Walks with Walser
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After a nervous breakdown in 1929, Robert Walser spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in mental asylums, closed off from the rest of the world in almost complete anonymity. While at the Herisau sanitarium, instead of writing, Walser practiced another favorite activity: walking. Starting in 1936, Carl Seelig, Walser’s friend and literary executor, visited and(...)
Walks with Walser
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After a nervous breakdown in 1929, Robert Walser spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in mental asylums, closed off from the rest of the world in almost complete anonymity. While at the Herisau sanitarium, instead of writing, Walser practiced another favorite activity: walking. Starting in 1936, Carl Seelig, Walser’s friend and literary executor, visited and accompanied him on these walks, meticulously recording their conversations. As they strolled, Walser told stories, shared his daily experiences of the sanatorium, and expressed his opinions about books and art, writing and history. When Seelig asked why he no longer wrote, Walser famously replied: “I’m not here to write, I’m here to be mad.” Filled with lively anecdotes and details, Walks with Walser offers the fullest available account of this wonderful writer’s inner and outer life.
Literature and poetry
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In this survey of the politics and meanings of urban landscapes, leading sociologist Göran Therborn offers a tour of the world’s major capital cities, showing how they have been shaped by national, popular, and global forces. Their stories begin with the emergence of various kinds of nation-state, each with its own special capital city problematic. In turn, radical shifts(...)
Cities of power: the urban, the national, the popular, the global
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In this survey of the politics and meanings of urban landscapes, leading sociologist Göran Therborn offers a tour of the world’s major capital cities, showing how they have been shaped by national, popular, and global forces. Their stories begin with the emergence of various kinds of nation-state, each with its own special capital city problematic. In turn, radical shifts of power have impacted on these cities’ development, in popular urban reforms or movements of protest and resistance; in the rise and fall of fascism and military dictatorships; and the coming and going of Communism. Therborn also analyzes global moments of urban formation, of historical globalized nationalism, as well as the cities of current global image capitalism and their variations of skyscraping, gating, and displays of novelty. Through a global, historical lens, and with a thematic range extending from the mutations of modernist architecture to the contemporary return of urban revolutions, Therborn questions received assumptions about the source, manifestations, and reach of urban power, combining perspectives on politics, sociology, urban planning, architecture, and urban iconography. He argues that, at a time when they seem to be moving apart, there is a strong link between the city and the nation-state, and that the current globalization of cities is largely driven by the global aspirations of politicians as well as those of national and local capital. With its unique systematic overview, from Washington, D.C. and revolutionary Paris to the flamboyant twenty- first-century capital Astana in Kazakhstan, its wealth of urban observations from all the populated continents, and its sharp and multi-faceted analyses, Cities of Power forces us to rethink our urban future, as well as our historically shaped present.
Urban Theory
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"Bad new days" examines the evolution of art and criticism in Western Europe and North America over the last twenty-five years, exploring their dynamic relation to the general condition of emergency instilled by neoliberalism and the war on terror. Considering the work of artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tacita Dean, and Isa Genzken, and the writing of thinkers like(...)
Bad new days: art, criticism, emergency
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"Bad new days" examines the evolution of art and criticism in Western Europe and North America over the last twenty-five years, exploring their dynamic relation to the general condition of emergency instilled by neoliberalism and the war on terror. Considering the work of artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tacita Dean, and Isa Genzken, and the writing of thinkers like Jacques Rancière, Bruno Latour, and Giorgio Agamben, Hal Foster shows the ways in which art has anticipated this condition, at times resisting the collapse of the social contract or gesturing toward its repair; at other times burlesquing it. Against the claim that art making has become so heterogeneous as to defy historical analysis, Foster argues that the critic must still articulate a clear account of the contemporary in all its complexity. To that end, he offers several paradigms for the art of recent years, which he terms “abject,” “archival,” “mimetic,” and “precarious.”
Art Theory
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The Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped into a state unknown for millions of years. How did we get to this point? Refuting the convenient view of a “human species” that upset the Earth system, unaware of what it was(...)
Environment and environmental theory
April 2017
The shock of the anthropocene: the earth, history and us
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The Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped into a state unknown for millions of years. How did we get to this point? Refuting the convenient view of a “human species” that upset the Earth system, unaware of what it was doing, this book proposes the first critical history of the Anthropocene, shaking up many accepted ideas: about our supposedly recent “environmental awareness,” about previous challenges to industrialism, about the manufacture of ignorance and consumerism, about so-called energy transitions, as well as about the role of the military in environmental destruction. In a dialogue between science and history, The Shock of the Anthropocene dissects a new theoretical buzzword and explores paths for living and acting politically in this rapidly developing geological epoch.
Environment and environmental theory
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This volume takes the reader on a tour of modern architecture through its most iconic and significant buildings, showing how to read the hallmarks of each architectural style and how to recognize them in the buildings. From Art Deco and Arts and Crafts through Bauhaus, the International Style, and Modernism to today’s environmental architecture and the rise and fall of(...)
March 2017
How to read modern buildings: a crash course in architecture of the modern era
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This volume takes the reader on a tour of modern architecture through its most iconic and significant buildings, showing how to read the hallmarks of each architectural style and how to recognize them in the buildings. From Art Deco and Arts and Crafts through Bauhaus, the International Style, and Modernism to today’s environmental architecture and the rise and fall of the “starchitect”, all the major architectural movements from the 1900s to the present day are traced through their classic buildings. Examining the key architectural elements and hidden details of each style, we learn what to look for and where to look for it.
Le Corbusier: the built work
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Le Corbusier is widely acknowledged as the most influential architect of the twentieth century. As extensively researched and documented as his works are, however, they have never been exhaustively surveyed in photographs until now. Photographer Richard Pare has crossed the globe for years to document the extant works of Le Corbusier- from his first villas in Switzerland(...)
Le Corbusier: the built work
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Le Corbusier is widely acknowledged as the most influential architect of the twentieth century. As extensively researched and documented as his works are, however, they have never been exhaustively surveyed in photographs until now. Photographer Richard Pare has crossed the globe for years to document the extant works of Le Corbusier- from his first villas in Switzerland to his mid-career works in his role as the first global architect in locations as far-flung as Argentina and Russia, and his late works, including his sole North American project, at Harvard University, and an extensive civic plan for Chandigarh, India.
Photography monographs
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Little Blue and Little Yellow are best friends, but one day they can’t find each other. When they finally do, they give each other such a big hug that they turn green! How they find their true colors again concludes a wonderfully satisfying story told with colorful pieces of torn paper and very few words. Leo Lionni launched his children’s book career in 1959 with Little(...)
Little blue and little yellow
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Little Blue and Little Yellow are best friends, but one day they can’t find each other. When they finally do, they give each other such a big hug that they turn green! How they find their true colors again concludes a wonderfully satisfying story told with colorful pieces of torn paper and very few words. Leo Lionni launched his children’s book career in 1959 with Little Blue and Little Yellow, and this 50th-anniversary edition, complete with Lionni’s own explanation of how the book came to be, is sure to resonate with children today.
Children's Books
Portzamparc buildings
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Pritzker Prize–winning architect Christian de Portzamparc is renowned for bold yet artful architecture that is at once sensitive to its context while at the same time being novel, adventurous, and frequently exciting. One57, the soaring residential skyscraper in New York, with unparalleled views of Central Park, is perhaps his most famous building in the United States,(...)
Architecture Monographs
November 2017
Portzamparc buildings
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Pritzker Prize–winning architect Christian de Portzamparc is renowned for bold yet artful architecture that is at once sensitive to its context while at the same time being novel, adventurous, and frequently exciting. One57, the soaring residential skyscraper in New York, with unparalleled views of Central Park, is perhaps his most famous building in the United States, but his work ranges widely across the globe, from an extraordinary handkerchief puff–shaped boutique for Christian Dior in Seoul to a low-winged arabesque of a building for the wine producer Cheval Blanc to a mysterious temple of the modern for Casarts in Casablanca.
Architecture Monographs
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This volume presents over 300 works from the collection of the MAK Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art in Vienna and private collections. It focuses on the history of glassmaking in Austria from 1900 to 1937, a period spanning the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the First Republic. The collaboration between architects and designers created the(...)
February 2017
The glass of the architects: Vienna 1900-1937
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This volume presents over 300 works from the collection of the MAK Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art in Vienna and private collections. It focuses on the history of glassmaking in Austria from 1900 to 1937, a period spanning the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the First Republic. The collaboration between architects and designers created the style of Viennese glass, found in new projects such as the Wiener Werkstätte or the Austrian Werkbund.
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In 2015, the storied fashion house Fendi moved its headquarters into the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome, a stark white cube perforated by symmetrical arches. Originally commissioned as part of an exhibition on Roman civilization for the 1942 world’s fair, the architects took their cues from ancient history to create a building that was quintessentially Roman yet(...)
Fendi: Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome
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In 2015, the storied fashion house Fendi moved its headquarters into the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome, a stark white cube perforated by symmetrical arches. Originally commissioned as part of an exhibition on Roman civilization for the 1942 world’s fair, the architects took their cues from ancient history to create a building that was quintessentially Roman yet decidedly modern, earning its nickname “the Square Colosseum.” Because of its striking appearance and iconic status, the palazzo subsequently made appearances in a number of films by directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini, and Peter Greenaway. The building remained relatively abandoned throughout much of its existence, until its recent inhabitance by the always forward-thinking house of Fendi, an experience which Karl Lagerfeld has likened to being “on a spaceship transported into the future.” Featuring photographs by famous artists such as Gabriele Basilico, Franco Fontana, and Lagerfeld, this gorgeously illustrated volume takes the reader on a fascinating tour through art, architecture, culture, and history.
Architecture since 1900, Europe