I Loved the ‘Meet the Happy New Me, Same as the Crappy Old Me‘ article from the March issue of GQ magazine (which isn’t online DaMnIt) from freelance author/copywriter Shalom Auslander so much I just bought his latest book. Check out the article if you have the time, it’s a lol quick read. The piece chronicles the attempts of writer , an author and NPR contributor who’s often compared to David Sedaris, to rebrand himself. It ends up with him flying halfway across the US to meet with famed ad man Alex Bogusky, who cancels the meeting at the last minute like a complete poseur douchebag. Great self-branding.
Tadao Ando is someone who produces stunning yet polarizing work. Even if you don’t understand architecture you have to appreciate what he brings to the equation in terms of balance and focus on proportion by the ubiquity of his material of choice; concrete. This is a coffee table book worth paying around $100 based on the juxtapositions of interior/exterior spaces and landscape integration for if you ask me. Taschen just can’t fail in this space and really doesn’t waste it’s time on artists that don’t deserve their attention–the perfect business model. Via Curated.
All I want for the holidays is this coffee table book that happens to be so expensive it would knock out everything else on my list. Clocking in at 808 pages this is a thorough assessment of the designer’s work from the last 40 years. Unfortunately it’s also not available until January of 2010 so I guess the publisher missed their deadline for the holiday season…..Bummer, but now I can catch up on some reading instead of admiring the designs of years past. That being said I still really want it because the layout is most likely as retro-fresh and clean as the work within. Check out details here.
Malcom Gladwell borrowed heavily from University of Chicago professor Gerd Gigerenzer’s work to write Blink, which was a good read if you ask me. This has since prompted the researcher to release a book of his own that I highly recommend. Snap it up on Amazon for $10 if you want to talk about instinct and impulse by quoting the researcher himself.
Piracy in the form of looting Intellectual Property is not as modern a story as one might expect. Looking back you can find several cases that Adrian Johns has selected that show some technological advances are simply……..functions of the inevitable. It’s also a bit of commentary on how today’s patent process is outdated for the digital space and how a global marketplace makes regulation that much more unrealistic. Get it for a shade above $20 here. Great book cover though, huh?
This combines my two favorite things: investigative journalism and information about the recent economic meltdown. This scary and yet informative book from New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin should be on your ‘must read’ list. Highly recommend it if you want any perspective on today’s recent events.
Being a nerdy research guy I think in terms of numbers naturally so it was interesting to read about those who need to change their mindset in order to do so, and how it changes their perceptions and shifts context. Snatch it up for less than $16 new, even less for used at Amazon. Check out the book’s site (with author interview) here.
Know a Pack Rat or two? From a digital standpoint you might already be one and not know it, then again according to this book we might as well all be. Without repercussion for having too much digital content since storage is more or less an obtuse issue it’s hard to gauge. One can’t argue that the immediacy of information may contribute to everyone getting stupider as a whole since retention is overrated if I can just ‘google’ pretty much anything and everything. But I digress, it’s interesting subject matter nonetheless from my standpoint. Get it from Amazon for $16. Heard about it via author interview on NPR.
I recently moved and now have a bit of a commute to work, which needless to say I do not enjoy. I remember someone suggesting this when it came out last year and found it a quick read, very much in the vein of Malcom Gladwell’s works in regards to being research-based, integrating hard data as well as a bit of ethnographic observation. You can get the book here for $16. Check out the author’s blog here.
I am convinced that Jim C. Collins is a certified maniac, read an article that pretty much tells the story why here. If Collins sounds familiar maybe it is because he also wrote ‘Good to Great’ and a few other B-School must-reads. This one isn’t as stellar but is definitely well timed. Get this one off of Amazon for $14.