$25.95
(available to order)
Summary:
We surround ourselves with material things that are invested with memories but can only stand for what we have lost. Physical objects—such as one’s own body—situate and define us; yet at the same time they are fundamentally indifferent to us. The melancholy of this rift is a rich source of inspiration for artists. Peter Schwenger deftly weaves together philosophical(...)
The tears of things : Melancholy and physical objects
Actions:
Price:
$25.95
(available to order)
Summary:
We surround ourselves with material things that are invested with memories but can only stand for what we have lost. Physical objects—such as one’s own body—situate and define us; yet at the same time they are fundamentally indifferent to us. The melancholy of this rift is a rich source of inspiration for artists. Peter Schwenger deftly weaves together philosophical and psychoanalytical theory with artistic practice. Concerned in part with the act of collecting, The Tears of Things is itself a collection of exemplary art objects—literary and cultural attempts to control and possess things—including paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe and René Magritte; sculpture by Louise Bourgeois and Marcel Duchamp; Joseph Cornell’s boxes; Edward Gorey’s graphic art; fiction by Virginia Woolf, Georges Perec, and Louise Erdrich; the hallucinatory encyclopedias of Jorge Luis Borges and Luigi Serafini; and the corpse photographs of Joel Peter Witkin. However, these representations of objects perpetually fall short of our aspirations. Schwenger examines what is left over—debris and waste—and asks what art can make of these. What emerges is not an art that reassembles but one that questions what it means to assemble in the first place. Contained in this catalog of waste is that ultimate still life, the cadaver, where the subject-object dichotomy receives its final ironic reconciliation. Peter Schwenger is professor of English at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of Fantasm and Fiction: On Textual Envisioning, Letter Bomb: Nuclear Holocaust and the Exploding Word, and Phallic Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth-Century Literature.
Architectural Theory
$34.99
(available to order)
Summary:
Author Alain de Botton considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel, and how we could build dwellings in which we would stand a better chance of happiness. In this look at how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings, Alain de Botton applies Stendhal’s motto that “Beauty is the promise of happiness” to the spaces we inhabit daily. Why(...)
The architecture of happiness
Actions:
Price:
$34.99
(available to order)
Summary:
Author Alain de Botton considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel, and how we could build dwellings in which we would stand a better chance of happiness. In this look at how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings, Alain de Botton applies Stendhal’s motto that “Beauty is the promise of happiness” to the spaces we inhabit daily. Why should we pay attention to what architecture has to say to us? de Botton asks. de Botton traces how human needs and desires have been served by styles of architecture, from stately Classical to minimalist Modern, arguing that the stylistic choices of a society can represent both its cherished ideals and the qualities it desperately lacks. On an individual level, de Botton has deep sympathy for our need to see our selves reflected in our surroundings; he demonstrates how buildings — just like friends — can serve as guardians of our identity. Worrying about the shape of our sofa or the colour of our walls might seem self-indulgent, but de Botton considers the hopes and fears we have for our homes at a new level of depth and insight. When shopping for furniture or remodelling the kitchen, we don’t just consider functionality but also the major questions of aesthetics and the philosophy of art: What is beauty? Can beautiful surroundings make us good? Can beauty bring happiness? The buildings we find beautiful, de Botton concludes, are those that represent our ideas of a meaningful life.
Architectural Theory
$23.99
(available to order)
Summary:
In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to(...)
The subtle art of not giving a f*ck: a counterintuitive approach to living a good life
Actions:
Price:
$23.99
(available to order)
Summary:
In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. ''The subtle art of not giving a f**k'' is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up. Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek.
Social
Dafydd Jones: Screen time
$26.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Dafydd Jones is recognized as one of the world's leading social photographers, which over the years has given him unique access to an extraordinary range of social events - from exclusive parties, to the races, to fashion shows, film festivals and debutantes balls• His keen eye, and an instinct for the absurd, has allowed him to capture the behaviour of people who are(...)
Dafydd Jones: Screen time
Actions:
Price:
$26.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Dafydd Jones is recognized as one of the world's leading social photographers, which over the years has given him unique access to an extraordinary range of social events - from exclusive parties, to the races, to fashion shows, film festivals and debutantes balls• His keen eye, and an instinct for the absurd, has allowed him to capture the behaviour of people who are either unaware of or indifferent to the camera. ''Screen time'' explores a variety of social situations, from the mundane to the exalted, and features celebrities, actors, models and even the occasional princess - all glued to their phonesAlmost everyone uses a smartphone, and most of us are addicted. In this book, photographer Dafydd Jones shows us just how pervasive our screen addiction has become. In almost every social situation, he shows how the smartphone has killed conversation and changed the way we look at the world. ''In the eighties and nineties,'' says Jones, ''when I photographed young people at parties or balls, I'd find them chatting each other up, or smooching in corners. Now I see them sneaking looks on their iPhones, checking on their Instagram feeds, or whatever it is they're hooked on. They hardly talk to each other, or make eye contact at all. And it's not just a generational thing - it afflicts the oldies too. Who knows what impact it's having in the bedroom. It's probably a race to see what will wipe out humanity first - global climate change or screen-induced sexual indifference.''
Photography monographs
books
$44.00
(available to order)
Summary:
The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project was one of the greatest public works projects of the 20th century, connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean by means of seven locks that raised the level of the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Lake Ontario. After more than 50 years of negotiations, the project finally began in 1954 and was completed in 1958, due to(...)
The St.Lawrence Seaway and power project : an oral history of the greatest construction show on earth
Actions:
Price:
$44.00
(available to order)
Summary:
The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project was one of the greatest public works projects of the 20th century, connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean by means of seven locks that raised the level of the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Lake Ontario. After more than 50 years of negotiations, the project finally began in 1954 and was completed in 1958, due to close cooperation between the Canadian and US governments. This major engineering feat employed 22,000 people who migrated to Massena (New York) and Cornwall (Ontario) to work on this project. This book focuses on the project's human side through a series of oral histories and historical narratives.
books
October 2009
Engineering Structures
Reclaiming travel
$36.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Based on a controversial opinion piece originally published in the New York Times, Reclaiming Travel is a provocative meditation on the meaning of travel from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison seek to understand why we travel and what has come to be missing from our contemporary understanding of travel. Engaging with canonical and(...)
Transportation, Tourism, Migration
December 2014
Reclaiming travel
Actions:
Price:
$36.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Based on a controversial opinion piece originally published in the New York Times, Reclaiming Travel is a provocative meditation on the meaning of travel from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison seek to understand why we travel and what has come to be missing from our contemporary understanding of travel. Engaging with canonical and contemporary texts, they explore the differences between travel and tourism, the relationship between travel and memory, the genre of travel writing, and the power of mapmaking, Stavans and Ellison call for a rethinking of the art of travel, which they define as a transformative quest that gives us deeper access to ourselves.
Transportation, Tourism, Migration
$39.00
(available to order)
Summary:
''Unearthing the underworld'' is a history of the Earth as told through rocks – the secret-keepers of past environments, of changing climates and the pulse of life over billions of years. Even the most seemingly ordinary stone can tell us much about the history of this planet, opening vistas of ancient worlds of ice, raging floods, strange, unbreathable atmospheres and(...)
Unearthing the underworld: A natural history of rocks
Actions:
Price:
$39.00
(available to order)
Summary:
''Unearthing the underworld'' is a history of the Earth as told through rocks – the secret-keepers of past environments, of changing climates and the pulse of life over billions of years. Even the most seemingly ordinary stone can tell us much about the history of this planet, opening vistas of ancient worlds of ice, raging floods, strange, unbreathable atmospheres and prehistoric worlds teeming with life. Remarkably, many types of rock owe their existence to living organisms, from the remains of dead animals to rotting ancient forests, or even the activity of fungi, bacteria and viruses. Anything but dull and uninteresting, rocks are intriguing portals that illuminate the secret underworld upon which we live.
Landscape Theory
$60.00
(available to order)
Summary:
What if every vista, every island—indeed, every geographical feature on Earth—could be viewed as an art object? In ''Living Surfaces'', Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka explore how the surface of the Earth has, over the last two centuries, become known and perceived as an environment of images. ''Living Surfaces'' features a range of case studies from(...)
Environment and environmental theory
June 2024
Living surfaces: Images, plants and environments of media
Actions:
Price:
$60.00
(available to order)
Summary:
What if every vista, every island—indeed, every geographical feature on Earth—could be viewed as an art object? In ''Living Surfaces'', Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka explore how the surface of the Earth has, over the last two centuries, become known and perceived as an environment of images. ''Living Surfaces'' features a range of case studies from eighteenth-century experiments with and observations of vegetal matter, photosynthesis, and plant physiology to twenty-first-century machine vision and AI techniques of calculating agricultural and other landscape surfaces. Mapping these different scales of vegetal images, Gil-Fournier and Parikka help us understand core questions that pertain to the artistic and architectural reference points for the Anthropocene.
Environment and environmental theory
$41.50
(available in store)
Summary:
"Footnotes from the most fascinating museums" is a collection of the greatest and most beloved museums of North America, illustrated and explored through fun and fascinating anecdotes. Curated by Bob Eckstein, author of the New York Times bestseller "Footnotes from the world's greatest bookstores", this delightful twist on an art history book shows these institutes in a(...)
Footnotes from the most facinating museums
Actions:
Price:
$41.50
(available in store)
Summary:
"Footnotes from the most fascinating museums" is a collection of the greatest and most beloved museums of North America, illustrated and explored through fun and fascinating anecdotes. Curated by Bob Eckstein, author of the New York Times bestseller "Footnotes from the world's greatest bookstores", this delightful twist on an art history book shows these institutes in a way not seen before, illustrated in a lush and idealized style. The 75+ museums featured include the biggest and boldest names (MoMA, the Whitney) and the more offbeat (Museum of Bad Art, the Museum of Jurassic Technology). They span the US, Canada, and Mexico and include those specializing in art, natural history, academia and science, and more.
Children's Books
$53.00
(available in store)
Summary:
If there is, indeed, nothing lovelier than a tree, Connecticut-based artist Bryan Nash Gill (1961-2013) showed us why. Creating prints from cross sections of trees, Gill revealed the sublime power locked inside their arboreal rings, patterns not only of great beauty but also a year-by-year record of the life and times of the fallen or damaged logs. The artist rescued the(...)
Bryan Nash Gill: Woodcut (updated edition)
Actions:
Price:
$53.00
(available in store)
Summary:
If there is, indeed, nothing lovelier than a tree, Connecticut-based artist Bryan Nash Gill (1961-2013) showed us why. Creating prints from cross sections of trees, Gill revealed the sublime power locked inside their arboreal rings, patterns not only of great beauty but also a year-by-year record of the life and times of the fallen or damaged logs. The artist rescued the wood from the property surrounding his studio and neighboring land, extracted and prepared blocks of various species--including ash, maple, oak, spruce, and willow--and then printed them by carefully following and pressing the contours of the rings until the intricate designs transferred from tree to paper.
Fauna and flora