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The modern world is dominated by flat surfaces. We write, print and project on flat paper or flat screens, which we stare at all day. We inhabit spaces constructed from flat materials. We play sport on level fields. Engineered planar surfaces have become so pervasive and fundamental to behaviour and thought that we barely notice their existence. But flat landscapes are(...)
Flatness
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The modern world is dominated by flat surfaces. We write, print and project on flat paper or flat screens, which we stare at all day. We inhabit spaces constructed from flat materials. We play sport on level fields. Engineered planar surfaces have become so pervasive and fundamental to behaviour and thought that we barely notice their existence. But flat landscapes are also often disparaged, viewed as featureless, empty and monotonous. Metaphorically, to ‘feel flat’ is to be bored, dull, lacking energy or inspiration. So what is it about flatness that makes it so desirable and practical in everyday life, yet so unattractive in landscape and as an idea? How has the construction of flat surfaces contributed to a degradation of visual diversity? "Flatness" attacks these questions by looking first at the ways humans have perceived the natural world around them, from Flat Earth theories to abstract geometric concepts and the Flatness Problem in modern cosmology. It also traces the long historical trajectory of flatness as an engineering ideal, and the representation of the concept in art, music and literature.
Critical Theory
Mountain: nature and culture
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Majestic and inspiring, there is nothing like the sight of a mountain on the horizon. Throughout all of human history mountains have been linked to the eternal, attracting us to their dizzying heights, stunning us with their natural beauty, and often threatening us with their dangers. Through a compelling journey to both real and imaginary peaks, this book explores how(...)
Mountain: nature and culture
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Majestic and inspiring, there is nothing like the sight of a mountain on the horizon. Throughout all of human history mountains have been linked to the eternal, attracting us to their dizzying heights, stunning us with their natural beauty, and often threatening us with their dangers. Through a compelling journey to both real and imaginary peaks, this book explores how the mountain has figured in our history, culture, and maginations. Veronica della Dora explores the ways mountains have functioned spiritually as a boundary between life and death, a bridge between the earth and the heavens. Interlacing science, culture, and religion, she sketches the mountain as a geological phenomenon that has profoundly influenced and been influenced by the human imagination, shaping our environmental consciousness and helping us understand our—quite small indeed—place in the world. She also explores their significance as objects of human feats, as prizes of adventure and sport, and as places of serene beauty for vacationers. Magnificently illustrated and showcasing famous peaks from all around the world, Mountain offers a fascinating dual portrait of these giants in nature and culture.
Landscape Theory
The adventure
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An ancient legend identifies Demon, Chance, Love, and Necessity as the four gods who preside over the birth of every human being. We must all pay tribute to these deities and should not try to elude or dupe them. To accept them, Giorgio Agamben suggests, is to live one’s life as an adventure—not in the trivial sense of the term, with lightness and disenchantment, but with(...)
The adventure
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An ancient legend identifies Demon, Chance, Love, and Necessity as the four gods who preside over the birth of every human being. We must all pay tribute to these deities and should not try to elude or dupe them. To accept them, Giorgio Agamben suggests, is to live one’s life as an adventure—not in the trivial sense of the term, with lightness and disenchantment, but with the understanding that adventure, as a specific way of being, is the most profound experience in our human existence. In this pithy, poetic, and compelling book, Agamben maps a journey from poems of chivalry to philosophy, from Yvain to Hegel, from Beatrice to Heidegger. The four gods of legend are joined at the end by a goddess, the most elusive and mysterious of all: Elpis, Hope. In Greek mythology, Hope remains in Pandora's box, not because it postpones its fulfillment to an invisible beyond but because somehow it has always been already satisfied. Here, Agamben presents Hope as the ultimate gift of the human adventure on Earth.
Critical Theory
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Ancient and enigmatic, ferns captivate with understated elegance. Their fronds unfurl in perfect mathematical spirals, connecting us to Earth's primordial past. Victorian-era "fern fever" transformed these plants into cultural icons inspiring art and literature, while Maori traditions revere them as sacred links between heaven and earth. Ferns also played a central role(...)
The elegance of ferns: portrait of a botanical marvel
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Ancient and enigmatic, ferns captivate with understated elegance. Their fronds unfurl in perfect mathematical spirals, connecting us to Earth's primordial past. Victorian-era "fern fever" transformed these plants into cultural icons inspiring art and literature, while Maori traditions revere them as sacred links between heaven and earth. Ferns also played a central role in the picturesque movement, where artists like Reverend William Gilpin sought to capture their untamed naturalism in evocative landscapes. While for poets like John Clare, ferns symbolized a mystical connection to nature, their shadowy habitats offering a refuge for contemplation and melancholy. But ferns are more than symbols—they are ecological marvels, resilient and adaptive. Nitzke also explores the environmental and evolutionary importance of ferns, which have adapted to thrive in diverse environments, from the lush rainforests of New Zealand to the fossilized landscapes of Saxony. Their prehistoric dominance—towering three stories high—is preserved in fossilized remains 360 million years old. ''The Elegance of Ferns'' invites us to marvel at these living relics—symbols of beauty, cultural identity, and ecological resilience illuminating our connection to the natural world.
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March 2026
Fauna and flora
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A photographic survey of Soviet-era playgrounds found in former members of the USSR, such as Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Through five chapters containing more than 150 photographs, the book documents the mass-produced, yet diverse play equipment installed in the communal spaces of socialist-era housing(...)
Soviet playgrounds: Playful landscapes of the former USSR
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A photographic survey of Soviet-era playgrounds found in former members of the USSR, such as Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Through five chapters containing more than 150 photographs, the book documents the mass-produced, yet diverse play equipment installed in the communal spaces of socialist-era housing estates, such as rocket slides and earth-shaped climbers, spaceships and animal-themed ladders, cosmic roundabouts and bizarre objects that would probably raise safety concerns nowadays. From Riga to Dushanbe and all the way from Kyiv to Vladivostok, children dreamt of becoming cosmonauts, and enjoyed the many space-themed playscapes which had proliferated since the onset of the Cold War era. While some are still in use, others are slowly disappearing to make way for modern equipment, or, more recently, being destroyed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, becoming only a faint memory of a Soviet childhood. Includes a foreword by the Ukrainian urban planner Mykola Gorokhov and informative maps of the playgrounds featured in every chapter. Pictures were taken by Zupagrafika, with contributions by local photographers.
Modernism
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Not for the first time, Jill "Doll" Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death.(...)
Vigil
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Not for the first time, Jill "Doll" Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it? "Vigil" transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s postdeath future.
Literature and poetry
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When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In(...)
Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures
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When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works.
Environment and environmental theory
The Dome of the Rock
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The Dome of the Rock, the beautiful Muslim shrine in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, was fully restored to its original state in the last half-century. Thus, this structure, sited on the third holiest spot on earth for Muslims, is at once a product of the seventh century and almost entirely the work of our own times - a paradox in keeping with the complexities and(...)
History until 1900, Middle East
October 2006, Cambridge (MA), London
The Dome of the Rock
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The Dome of the Rock, the beautiful Muslim shrine in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, was fully restored to its original state in the last half-century. Thus, this structure, sited on the third holiest spot on earth for Muslims, is at once a product of the seventh century and almost entirely the work of our own times - a paradox in keeping with the complexities and contradictions of history and religion, architecture and ideology that define this site. This book tells the story of the Dome of the Rock, from the first decades of its creation - on the esplanade built in the fourth decade B.C.E. for the Second Jewish Temple - to its engulfment in the clashes of the Crusades and the short-lived Christianization of all of Jerusalem, to its modern acquisition of different and potent meanings for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish cultures. Oleg Grabar's presentation combines what we know of the building with the views of past observers and with the broader historical, cultural, and aesthetic implications of the monument.
History until 1900, Middle East
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How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences. One of the book's innovations is(...)
CIty at the edge of forever: Los Angeles reimagined
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How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences. One of the book's innovations is to brand Los Angeles as the alchemical city. Earth became real estate when the Yankees took control in the nineteenth century. Fire fueled the city's early explosive growth as the Southland's oil fields supplied the inexhaustible demands of drivers and their cars. Air defined the area from WWII to the end of the Cold War, with aeronautics and aerospace dominating the region's industries. Water is now the key element, and Southern California's ports are the largest in the western hemisphere. What alchemists identify as the ethereal fifth element, or quintessence, this book positions as the glamour of Hollywood, a spell that sustains the city but also needs to be broken in order to understand Los Angeles now.
Urban Theory
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Surveying humanity's impact on the planet, with contributions from Donna Haraway, Bill McKibben, Greta Thunberg, Bruno Latour, Alice Waters and others. This book, in the form of an encyclopedia, considers the totality of issues surrounding the Anthropocene, that geologic era characterized by humanity's vast impact on the Earth. ''Connectedness'' acknowledges the(...)
Connectedness: An incomplete encyclopedia of the Anthropocene
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Surveying humanity's impact on the planet, with contributions from Donna Haraway, Bill McKibben, Greta Thunberg, Bruno Latour, Alice Waters and others. This book, in the form of an encyclopedia, considers the totality of issues surrounding the Anthropocene, that geologic era characterized by humanity's vast impact on the Earth. ''Connectedness'' acknowledges the incomplete nature of its project seeing as how this riotous era is not yet finished. With contributions by Greta Thunberg, Bill McKibben, Alice Waters, Tomás Saraceno, Björk and many others, this publication consists of approximately 100 entries, arranged alphabetically, each reflecting on questions, phenomena, terms, possibilities and theories associated with the Anthropocene. Examples of entries include Air, Borders and Coexistence, as well as more complex subjects such as Donna Haraway on the Chthulucene or Anders Blok on Climate Risk Communities. The content ranges from scientific to cultural-theoretical and artistic contributions featuring a wide span of scholars, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, authors, artists and others. The book accompanies the exhibition at the Danish Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Architectural Biennale.
Environment and environmental theory