Revolutionary essays on design, aesthetics and materialism - from one of the great masters of modern architecture
Adolf Loos, the great Viennese pioneer of modern architecture, was a hater of the fake, the fussy and the lavishly decorated, and a lover of stripped down, clean simplicity. He was also a writer of effervescent, caustic wit, as shown in this selection of essays on all aspects of design and aesthetics, from cities to glassware, furniture to footwear, architectural training to why 'the lack of ornament is a sign of intellectual power'.
Translated by Shaun Whiteside
With an epilogue by Joseph Masheck
Fleeing Russia amid the chaos of the 1917 revolution and subsequent Civil War, many writers went on to settle in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere. In exile, they worked as taxi drivers, labourers and film extras, and wrote some of the most brilliant and imaginative works of Russian literature.
This new collection includes stories by the most famous émigré writers, Vladimir Nabokov and Ivan Bunin, and introduces powerful lesser known voices, some of whom have never been available in English before.
Here is Yuri Felsen's evocative, impressionistic account of a night of debauchery in Paris; Teffi's witty and timely reflections on refugee experience; and Mark Aldanov's sparkling story of an elderly astrologer who unexpectedly finds himself in Hitler's bunker in Berlin. Exploring displacement, loss and new beginnings, their short stories vividly evoke the experience of life in exile and also return obsessively to the Russia that has been left behind - whether as a beautiful dream or terrifying nightmare. By turns experimental, funny, exciting, poignant and haunting, these works reveal the full range of émigré writing and are presented here in masterly translations by Bryan Karetnyk and others.
You become a footballer because you love football. And then you are a footballer, and you’re suddenly in the strangest, most baffling world of all. A world where one team-mate comes to training in a bright red suit with matching top-hat, cane and glasses, without any actual glass in them, and another has so many sports cars they forget they have left a Porsche at the train station. Even when their surname is incorporated in the registration plate.
So walk with me into the dressing-room, to find out which players refuse to touch a football before a game, to discover why a load of millionaires never have any shower-gel, and to hear what Cristiano Ronaldo says when he looks at himself in the mirror.
We will go into post-match interviews, make fools of ourselves on social media and try to ensure that we never again pay £250 for a haircut that should have cost a tenner. We’ll be coached and cajoled by Harry Redknapp, upset Rafa Benitez and be soothed by the sound of an accordion played by Sven-Goran Eriksson’s assistant Tord Grip. There will be some very bad music and some very bad decisions.
I am Peter Crouch. This is How To Be A Footballer. Shall we?
Blending fact with fiction, China Dream is an unflinching satire of totalitarianism. After decades of loyal service, Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with promoting President Xi Jinping’s China Dream of national rejuvenation. But just as he is about to present his plan for a microchip that will be implanted into the brain of every citizen to replace all painful recollections with a collective dream of national supremacy, his sanity begins to unravel. Plagued by flashbacks of the Cultural Revolution, his nightmare visions from the past threaten to destroy his dream of a glorious future.
This darkly comic fable is a dystopian vision of repression and state-enforced amnesia set not in the future, but in China today.
‘Excoriating…Not for nothing has Ma been called both the Orwell and Solzhenitsyn of Chinese literature’ A Financial Times Book of the Year
‘Red Guards meet Kurt Vonnegot, sort of: powerful!’
Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
At thirty-eight and a quarter years old, Camille has everything she needs to be happy, or so it seems: a good job, a loving husband, a wonderful son. Why then does she feel as if happiness has slipped through her fingers? All she wants is to find the path to joy.
When Claude, a French Sean Connery lookalike and routinologist, offers his unique advice to help get her there, she seizes the opportunity with both hands. Camille’s journey is full of surprising adventures, creative capers and deep meaning, as she sets out to transform her life and realize her dreams one step at a time . . .
A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no others. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality and literary mastery. Who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else.
Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of.
But it doesn't really tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant, deflecting us from investigating the challenges of his inconsistencies and flaws. This electrifying new book thrives on revealing, not resolving, the ambiguities of Shakespeare's plays and their changing topicality. It introduces an intellectually, theatrically and ethically exciting writer who engages with intersectionality as much as with Ovid, with economics as much as poetry: who writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity and sex. It takes us into a world of politicking and copy-catting, as we watch him emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day; flirting with and skirting round the cut-throat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval and technological change. The Shakespeare in this book poses awkward questions rather than offering bland answers, always implicating us in working out what it might mean.
We spend our lives gathering - first in classrooms and then in meetings, weddings, conferences and away days. Yet so many of us spend this time in underwhelming moments that fail to engage us, inspire us, or connect us. We've all sat in meetings where people talk past each other or go through the motions and others which galvanize a team and remind everyone why they first took the job. We've been to weddings that were deeply moving and others that were run-of-the-mill and simply faded away.
Why do some moments take off and others fizzle? What's the difference between the gatherings that inspire you and the ones that don't?
In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker gets to the heart of these questions and reveals how to design a transformative gathering. An expert on organizing successful gatherings whether in conference centres or her living room, Parker shows us how to create moving, magical, mind-changing experiences - even in spaces where we've come to expect little.
'Reminds us that the mind is the greatest mystery in the universe' Yuval Noah Harari, Guardian, Books of the Year
Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? Join Michael Pollan on a journey to the frontiers of the human mind.
Diving deep into an extraordinary world - from shamans and magic mushroom hunts to the pioneering labs mapping our brains - and putting himself forward as a guinea-pig, Michael Pollan has written a remarkable history of psychedelics and a compelling portrait of the new generation of scientists fascinated by the implications of these drugs. How to Change Your Mind is a report from what could very well be the future of consciousness.
'A sweeping and often thrilling chronicle of the history of psychedelics, all interwoven with Pollan's adventures as a psychedelic novice. This is a serious work of history and science, but also one in which the author, under the influence of toad venom, becomes convinced he's giving birth to himself' Oliver Burkeman, Guardian
'A mind-altering book ... full of transformations' Richard Godwin, Evening Standard
'An irresistible blend of history, research and personal experience. In terms of the psychedelic wave, the book is the big kahuna, the Big Bang moment for a movement that is gathering force' John McKenna, Irish Times
'Entertaining and engrossing' Paul Laity, Financial Times
'Deeply absorbing, wise and beautifully written' Mick Brown, Literary Review
'An astounding book' Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine
Valentyne has lived many lives - physician, philosopher, soldier - but his defining work has been his ability to stop the clock. He has lived for centuries, as has his dog, Tomorrow.
Inseparable, they've voyaged across Europe, using their time wisely. They've attended royalty in a dozen courts, healed soldiers on a hundred battlefields, and met with the greatest minds of the Renaissance. Until one day, in watery Venice, Valentyne vanishes without trace.
Broken-hearted, Tomorrow begins a search that will endure for centuries. But as the continent collapses into war, he must risk everything to find his master - or lose him forever.
A major anthology of great Japanese short stories introduced by Haruki Murakami
This is a celebration of the Japanese short story from its modern origins in the nineteenth century to remarkable contemporary works. It includes the most well-known Japanese writers - Akutagawa, Murakami, Mishima, Kawabata - but also many surprising new pieces, from Yuko Tsushima's 'Flames' to Banana Yoshimoto's 'Bee Honey'. Ranging over myth, horror, love, nature, modern life, a diabolical painting, a cow with a human face and a woman who turns into sugar, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is filled with fear, charm, beauty and comedy.
Edited by Jay Rubin with an introduction by Haruki Murakami
The gripping story of an affair gone horribly wrong, from one of Japan's greatest twentieth-century writers
Koji, a young student, has fallen hopelessly in love with the beautiful, enigmatic Yuko. But she is married to the literary critic and serial philanderer Ippei. Tormented by desire and anger, Koji is driven to an act of violence that will bind this strange, terrible love triangle together for the rest of their lives. A starkly compelling story of lust, guilt and punishment, The Frolic of the Beasts explores the masks we wear in life, and what happens when they slip.
'One of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century' New Yorker
'Thank god for Richard Sennett ... essential reading for all students of the city' Anna Minton, Prospect
'Constantly stimulating ideas from a veteran of urban thinking' Jonathan Meades, Guardian
In Building and Dwelling, Richard Sennett distils a lifetime's thinking and practical experience to explore the relationship between the good built environment and the good life. He argues for, and describes in rich detail, the idea of an open city, one in which people learn to manage complexity. He shows how the design of cities can enrich or diminish the everyday experience of those who dwell in them.
The book ranges widely - from London, Paris and Barcelona to Shanghai, Mumbai and Medellin in Colombia - and draws on classic thinkers such as Tocqueville, Heidegger, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. It also draws on Sennett's many decades as a practical planner himself, testing what works, what doesn't, and why. He shows what works ethically is often the most practical solution for cities' problems. This is a humane and thrilling book, which allows us to think freshly about how we live in cities.
'Sennett is my kind of urbanist. He sees the modern city. He reads its secrets as he walks down the street, kicking over the detritus of the past ... There is no alternative to the planner, but please a planner who has read Sennett's book' Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times
Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home is taken away and they lose their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.
Carrying only the essentials for survival on their backs, they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.
The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.
Meet the forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd. A detective in his own right, he must solve the mystery of sudden and unexplained deaths.
He has performed over 23,000 autopsies, including some of the most high-profile cases of recent times; the Hungerford Massacre, the Princess Diana inquiry, and 9/11.
He has faced serial killers, natural disaster, 'perfect murders' and freak accidents.
His evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent, and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads.
Yet all this has come at a huge personal cost.
Unnatural Causes tells the story of not only the cases and bodies that have haunted him the most, but also how to live a life steeped in death.
'A training manual for our troubled times ... It makes sense of our world, but is also capable of beautifully crafted pithy historical judgements. ... It is a book that cares about liberty, choice and a moral compass, that warns against hubris' Roger Boyes, The Times
John Lewis Gaddis, the distinguished historian and acclaimed author of The Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught the grand strategy seminar at Yale University with his colleagues Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects with insight and wit on what he has learned.
In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, Saint Augustine, Machiavelli,Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy,Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin.
'For the past 16 years Gaddis has taught a course on grand strategy to students at Yale University. Reading his book, you wish every university could offer it. Gaddis roves across the centuries, offering advice on subjects from statecraft and warfare to leading a worthwhile life' Phillip Delves Broughton, Evening Standard
The No.1 bestselling author of The Future of the Mind brings us a stunning new vision of our future in space
Human civilization is on the verge of living beyond Earth. But how will it happen? World-renowned physicist Michio Kaku takes us on a journey to the future, introducing the mind-boggling developments in robotics, nanotechnology and biotechnology that will one day enable us to make our homes among the stars.
'With admirable clarity and ease, Kaku explains how we might colonize not only Mars but some of the rocky moons of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn . . . The book has an infectious, can-do enthusiasm' Steven Poole, The Wall Street Journal
'Kaku grounds his readers in science happening right now, while throwing open the windows to imagine where it might lead in a thousand years' Adam Frank, The New York Times Book Review
'Kaku is an international treasure and a man of infectious enthusiasm' The Times
The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics takes us on an enchanting, consoling journey to discover the meaning of time
'We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come'
Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe.
With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery. Enlightening and consoling, The Order of Time shows that to understand ourselves we need to reflect on time -- and to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves.
Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre
Soren Kierkegaard, one of the most passionate and challenging of modern philosophers, is now celebrated as the father of existentialism - yet his contemporaries described him as a philosopher of the heart. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen analysing love and suffering, courage and anxiety, religious longing and defiance, and forging a new philosophical style rooted in the inward drama of being human.
As Christianity seemed to sleepwalk through a changing world, Kierkegaard dazzlingly revealed its spiritual power while exposing the poverty of official religion. His restless creativity was spurred on by his own failures: his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, then left to devote himself to writing, haunted him throughout his life.
Though tormented by the pressures of celebrity, he deliberately lived amidst the crowds in Copenhagen, known by everyone but, he felt, understood by no one. When he collapsed exhausted at the age of 42, he was still pursuing the question of existence: how to be a human being in this world?
Clare Carlisle's innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard's remarkable life as far as possible from his own perspective, conveying what it was like to be this Socrates of Christendom - as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.
The Bible is the central book of Western culture. For the two faiths which hold it sacred, it is the bedrock of their religion, a singular authority on what to believe and how to live. For non-believers too, it has a commanding status: it is one of the great works of world literature, woven to an unparalleled degree into our language and thought.
This book tells the story of the Bible, explaining how it came to be constructed and how it has been understood, from its remote beginnings down to the present. John Barton describes how the narratives, laws, proverbs, prophecies, poems and letters which comprise the Bible were written and when, what we know - and what we cannot know - about their authors and what they might have meant, as well as how these extraordinarily disparate writings relate to each other. His incisive readings shed new light on even the most familiar passages, exposing not only the sources and traditions behind them, but also the busy hands of the scribes and editors who assembled and reshaped them. Untangling the process by which some texts which were regarded as holy, became canonical and were included, and others didn't, Barton demonstrates that the Bible is not the fixed text it is often perceived to be, but the result of a long and intriguing evolution.
Tracing its dissemination, translation and interpretation in Judaism and Christianity from Antiquity to the rise of modern biblical scholarship, Barton elucidates how meaning has both been drawn from the Bible and imposed upon it. Part of the book's originality is to illuminate the gap between religion and scripture, the ways in which neither maps exactly onto the other, and how religious thinkers from Augustine to Luther and Spinoza have reckoned with this. Barton shows that if we are to regard the Bible as 'authoritative', it cannot be as believers have so often done in the past.
In 2011, Tim Cook took on an impossible task - following in the footsteps of one of history's greatest business visionaries, Steve Jobs. Facing worldwide scrutiny, Cook (who was often described as shy, unassuming and unimaginative) defied all expectations. Under Cook's leadership Apple has soared: its stock has nearly tripled to become the world's first trillion-dollar company. From the massive growth of the iPhone to new victories like the Apple Watch, Cook is leading Apple to a new era of success.
But he's also spearheaded a cultural revolution within the company. Since becoming CEO, Cook has introduced a new style of management that emphasizes kindness, collaboration and honesty, and has quietly pushed Apple to support sexual and racial equal rights and invest heavily in renewable energy.
Drawing on authorized access with several Apple insiders, Kahney, the world's leading reporter on Apple, tells the inspiring story of how one man attempted to replace the irreplaceable and succeeded better than anyone thought possible.
Leander Kahney has covered Apple for more than a dozen years and has written four popular books about Apple and the culture of its followers, including Inside Steve's Brain and Jony Ive. The former news editor for Wired.com, he is currently the editor and publisher of CultofMac.com.
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