$60.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Many people are not familiar with Kumbh Mela, and yet it is the largest celebration on earth: depending on the positions of Jupiter, the sun and the moon, Hindus travel to certain places along holy rivers, the Ganges for example, to bathe and cleanse themselves of sin. With a 2013 attendance of approximately 34 million, the triennial pilgrimage requires that the(...)
Kumbh Mela: mapping the ephemeral Megacity
Actions:
Price:
$60.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Many people are not familiar with Kumbh Mela, and yet it is the largest celebration on earth: depending on the positions of Jupiter, the sun and the moon, Hindus travel to certain places along holy rivers, the Ganges for example, to bathe and cleanse themselves of sin. With a 2013 attendance of approximately 34 million, the triennial pilgrimage requires that the communities hosting the gatherings create functioning temporary structures to transport, house and feed enormous crowds of people. In 2013, a team from Harvard University monitored the large-scale event from its preparation through to the actual celebration, investigating and documenting the prototypes for flexible urban planning and offering organizers advice on issues around environmental protection. This substantial hardcover presents their comprehensive research findings along with city maps, aerial images and photographs of this most fascinating feat of urban planning.
Architectural Theory
$47.00
(available in store)
Summary:
For seven thousand years concrete has periodically shaped the path of human progress. Reese Palley's fascinating history of this ubiquitous and versatile material chronicles the repeated and often centuries-long losses of the technology and its many reemergences and the cultural, scientific, and engineering accomplishments it has enabled. Palley takes us from concrete's(...)
Concrete : a seven-thousand-year history
Actions:
Price:
$47.00
(available in store)
Summary:
For seven thousand years concrete has periodically shaped the path of human progress. Reese Palley's fascinating history of this ubiquitous and versatile material chronicles the repeated and often centuries-long losses of the technology and its many reemergences and the cultural, scientific, and engineering accomplishments it has enabled. Palley takes us from concrete's earliest beginnings, including the startling proof that at least one of the pyramids was partially poured, through the building of the Eddystone Light, to the dramatic building explosion in the use of concrete during the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first century. He discusses the environmental impact of the production of concrete and attempts to find substitutes for the burning of lime. He ends by contemplating outer space, where almost all of the elements needed to build extraterrestrial communities already exist in the chemical makeup of the moon and Mars.
Materials and Lighting
$32.00
(available to order)
Summary:
The goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth required the development of three things: spacecraft, launch vehicles, and protective clothing. Spacesuits: Within the Collections of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum takes the reader through the development of the last category, the spacesuits used during this venture. Highlighting the(...)
June 2009
Spacesuits: within the collection of the Smithsonian
Actions:
Price:
$32.00
(available to order)
Summary:
The goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth required the development of three things: spacecraft, launch vehicles, and protective clothing. Spacesuits: Within the Collections of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum takes the reader through the development of the last category, the spacesuits used during this venture. Highlighting the pressure suits created during the years leading up to the lunar missions and beyond, this book features dramatic photographs of the Smithsonian’s collection, as well as never-before-published historical images of spacesuit development and testing—range-of-motion studies, for example, in which researchers wore spacesuits while playing baseball and football. The book also includes a group of advanced spacesuits, which, though never used on a mission, are in many respects the most exciting suits ever created. One suit glove has steel fingernails and sharkskin pads, in an attempt to harness the abilities of the human hand.
$34.00
(available to order)
Summary:
From the creator of Paper Pilot and Paper Captain, Paper Astronaut is a beautifully illustrated voyage into deep space, combining stunning archival photographs and colorful technical drawings with expertly designed die-cut models that readers can actually cut out and assemble. Published for the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing in 1969—and introduced by Buzz(...)
Paper astronaut: paper spacecraft mission manual
Actions:
Price:
$34.00
(available to order)
Summary:
From the creator of Paper Pilot and Paper Captain, Paper Astronaut is a beautifully illustrated voyage into deep space, combining stunning archival photographs and colorful technical drawings with expertly designed die-cut models that readers can actually cut out and assemble. Published for the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing in 1969—and introduced by Buzz Aldrin—the book includes histories of twenty feats of aeronautic engineering drawn from half a century of space programs around the world, from Apollo 11 to the Soviet space station Mir and China’s Shenzou 7 capsule, and featuring the most iconic designs of fifty years of space exploration. Each spacecraft is accompanied by amazing stories, fascinating facts and statistics about the universe around them, and mesmerizing photographs of the vessels in space. Sixty-four pages of the book are devoted to finely crafted die-cut paper models of the featured rockets, presented with clear instructions for assembly and helpful advice for deploying your galactic fleet.
activity books
$22.00
(available to order)
Summary:
When the gates of the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair swung open on April 24, 1964, the first of more than 51 million lucky visitors entered, ready to witness the cutting edge of worldwide technology and progress. Faced with a disappointing lack of foreign participants due to political contention, the fair instead showcased the best of American industry and science. While(...)
Museums and Universal Exhibitions
July 2008, Charleston, Chicago
The 1964-1965 New York World's fair: creation and legacy
Actions:
Price:
$22.00
(available to order)
Summary:
When the gates of the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair swung open on April 24, 1964, the first of more than 51 million lucky visitors entered, ready to witness the cutting edge of worldwide technology and progress. Faced with a disappointing lack of foreign participants due to political contention, the fair instead showcased the best of American industry and science. While multimillion-dollar pavilions predicted colonies on the moon and hotels under the ocean, other forecasts, such as the promises of computer technology, have surpassed even the most optimistic predictions of the fair. The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair: Creation and Legacy uses rare, previously unpublished photographs to examine the creation of the fair and the legacies left behind for future generations. Bill Cotter and Bill Young, authors of The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, they have contributed to numerous other books, magazine articles, and documentaries on the fair. They also host two popular Web sites devoted to the study and appreciation of this once-in-a-lifetime event.
Museums and Universal Exhibitions
Why the world does not exist
$28.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Where do we come from? Are we merely a cluster of elementary particles in a gigantic world receptacle? And what does it all mean? In this new book, the philosopher Markus Gabriel challenges our notion of what exists and what it means to exist. He questions the idea that there is a world that encompasses everything like a container life, the universe, and everything else.(...)
Why the world does not exist
Actions:
Price:
$28.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Where do we come from? Are we merely a cluster of elementary particles in a gigantic world receptacle? And what does it all mean? In this new book, the philosopher Markus Gabriel challenges our notion of what exists and what it means to exist. He questions the idea that there is a world that encompasses everything like a container life, the universe, and everything else. This all-inclusive being does not exist and cannot exist. For the world itself is not found in the world. And even when we think about the world, the world about which we think is obviously not identical with the world in which we think. For, as we are thinking about the world, this is only a very small event in the world. Besides this, there are still innumerable other objects and events: rain showers, toothaches and the World Cup. Drawing on the recent history of philosophy, Gabriel asserts that the world cannot exist at all, because it is not found in the world. Yet with the exception of the world, everything else exists; even unicorns on the far side of the moon wearing police uniforms.
Critical Theory
Photography and travel
$42.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Photography and travel have been linked since 1839, when Daguerre and Talbot first made their inventions known to the public. The inventors and their advocates immediately recognised photography’s capability to vividly represent the spectacles of the world, and make them accessible to the general public in the comfort of their homes. The unquestionable connection between(...)
Photography and travel
Actions:
Price:
$42.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Photography and travel have been linked since 1839, when Daguerre and Talbot first made their inventions known to the public. The inventors and their advocates immediately recognised photography’s capability to vividly represent the spectacles of the world, and make them accessible to the general public in the comfort of their homes. The unquestionable connection between photography and travel remains vital today. In Photography and Travel, Graham Smith provides a lively account of this partnership, discussing the diverse applications of photography to travel during the nineteenth century, in destinations as exotic as France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Japan and North America. He then moves to the twentieth century, ranging from seaside excursions to transcontinental travel by rail, road and air. As it has become more democratized, the methods and experiences of travel have developed in many unexpected directions, all of which have created their own new photographic narratives.Photography and Travel shows that photographers have often gone to great lengths – at considerable personal danger – to record exotic destinations, from the ice caves and crevasses of the Mer de Glace to the maw of Vesuvius, from the summit of Mount Everest to the pock-marked surface of the moon.
Theory of Photography
$26.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Measures are the subject of this unusual book, in which Robert Tavernor offers a fascinating account of the various measuring systems human beings have devised over two millennia. Tavernor urges us to look beyond the notion that measuring is strictly a scientific activity, divorced from human concerns. Instead, he sets measures and measuring in cultural context and shows(...)
August 2007
Smoot's Ear : The measure of humanity
Actions:
Price:
$26.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Measures are the subject of this unusual book, in which Robert Tavernor offers a fascinating account of the various measuring systems human beings have devised over two millennia. Tavernor urges us to look beyond the notion that measuring is strictly a scientific activity, divorced from human concerns. Instead, he sets measures and measuring in cultural context and shows how deeply they are connected to human experience and history. The book explores changing attitudes toward measure, focusing on key moments in art, sculpture, architecture, philosophy, and the development of scientific thought. It encompasses the journey of Western civilization from the construction of the Great Pyramid to the first manned flight to the moon. Beginning with a review of early measuring standards that referred to the feet and inches of ideal bodies, the book then tracks how Enlightenment interest in a truly scientific system of measure led to the creation of the metric system. This “rational” approach to measure in turn has inspired artists, architects, writers, and others to seek a balance that takes the human story into account. Tavernor concludes with a discussion of measure in our own time, when space travel presents to humankind a direct encounter with the unfathomable measure of the universe.
$54.00
(available to order)
Summary:
In this new approach to the history of colour, Kelly Grovier takes readers on a search for the intriguing and unusual. In Grovier’s telling, a colour’s connotations are never fixed but are endlessly evolving. Knowledge of a pigment and its history can unlock meaning in the works that feature it. Grovier employs the term ''artymology'' to suggest that colour is a(...)
The art of colour: a history in 39 pigments
Actions:
Price:
$54.00
(available to order)
Summary:
In this new approach to the history of colour, Kelly Grovier takes readers on a search for the intriguing and unusual. In Grovier’s telling, a colour’s connotations are never fixed but are endlessly evolving. Knowledge of a pigment and its history can unlock meaning in the works that feature it. Grovier employs the term ''artymology'' to suggest that colour is a linguistic device, where pigments stand in for syllables in art’s language. Colour is the site of invigorating conflict—a battleground where past and present, influence and originality, and superstition and science merge into meanings that complicate and intensify our appreciation of a given work. How might it change our understanding of a well-known masterpiece like Vincent van Gogh’s ''Starry Night'' to know that the intense yellow moon in that painting was sculpted from clumps of dehydrated urine from cows that were fed nothing but mango leaves? Or that the cobalt blue pigment in Van Gogh’s sky shares a material bloodline with the glaze of Ming Dynasty porcelain? Consisting of ten chapters, each presenting a biography of a family of colours, this volume mines a rich vein of pigmentation from prehistoric cave painting to art of the present day. The book also includes features exploring important milestones in the history of colour theory from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century.
Colour Theory and Design
$19.95
(available to order)
Summary:
This collection boasts four superb animated films about the universe and the evolution of comets and stars: Comet: A description of the general phenomenon of comets, and the radical transformations they undergo as they approach the sun. Superb drawings re-create the intergalactic universe with impact and accuracy. Particular attention is given to Halley's comet, which(...)
November 2009
The wonders of earth and space 2
Actions:
Price:
$19.95
(available to order)
Summary:
This collection boasts four superb animated films about the universe and the evolution of comets and stars: Comet: A description of the general phenomenon of comets, and the radical transformations they undergo as they approach the sun. Superb drawings re-create the intergalactic universe with impact and accuracy. Particular attention is given to Halley's comet, which reappears every seventy-six years (12 min. 18 sec.); Fields of Space: An exploration of the fourth state of matter, the plasma that fills the infinite void between stars and galaxies. Single atoms in space, or planets as large as the sun, are each seen to have their own magnetic fields, attracting to themselves streams of invisible particles (18 min. 38 sec.); Starlife traces the evolution of a star from its birth in the depths of a black nebula to its final extinction. Animated drawings are amplified by a dense narrative describing the differing evolutionary processes followed by stars of different masses. The film touches on the creation of elements in the core of stars, red giants, bursters, space-time relationships, and black holes (19 min. 58 sec.); and Universe: A picture of the universe as it would appear to a voyager through space. Realistic animation takes you into far regions of space past Moon, Sun, and Milky Way into galaxies yet unfathomed (28 min. 53 sec.).