation of New York magazine to redesigns of such publications as TimeFortuneParis Match, and The Nation, explaining how their designs complemented a story and shaped the visual identity of a magazine.

Mag Men Fifty Years of Making Magazines by Walter Bernard and Milton Glaser Dec 2019

Highlighting the importance of collaboration in magazine journalism, Bernard and Glaser detail their relationships with a variety of writers, editors, and artists, including Nora Ephron, Tom Wolfe, Gail Sheehy, David Levine, Seymour Chwast, Katherine Graham, Clay Felker, and Katrina vanden Heuvel. The book features a foreword by Gloria Steinem, who reflects on her work in magazines and her collaborations with Bernard and Glaser. At a time when uncertainty continues to cloud the future of print journalism, Mag Men offers not only a personal history from two of its most innovative figures but also a reminder and celebration of the visual impact and sense of style that only magazines can offer.

To read more and/or purchase: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/mag-men/9780231191807

Comics Books: “George Herriman’s Krazy Kat – The Complete Color Sundays 1935-1944” (Taschen)

George Herriman's Krazy Kat The Complete Color Sundays 1935-1944 TaschenThe premise is simple: a black cat loves scheming a white mouse who incessantly throws bricks at the cat’s head, which police dog Officer Pupp, secretly harboring a passionate love for the cat, tries to prevent.

George Herriman endlessly plays with the above formula in his legendary newspaper strip Krazy Kat, published from 1913 until his death in 1944. Through his witdetailed characterizationand visual-verbal creativity, Herriman introduced even the least comically-inclined to the young medium; Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, US President Woodrow Wilson, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Capra, P.G. Wodehouse, Willem de Kooning—all KK fans among many others.

It was thanks to media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, a confirmed fan who gave Herriman carte blanche in his newspapers, that the artist was allowed to freely explore countless absurd and melancholy variations on the theme of unrequited love for years on end. Herriman unabashedly took advantage of this, radically exploring the medium’s potential and pushing all of its formal boundaries; readers had to put up with surreal, Dadaist sceneries, a language that whirled slang, neologisms, phonetic spelling, and scholarly references, and diffuse gender roles—making Krazy Kat probably the first gender-fluid star in comic history.

To read more or purchase: https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/graphic_design/all/01173/facts.george_herrimans_krazy_kat_the_complete_color_sundays_19351944.htm

Architecture & Design Books: “Lo-TEK Design By Radical Indigenism” By Julia Watson (Taschen)

julia_watson_lo_tek_design_by_radical_indigenism_va_gb_3d_04698_1910101554_id_1260524.png-380x526Lo—TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. It is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems.

Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, this mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive. Today, we have slowly come to realize that the legacy of this mythology is haunting us.

With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and four chapters spanning Mountains, Forests, Deserts, and Wetlands, this book explores thousands of years of human wisdom and ingenuity from 20 countries including Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Iraq, India, and Indonesia. We rediscover an ancient mythology in a contemporary context, radicalizing the spirit of human nature.

To read more or purchase: https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/architecture/all/04698/facts.julia_watson_lotek_design_by_radical_indigenism.htm

Cultural History Books: “Wicked City – The Many Cutures Of Marseille”

From a Literary Review online review:

Wicked City The Many Cutures of Marseille Nicholas Hewitt 2019The Toulousain Charles Dantzig wrote, ‘I find the Marseillais tiresome, especially those who, as soon as you speak to them, start to bang on about the uniqueness of being Marseillais, adding with a particular sort of whining machismo that no one likes them and everyone defames them. Their humour is nothing more than pitiable braggadocio.’ Régis Jauffret, who grew up there, is pithier: ‘Marseille is a tragic city. It formed my imagination.’ (It’s an imagination of peerless bleakness.)

Literary Review December 2019Nicholas Hewitt died in March, less than a month after completing the text of Wicked City. It’s a fine monument to his curiosity, compendious knowledge, resourcefulness and measured enthusiasm. He calls it ‘a series of snapshots’, which is perhaps too modest. If they are snapshots, they have been photoshopped and retouched to accord with his vision of the city and its well-rehearsed mythology of outsiderdom and exceptionalism, edginess and banditry. And his aspiration to explore Marseille’s hold on the ‘nation’s imagination’ is also too modest. The ‘international imagination’ would be more apt.

To read more: https://literaryreview.co.uk/babylon-on-sea

New History Books: “American Disruptor – The Scandalous Life Of Leland Stanford” (De Wolk)

It is also the saga of how Stanford, once a serial failure, overcame all obstacles to become one of America’s most powerful and wealthiest men, using his high elective office to enrich himself before losing the one thing that mattered most to him – his only child and son. Scandal and intrigue would follow Stanford through his life, and even after his death, when his widow was murdered in a Honolulu hotel – a crime quickly covered up by the almost stillborn university she had saved.  Richly detailed and deeply researched, American Disruptor restores Leland Stanford’s rightful place as a revolutionary force and architect of modern America.

American Disruptor is the untold story of Leland Stanford – from his birth in a backwoods bar to the founding of the world-class university that became and remains the nucleus of Silicon Valley. The life of this robber baron, politician, and historic influencer is the astonishing tale of how one supremely ambitious man became this country’s original “disruptor” – reshaping industry and engineering one of the greatest raids on the public treasury for America’s transcontinental railroad, all while living more opulently than maharajas, kings, and emperors.

Literary & Cultural Books: “The Peanuts Papers” Looks At Life Of Charles M. Schulz And His Cartoon Characters

The Peanuts Papers Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown Snoopy & the Gang and the Meaning of LifeOver the span of fifty years, Charles M. Schulz created a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture—hilarious, poignant, inimitable. Some twenty years after the last strip appeared, the characters Schulz brought to life in Peanuts continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself.

In The Peanuts Papers, thirty-three writers and artists reflect on the deeper truths of Schulz’s deceptively simple comic, its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture. These enchanting, affecting, and often quite personal essays show just how much Peanuts means to its many admirers—and the ways it invites us to ponder, in the words of Sarah Boxer, “how to survive and still be a decent human being” in an often bewildering world. Featuring essays, memoirs, poems, and two original comic strips, here is the ultimate reader’s companion for every Peanuts fan.

Website: https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1586-silliness-small-stakes-and-a-compelling-other-world-jonathan-franzen-pays-homage-to-_peanuts_