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Intelligent Life is a bi-monthly lifestyle and culture magazine from The Economist. It covers the arts, style, food, wine, cars, travel and anything else under the sun, as long as it’s interesting. It shares The Economist’s fondness for crisp prose, dry wit and free thinking. But rather than covering politics and economics, it is about life in general and making the most of your time off, from tailoring to museums, hotels to philanthropy, choosing wine to going green
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Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters by Gordon M. Shepherd. Leading neuroscientist Gordon M. Shepherd embarks on a paradigm-shifting trip through the “human brain flavor system,” laying the foundations for a new scientific field: neurogastronomy. Challenging the belief that the sense of smell diminished during human evolution, Shepherd argues that this sense, which constitutes the main component of flavor, is far more powerful and essential than previously believed. Shepherd begins Neurogastronomy with the mechanics of smell, particularly the way it stimulates the nose from the back of the mouth. As we eat, the brain conceptualizes smells as spatial patterns, and from these and the other senses it constructs the perception of flavor. Shepherd then considers the impact of the flavor system on contemporary social, behavioral, and medical issues. He analyzes flavor’s engagement with the brain regions that control emotion, food preferences, and cravings, and he even devotes a section to food's role in drug addiction and, building on Marcel Proust’s iconic tale of the madeleine, its ability to evoke deep memories.
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The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking Edited by Cesar Vega, Job Ubbink, and Erik van der Linden. Eating is a multisensory experience, yet chefs and scientists have only recently begun to deconstruct food’s components, setting the stage for science-based cooking. In this global collaboration of essays, chefs and scientists advance culinary knowledge by testing hypotheses rooted in the physical and chemical properties of food. Using traditional and cutting-edge tools, ingredients, and techniques, these pioneers create, and sometimes revamp, dishes that respond to specific desires and serve up an original encounter with gastronomic practice.
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The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by Michael E. Mann. The Hockey Stick became a central icon in the “climate wars,” and well-funded science deniers immediately attacked the chart and the scientists responsible for it. Yet the controversy has had little to do with the depicted temperature rise and much more with the perceived threat the graph posed to those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect our environment and planet. Michael E. Mann, lead author of the original paper in which the Hockey Stick first appeared, shares the real story of the science and politics behind this controversy. He introduces key figures in the oil and energy industries, and the media front groups who do their bidding in sometimes slick, bare-knuckled ways to cast doubt on the science. Mann concludes with an account of the “Climategate” scandal, the 2009 hacking of climate scientists’ emails. Throughout, Mann reveals the role of science deniers, abetted by an uninformed media, in once again diverting attention away from one of the central scientific and policy issues of our time.
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"The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips are Telling Us" by Sheril Kirshenbaum. The Science of Kissing is divided into three main sections, covering the origins of kissing as we know them, the biology of kissing, and where the kissing field is going scientifically. So while the book begins with a more historical and sociological perspective, it goes into biology and all the way into an experiment itself before coming out again. The origins of kissing begins the book, and talks about forms of "kissing" in other species, forms of what may be considered "kissing" around the world that differ from the traditional liplock, and how kissing spread from what may have primarily been a show of master-servant relationship to the romantic thing we know and love today.
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The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011Edited by Hilary Ballon. The Greatest Grid shares the history of the Commissioners' plan, incorporating archival photos and illustrations, primary documents and testimony, and magnificent maps with essential analysis. The text, written by leading historians of New York City, follows the grid's initial design, implementation, and evolution, and then speaks to its enduring influence. A foldout map, accompanied by explanatory notes, reproduces the Commissioners' original plan, and additional maps and prints chart the city's pre-1811 irregular growth patterns and local precedent for the grid's design. Constituting the first sustained examination of this subject, this text describes the social, political, and intellectual figures who were instrumental in remaking early New York, not in the image of old Europe but as a reflection of other American cities and a distinct New World sensibility. The grid reaffirmed old hierarchies while creating new opportunities for power and advancement, giving rise to the multicultural, highly networked landscape New Yorkers thrive in today.
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Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found by Sophie Blackall. Since 2009, she has been capturing Craigslist missed connections in her delightful illustrations and unmistakable style of Chinese ink and watercolor, brimming with charm, romanticism and soft whimsy.
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In the Company of Strangers: Family and Narrative in Dickens, Conan Doyle, Joyce, and Proust by Barry McCrea. In the Company of Strangers shows how a reconception of family and kinship underlies the revolutionary experiments of the modernist novel. While stories of marriage and long-lost relatives were a mainstay of classic Victorian fiction, Barry McCrea suggests that rival countercurrents within these family plots set the stage for the formal innovations of Joyce and Proust. Tracing the challenges to the family plot mounted by figures such as Fagin, Sherlock Holmes, Leopold Bloom, and Charles Swann, McCrea tells the story of how bonds generated by chance encounters between strangers come to take over the role of organizing narrative time and give shape to fictional worlds—a task and power that was once the preserve of the genealogical family. By investigating how the question of family is a hidden key to modernist structure and style, In the Company of Strangers explores the formal narrative potential of queerness and in doing so rewrites the history of the modern novel.
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The Inquisition of Climate Science James L. Powell. The Inquisition of Climate Science is the first book to comprehensively take on the climate science denial movement and the deniers themselves, exposing their lack of credentials, their extensive industry funding, and their failure to provide any alternative theory to explain the observed evidence of warming. In this book, readers meet the most prominent deniers while dissecting their credentials, arguments, and lack of objectivity. James Lawrence Powell shows that the deniers use a wide variety of deceptive rhetorical techniques, many stretching back to ancient Greece. Carefully researched, fully referenced, and compellingly written, his book clearly reveals that the evidence of global warming is real and that an industry of denial has deceived the American public, putting them and their grandchildren at risk.
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The SCAR Project: Breast Cancer Is Not a Pink Ribbon. (Volume I) Hardcover. 126 pages containing 50 portraits of young breast cancer survivors, as well as an autobiographical sketch by each woman, describing her experience with breast cancer. The SCAR Project is an exhibition of large-scale portraits of young breast cancer survivors shot by fashion photographer David Jay.
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1995, saw the publication of Dream Boy. In it, author Jim Grimsley confronts the violence of adolescent homophobia, but also, and maybe more importantly, he describes the emotional texture — the loneliness — of growing up queer, and the bravery and special intensity of finding love in a hostile environment. Grimsley demonstrates that two working-class boys loving each other, in the rural South, is an act as profound as it is simple. Dream Boy tells the story of Nathan and Roy. Nathan's troubled family relocates to a new home on Roy's family farm. Nathan is smart, shy and slight. Roy is two years older, strong and popular. He is pulled gravitationally toward Nathan. The first half of the book is written with devastating beauty; the language manages to be clear and precise while at the same time dreamy and incantatory. The second half of Dream Boy takes us to a haunted house, and the book becomes a ghost story. This is a brilliant, unexpected turn, and Dream Boy is like no other book I've ever read. I won't say too much more here, because you must read this book, but I will say that Grimsley realizes literature is not bound to the laws of the physical world, and he makes the most of this. And though he writes about those on the margins, he is an inventive, masterful writer deserving of a universal audience.
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Menu Design in America, 1850–1985 Jim Heimann, Steven Heller, John Mariani. Appetite for art: over one hundred years of menu graphics Until restaurants became commonplace in the late 1800s, printed menus for meals were rare commodities reserved for special occasions. As restaurants proliferated, the menu became more than just a culinary listing. The design of the menu became an integral part of eating out and as such menus became a marketing tool and a favored keepsake. Menu Design is an omnibus showcasing the best examples of this graphic art. With nearly 800 examples, illustrated in vibrant color, this deluxe volume not only showcases this extraordinary collection of paper ephemera but serves as a history of restaurants and dining out in America. In addition to the menu covers, many menu interiors are featured providing a epicurean tour and insight to more than a hundred years of dining out. An introduction on the history of menu design by graphic design writer Steven Heller and extended captions by culinary historian John Mariani accompany the menus throughout the book. Various photographs of restaurants round out this compendium that will appeal to anyone who enjoys dining out and its graphic and gastronomic history.
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Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003 by Roberto Bolano. The essays of Roberto Bolano in English at last. Between Parentheses collects most of the newspaper columns and articles Bolaño wrote during the last five years of his life, as well as the texts of some of his speeches and talks and a few scattered prologues. “Taken together,” as the editor Ignacio Echevarría remarks in his introduction, they provide “a personal cartography of the writer: the closest thing, among all his writings, to a kind of fragmented ‘autobiography.’” Bolaño’s career as a nonfiction writer began in 1998, the year he became famous overnight for The Savage Detectives; he was suddenly in demand for articles and speeches, and he took to this new vocation like a duck to water. Cantankerous, irreverent, and insufferably opinionated, Bolaño also could be tender (about his family and favorite places) as well as a fierce advocate for his heroes (Borges, Cortázar, Parra) and his favorite contemporaries, whose books he read assiduously and promoted generously. A demanding critic, he declares that in his “ideal literary kitchen there lives a warrior”: he argues for courage, and especially for bravery in the face of failure. Between Parentheses fully lives up to his own demands: “I ask for creativity from literary criticism, creativity at all levels.”
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Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans. This electric debut story collection focuses on African-American and mixed-race teens, women, and men struggling to find their place. Striking in their emotional immediacy, the tales are based in a world where insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family are the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.
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Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America by Sharifa Rhodes Pitts. For a century Harlem has been celebrated as the capital of black America, a thriving center of cultural achievement and political action. At a crucial moment in Harlem's history, as gentrification encroaches, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts untangles the myth and meaning of Harlem's legacy. Examining the epic Harlem of official history and the personal Harlem that begins at her front door, Rhodes-Pitts introduces us to a wide variety of characters, past and present. At the heart of their stories, and her own, is the hope carried over many generations, hope that Harlem would be the ground from which blacks fully entered America's democracy.
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Amulet 1: Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi. Amulet is a derivative schmaltz-fest: obvious, goofy, and a breath-quickening thrill read. My brain kept registering objections while some hysterical page-turning left me with a full-blown case of reader's wrist. The books' hero is Emily, who inherits a magic amulet and is transported (with her brother, via her basement) to a world called Alledia, where an Elf King is raring to kill her. But one of the things that makes Amulet a delight — it's actually set to be a movie starring a pair of cute, young Pinkett-Smiths — is its shamelessness. It's made of fun bits from movies and books we've already enjoyed: a mash-up. The titular amulet that Emily wears is an all-powerful but dangerous talisman (that's a Lord of the Rings rip); and Emily is thought to be "The One" — the foretold savior whom a rebel army has been waiting for (like The Matrix). The Amulet itself tempts Emily to disregard the "Life Force," the better to channel its own dark power (a la Star Wars), while a bounty hunter chases good guys around a city in the clouds (that's Empire Strikes Back) and a mysterious character trains Emily in venerable warrior ways ... You get the idea.
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The Summons of Love. by Mari Ruti. In the book, Ruti portrays love as a much more complex, multifaceted phenomenon than we tend to appreciate—an experience that helps us encounter the depths of human existence. Love’s ruptures are as important as its triumphs, and sometimes love succeeds because it fails. At the heart of Ruti’s argument is a meditation on interpersonal ethics that acknowledges the inherent opacity of human interiority and the difficulty of taking responsibility for what we cannot fully understand.
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Some people (read: New Yorkers) often get into a frenzy about how amazing New York is, but this new book takes the middleground. "New York is a pretty okay city!" they say, "Have you ever loved something, but also totally not loved it at the same time? Obviously, we realize that there are some cool elements to the place, like some statues and stuff, but we also recognize that New York just seems like kind of a hassle."
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KNOW THE PAST, FIND THE FUTURE. From Laurie Anderson to Vampire Weekend, Roy Blount Jr. to Renée Fleming, Stephen Colbert to Bill T. Jones—more than 100 luminaries reflect on the treasures of America’s favorite public library. Marking the Centennial of The New York Public Library’s Beaux-Arts landmark at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, now called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Know the Past, Find the Future harnesses the thoughts of an eclectic assortment of icons as they ponder an even more eclectic assortment of objects. From among the Library’s vast collections, these writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, musicians, athletes, architects, choreographers, and journalists—not to mention some of the curators who have preserved these riches—selected an item and describe what it means to them. The result, in words and photographs, is a glimpse of what a great library can be. Know the Past, Find the Future is available at all 90 NYPL locations — WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!
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War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times by Linda Polman. From Rwanda to Afghanistan, from Sudan to Iraq, this brilliantly written and at times blackly funny work of reportage shows how the humanitarian aid industry, the media and warmongers the world over are locked in a cycle of mutual support. Drawing on her decades of first-hand experience, Linda Polman's gripping narrative introduces us to the key players in this twisted game, to the aid-workers and the warlords themselves. Among many others, there is the Bible-bashing one-man NGO who rescued two Sierra Leonean girls from life in an amputee camp - only to change his mind and try to send them back again; the director of the World Bank in Kabul who estimates that 35-40 per cent of all aid in Afghanistan is looted or lost; and the rebel soldier who explains that war does not mean fighting: 'W.A.R. means Waste All Resources. Destroy everything. Then you people will come and fix it.' War Games is a controversial exposé from the front lines of the humanitarian aid industry by one of the most intrepid and brilliantly incisive journalists of our times.
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The Whole World Over by Julia Glass. "Alan, two years away from forty, had reached what Greenie privately conceived of as the Peggy Lee stage in life: Is That All There Is? Greenie did not know what to do about this. She would have attacked the problem head on if the sufferer had been one of her girlfriends, but Alan was a man, chronically resentful of direction. When he was with friends, his argumentative nature was his strength, a way of challenging the world and its complacencies, but in private—alone with Greenie—he fell prey to defensiveness and nocturnal nihilism. She had known this before they married, but she had assumed this aspect of his psyche would burn off, under the solar exposure of day-to-day affection, like cognac set aflame in a skillet. Next year they would be married ten years, and it had not."
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Now available for pre-order, the first issue of David Chang’s new food journal, Lucky Peach, arrives this June. The James Beard Award winning chef has partnered with writer Peter Meehan, and Zero Point Zero Production (who make Anthony Bourdain’s TV show) on the venture, which is published by McSweeney’s. Issue One’s theme is “Ramen,”and will contain the following features: • The over-stuffed and nauseated (but nevertheless intrepid) Peter Meehan and Dave Chang on the trials and tribulations of producing this first issue, including travels to Tennessee, Japan, and Spain. • Anthony Bourdain discussing the career trajectory of David Chang in respect to classic films, including Ramen Girl and Tampopo. • Exploring alkaline noodles, MSG, and the term “molecular gastronomy” with food scientist Harold McGee. • Photography and art by Ben Jones, Gabriele Stabile, Mark Ibold, Pableaux Johnson, David Rees, Tony Millionaire, Mike Houston, Jeremy Earl, Matt Volz, and many others. • Recipes galore from Chang, Wylie Dufresne, Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, Juan Mari Arzak, and others.
In Born in Africa, author Martin Meredith details the battles, contempt and fraud of the search for the origins of human life. For years, anthropologists and archeologists believed that Asia held the answers to their questions about the origins of mankind. So when a set of controversial hominid remains was discovered in Africa in the early 20th century, it took a while for scholars to accept that they may have been wrong.
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Yourself in the World, a companion volume published by the Whitney and Yale University Press, collects Ligon’s lively interviews and trenchant essays on topics ranging from pop culture and the work of young artists to the first post-Katrina Biennial in New Orleans.. Glenn Ligon: AMERICA is the first comprehensive mid-career retrospective devoted to this pioneering New York–based artist. Throughout his career, Ligon (b. 1960) has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature, and society across a body of work that builds critically on the legacies of modern painting and more recent conceptual art. He is best known for his landmark series of text-based paintings, made since the late 1980s, which draw on the writings and speech of diverse figures including Jean Genet, Zora Neale Hurston, Jesse Jackson, and Richard Pryor. Ligon’s subject matter ranges widely from the Million Man March and the aftermath of slavery to 1970s coloring books and the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe—all treated within artworks that are both politically provocative and beautiful to behold.
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What Should I Do? Philosophers on the Good, the Bad, and the Puzzling Edited by Alexander George and Elisa Mai. Is it ever OK to be dishonest? Is it wrong to enjoy violent video games, or to cheat on one's tax returns? Should we be vegetarians? When is war justified? Are there any moral facts, or is morality relative? Life throws ethical questions at us every day. Some are momentous and difficult, while others are relatively trivial and easily worked out; still others lodge themselves in our heads and bother us for years. We regularly encounter controversial issues (such as prostitution, abortion, or racial profiling), tricky conundrums (Would I be wrong to take advantage of my teacher's forgetfulness? When should I allow my teenage daughter to have a boyfriend? Are we responsible for our emotions?), and classic problems (What is the relation between religion and morality? Is suicide wrong? Why should we be moral?) Philosophers have engaged with these questions for as long as there have been philosophers, but most people have had no exposure to the wide variety of arguments and positions that they have offered. The website AskPhilosophers.org has sought to fill this void, bringing together a panel of distinguished philosophers who use their knowledge of the history of philosophy, as well as their own skills and ingenuity, to respond to questions sent in from all over the world. What Should I Do? is a collection of some of the most interesting questions about ethics to have appeared on the website during its first five years. It is a delightfully fresh book that will encourage readers to think a bit more deeply about the moral questions they frequently encounter, and will provide them with the tools to do so.
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Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach by Martha C. Nussbaum. If a country’s Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world’s billions of individuals are really managing? In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model. It demonstrates a path to justice for both humans and nonhumans, weighs its relevance against other philosophical stances, and reveals the value of its universal guidelines even as it acknowledges cultural difference. In our era of unjustifiable inequity, Nussbaum shows how—by attending to the narratives of individuals and grasping the daily impact of policy—we can enable people everywhere to live full and creative lives.
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Climate Capitalism Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change by L. Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen. Believe in climate change. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter. But you’d better understand this: the best route to rebuilding our economy, our cities, and our job markets, as well as assuring national security, is doing precisely what you would do if you were scared to death about climate change. Whether you’re the head of a household or the CEO of a multinational corporation, embracing efficiency, innovation, renewables, carbon markets, and new technologies is the smartest decision you can make. It’s the most profitable, too. And, oh yes—you’ll help save the planet. In Climate Capitalism, L. Hunter Lovins, coauthor of the bestselling Natural Capitalism, and the sustainability expert Boyd Cohen prove that the future of capitalism in a recession-riddled, carbon-constrained world will be built on innovations that cutting-edge leaders are bringing to the market today. These companies are creating jobs and driving innovation. Climate Capitalism delivers hundreds of indepth case studies of international corporations, small businesses, NGOs, and municipalities to prove that energy efficiency and renewable resources are already driving prosperity. While highlighting business opportunities across a range of sectors—including energy, construction, transportation, and agriculture technologies—Lovins and Cohen also show why the ex–CIA director Jim Woolsey drives a solar-powered plugin hybrid vehicle. His bumper sticker says it all: “Osama bin Laden hates my car.” Corporate executives, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, and concerned citizens alike will find profitable ideas within these pages. In ten information-packed chapters, Climate Capitalism gives tangible examples of early adopters across the globe who see that the low-carbon economy leads to increased profits and economic growth. It offers a clear and concise road map to the new energy economy and a cooler planet.
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Smart Solutions to Climate Change Comparing Costs and Benefits Edited by: Bjørn Lomborg, Copenhagen Business School. The failure of the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009 revealed major flaws in the way the world's policy makers have attempted to prevent dangerous levels of increases in global temperatures. The expert authors in this specially commissioned collection focus on the likely costs and benefits of a very wide range of policy options, including geo-engineering, mitigation of CO2, methane and 'black carbon', expanding forest, research and development of low-carbon energy and encouraging green technology transfer. For each policy, authors outline all of the costs, benefits and likely outcomes, in fully referenced, clearly presented chapters accompanied by shorter, critical alternative perspectives. To further stimulate debate, a panel of economists, including three Nobel laureates, evaluate and rank the attractiveness of the policies. This authoritative and thought-provoking book will challenge readers to form their own conclusions about the best ways to respond to global warming.
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Eco Barons: The New Heroes of Environmental Activism (published in hardcover as: Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet By Edward Humes. While many people remain paralyzed by the scope of Earth's environmental crisis, the eco barons—a new, unheralded generation of men and women—have quietly dedicated their lives and fortunes to saving the planet from eco-logical destruction. From the former fashion magnate and founder of Esprit who's saved more rainforests than anyone else to the Hollywood pool cleaner who became the leading force behind a worldwide effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the incredible stories of Eco Barons offer proof that a single person's determination and vision can effect monumental change.
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Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy by eric wilson. Americans are addicted to happiness. When we’re not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, or read self-help books by everyone from armchair philosophers and clinical psychologists to the Dalai Lama on how to achieve a trouble-free life: Stumbling on Happiness; Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment; The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. The titles themselves draw a stark portrait of the war on melancholy. More than any other generation, Americans of today believe in the transformative power of positive thinking. But who says we’re supposed to be happy? In Against Happiness, scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation—and that it is the force underlying original insights. So enough Prozac-ing of our brains. Let’s embrace our depressive sides as the wellspring of creativity. What most people take for contentment, Wilson argues, is living death, and what the majority takes for depression is a vital force. It’s time to throw off the shackles of positivity and relish the blues that make us human.
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Hidden Alcatraz: The Fortress Revealed. When we think of the isolated crag that is Alcatraz Island, images of America's worst cons serving one of the harshest possible sentences come to mind. But "The Rock" was a federal prison for only 29 years of its existence. Before it became a notorious penitentiary, the island had not just one but two previous lives. And, after it emptied its prison cells in 1963—before it capitalized on its infamy and transitioned into a museum—the island became a symbol of the Native American solidarity movement of the 1970s. The recently released Hidden Alcatraz (University of California Press, April 2011, $24.95), featuring nearly 100 photographs of the island taken over a four-year period, reveals these layers of Alcatraz's long history. I spoke with Alcatraz historian and retired park ranger John Martini—who worked on the island when it opened to the public as a National Park and historical landmark, and who wrote the book's introduction—about the island's many pasts.
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Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image by Rosalind Galt. Film culture often rejects visually rich images, treating simplicity, austerity, or even ugliness as the more provocative, political, and truly cinematic choice. Cinema may challenge traditional ideas of art, but its opposition to the decorative represents a long-standing Western aesthetic bias against feminine cosmetics, Oriental effeminacy, and primitive ornament. Inheriting this patriarchal, colonial perspective—which treats decorative style as foreign or sexually perverse—filmmakers, critics, and theorists have often denigrated colorful, picturesque, and richly patterned visions in cinema. Condemning the exclusion of the "pretty" from masculine film culture, Rosalind Galt reevaluates received ideas about the decorative impulse from early film criticism to classical and postclassical film theory. The pretty embodies lush visuality, dense mise-en-scène, painterly framing, and arabesque camera movements-styles increasingly central to world cinema. F
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A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer. This fascinating book explores the hidden world of viruses—a world that each of us inhabit. Here Carl Zimmer, popular science writer and author of Discover magazine’s award-winning blog The Loom, presents the latest research on how viruses hold sway over our lives and our biosphere, how viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, how viruses are producing new diseases, how we can harness viruses for our own ends, and how viruses will continue to control our fate for years to come. In this eye-opening tour through the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life as we know it, we learn that some treatments for the common cold do more harm to us than good; that the world’s oceans are home to an astonishing 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viruses; and that the evolution of HIV is now in overdrive, spawning more mutated strains than we care to imagine.
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Oceana by Ted Danson covers many of the major issues threatening our oceans, including ocean acidification, climate change, and pollution. The majority of the book, however, focuses on overfishing. Danson’s description of overfishing issues are thorough, engaging, and, for the most part, backed up by science. He discusses the concept of “fishing down the food web”, how fishermen target smaller and smaller fish as the larger, more desirable species are wiped out. Research which showed that global fisheries may have peaked in 1988 despite false catch statistics made by the Chinese government is covered. Danson focuses not just on global trends (90% of the large fish have disappeared since the 1950′s), but also on individual species (the average weight of a landed swordfish has declined from 266 pounds to 90 pounds since the 1960′s). Numerous scientists who have demonstrated that many of the largest fish in the ocean are gone are interviewed. If all that science doesn’t persuade you, Danson also interviews fishermen who know that “things aren’t what they used to be”.
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A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. This new book documents what claims to be the largest comprehensive study of human sexual desire since the groundbreaking Kinsey reports in the mid-20th century. After analyzing a billion web searches and millions of websites, videos, and personal ads, two Boston University-trained neuroscientists have drawn a wide range of conclusions about what men and women desire—even if they would never admit those desires to others or to themselves.
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Arabic Graffiti, by Stone aka Don Karl and the Libyan typographer Pascal Zoghbi, looks really great
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The End of Abundance: economic solutions to water scarcity by David Zetland of Aquanomics. In a past of abundance, we had enough water to meet all of our demands, for showers, and pools, farms and rivers. Our laws and customs did not need to regulate or ration demand. Over time, our demand has grown, and scarcity has replaced abundance. The end of abundance forces us to choose between struggling with new problems using old ideas or adopting new rules that help us cope with water scarcity. In this book, David Zetland describes the impact of scarcity on our many water uses, how the institutions of abundance fail in scarcity, and how economic ideas and tools can help us direct water to its highest and best use. Written for non-academic readers, The End of Abundance provides examples, insights and ideas to anyone interested in the management of our most precious resource.
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Birgit Burke read the env-econ blog he contributes to? It's a hoot.
justenoughsalt i adore his blog! i am on there just about everyday.
The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman. "It's not your typical water book — plenty of contrarian thinking, including the idea that water problems, unlike most "big" problems, are quite solvable; that many apparently serious water problems are really problems of bad management (which doesn't mean they aren't serious — just solvable); and that "free" is not just the wrong price for water — incredibly inexpensive water is really the source of almost all other water problems, from bad environmental management and pollution, to scarcity and waste. It is not a doom & gloom book. And it is a book with what I think is some fresh water thinking, and some fresh ways of thinking about water."
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A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. A startling investigation of what people do in disasters and why it matters Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster- whether manmade or natural-people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities? In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.
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STARMAN: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony. So there's a cosmonaut up in space, circling the globe, convinced he will never make it back to Earth; he's on the phone with Alexei Kosygin — then a high official of the Soviet Union — who is crying because he, too, thinks the cosmonaut will die. The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes — though no one knows this — won't work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, "cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship."
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Haruki Murakami: After the Quake. Another collection of stories from one of my favorite authors. This time they are all connected in some way to the Kobe earthquake of 1995. Probably not his strongest collection, but if you’re a fan or like his generally mind-bending tales of love and/or pets, you’ll probably enjoy this. Plus, it’s short.
the company we keep: a husband-and-wife true-life spy story • robert baer and dayna baer
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Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life by Mario Luis Small. Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? Unanticipated Gains argues that the practice and structure of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare centers, and schools in which people happen to participate routinely matter more than their deliberate "networking." Exploring the experiences of New York City mothers whose children were enrolled in childcare centers, this book examines why a great deal of these mothers, after enrolling their children, dramatically expanded both the size and usefulness of their personal networks. Whether, how, and how much the mother's networks were altered--and how useful these networks were--depended on the apparently trivial, but remarkably consequential, practices and regulations of the centers. The structure of parent-teacher organizations, the frequency of fieldtrips, and the rules regarding drop-off and pick-up times all affected the mothers' networks. Relying on scores of in-depth interviews with mothers, quantitative data on both mothers and centers, and detailed case studies of other routine organizations, Small shows that how much people gain from their connections depends substantially on institutional conditions they often do not control, and through everyday processes they may not even be aware of. Emphasizing not the connections that people make, but the context in which they are made, Unanticipated Gains presents a major new perspective on social capital and on the mechanisms producing social inequality.
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Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle over Black Family Life from LBJ to Obama by James T. Patterson. On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered what he and many others considered the greatest civil rights speech of his career. Proudly, Johnson hailed the new freedoms granted to African Americans due to the newly passed Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, but noted that “freedom is not enough.” The next stage of the movement would be to secure racial equality “as a fact and a result.”The speech was drafted by an assistant secretary of labor by the name of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had just a few months earlier drafted a scorching report on the deterioration of the urban black family in America. When that report was leaked to the press a month after Johnson’s speech, it created a whirlwind of controversy from which Johnson’s civil rights initiatives would never recover. But Moynihan’s arguments proved startlingly prescient, and established the terms of a debate about welfare policy that have endured for forty-five years.The history of one of the great missed opportunities in American history, Freedom Is Not Enough will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand our nation’s ongoing failure to address the tragedy of the black underclass.
3 likes 8 repins
Kitchens California Design Library By Diane Dorrans Saeks. Well known for her gorgeous design and style books, bestselling author Diane Dorrans Saeks now brings her flair for breathtaking interiors to a new series with a practical twist and a great price, the California Design Library. Starting with the kitchen and living room and featuring inspiring color photographs throughout, each edition focuses on one home area, setting the trend for homes around the country and offering ideas, examples, and tips from the professionals on everything from selecting a great sofa to choosing the right countertops. Diane Saeks consulted with designers, decorators, architects, savy homeowners, and, for Kitchens, even some of the country's best chefs, to discover the most exciting, livable, and innovative ideas in design today. Including big ideas for small spaces and advice on how to avoid common pitfalls, the California Design Librarymakes the comfortable elegance of West Coast style a perfect fit for almost any setting, wherever you live.
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Villette by Charlotte Bronte. Arguably Brontë's most refined and deeply felt work, Villette draws on her profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings. Lucy Snowe, the narrator of Villette, flees from an unhappy past in England to begin a new life as a teacher at a French boarding school in the great cosmopolitan capital of Villette. Soon Lucy's struggle for independence is overshadowed by both her friendship with a worldly English doctor and her feelings for an autocratic schoolmaster. Brontë's strikingly modern heroine must decide if there is any man in her society with whom she can live and still be free. "Villette is an amazing book," observed novelist Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. "Written before psychoanalysis came into being, Villette is nevertheless a psychoanalytic work—a psycho-sexual study of its heroine, Lucy Snowe. Written before the philosophy of existentialism was formulated, the novel's view of the world can only be described as existential. Today it is read and discussed more intensely than Charlotte Brontë's other novels, and many critics now believe it to be a true master-piece, a work of genius that more than fulfilled the promise of Jane Eyre." Indeed, Virginia Woolf judged Villette to be Brontë's "finest novel."
4 likes 22 repins
The Seven States of California: A Natural and Human History by Philip L. Fradkin. What explains California? To a large extent, as Philip Fradkin's rich, exuberant portrait makes clear, it's the multiple landscapes and the different states of mind that best define America's most populous, diverse, and fabled state. Fradkin divides California into seven distinct ecological and cultural provinces—from the hot deserts and high peaks to the rich agricultural Central Valley, the redwood forests of the north and sandy beaches of the south. Describing geographical regions based on their emblematic landscape features, Fradkin intertwines natural and social history.
3 likes 3 repins
Life's Matrix: A Biography of Water by Philip Ball. One of the four elements of classical antiquity, water is central to the environment of our planet. In Life's Matrix, Philip Ball writes of water's origins, history, and unique physical character. As a geological agent, water shapes mountains, canyons, and coastlines, and when unleashed in hurricanes and floods its destructive power is awesome. Ball's provocative exploration of water on other planets highlights the possibilities of life beyond Earth. Life's Matrix also examines the grim realities of depletion of natural resources and its effects on the availability of water in the twenty-first century.
Essential Manners for Men: What to Do, When to Do It, and Why by Peter Post. In 2003, Peter Post, great-grandson of etiquette maven Emily Post, published the first edition of Essential Manners for Men. The Emily Post Institute is working on a second edition and is looking for input from men on the subjects and situations that need to be addressed and men want to know more about.
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Hiroshima After Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War Rosalyn Deutsche. Many on the left lament an apathy or amnesia toward recent acts of war. Particularly during the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, opposition to war seemed to lack the heat and potency of the 1960s and 1970s, giving the impression that passionate dissent was all but dead. Through an analysis of three politically engaged works of art, Rosalyn Deutsche argues against this melancholic attitude, confirming the power of contemporary art to criticize subjectivity as well as war. Deutsche selects three videos centered on the deployment of the atomic bomb: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Hiroshima Projection (1999), made after the first Gulf War; Silvia Kolbowski's After Hiroshima mon amour (2005-2008); and Leslie Thornton's Let Me Count the Ways (2004-2008), which followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of these works confronts the ethical task of addressing historical disaster, and each explores the intersection of past and present wars. These artworks profoundly contribute to the discourse of war resistance, illuminating the complex dynamics of viewing and interpretation. Deutsche employs feminist and psychoanalytic approaches in her study, questioning both the role of totalizing images in the production of warlike subjects and the fantasies that perpetuate, especially among the left, traditional notions of political dissent. She ultimately reveals the passive collusion between leftist critique and dominant discourse in which personal dimensions of war are denied.
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$24.95
SKR Sounds interesting, will look for this.