These eleven short fictions evoke the microcosmic worlds every human relationship contains. A woman is captivated by the stories her boyfriend tells about his exes. A faltering artist goes on a date with a married couple. Twin brothers work out their rivalry via the girl next door. In every one of these tales, we meet indelibly real and unforgettable people, a cast of rebels and dreamers trying to transform themselves, forge new destinies, or simply make the moment last.
More than eighty designs--iconic, archaic, quotidian, and taboo--that have defined the arc of human reproduction. While birth often brings great joy, making babies is a knotty enterprise. The designed objects that surround us when it comes to menstruation, birth control, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood vary as oddly, messily, and dramatically as the stereotypes suggest. This smart, image-rich, fashion-forward, and design-driven book explores more than eighty designs--iconic, conceptual, archaic, titillating, emotionally charged, or just plain strange--that have defined the relationships between people and babies during the past century. Each object tells a story. In striking images and engaging text, Designing Motherhood unfolds the compelling design histories and real-world uses of the objects that shape our reproductive experiences. The authors investigate the baby carrier, from the Snugli to BabyBjörn, and the (re)discovery of the varied traditions of baby wearing; the tie-waist skirt, famously worn by a pregnant Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy, and essential for camouflaging and slowly normalizing a public pregnancy; the home pregnancy kit, and its threat to the authority of male gynecologists; and more. Memorable images--including historical ads, found photos, and drawings--illustrate the crucial role design and material culture plays throughout the arc of human reproduction. The book features a prologue by Erica Chidi and a foreword by Alexandra Lange. Contributors Luz Argueta-Vogel, Zara Arshad, Nefertiti Austin, Juliana Rowen Barton, Lindsey Beal, Thomas Beatie, Caitlin Beach, Maricela Becerra, Joan E. Biren, Megan Brandow-Faller, Khiara M. Bridges, Heather DeWolf Bowser, Sophie Cavoulacos, Meegan Daigler, Anna Dhody, Christine Dodson, Henrike Dreier, Adam Dubrowski, Michelle Millar Fisher, Claire Dion Fletcher, Tekara Gainey, Lucy Gallun, Angela Garbes, Judy S. Gelles, Shoshana Batya Greenwald, Robert D. Hicks, Porsche Holland, Andrea Homer-Macdonald, Alexis Hope, Malika Kashyap, Karen Kleiman, Natalie Lira, Devorah L Marrus, Jessica Martucci, Sascha Mayer, Betsy Joslyn Mitchell, Ginger Mitchell, Mark Mitchell, Aidan O’Connor, Lauren Downing Peters, Nicole Pihema, Alice Rawsthorn, Helen Barchilon Redman, Airyka Rockefeller, Julie Rodelli, Raphaela Rosella, Loretta J. Ross, Ofelia Pérez Ruiz, Hannah Ryan, Karin Satrom, Tae Smith, Orkan Telhan, Stephanie Tillman, Sandra Oyarzo Torres, Malika Verma, Erin Weisbart, Deb Willis, Carmen Winant, Brendan Winick, Flaura Koplin Winston
Forget about building a business—businesses fail and fade into oblivion. Start a revolution instead. James Watt started a rebellion against tasteless mass market beers by founding BrewDog, now one of the world’s best-known and fastest growing craft breweries, famous for beers, bars, and crowdfunding. In this smart, funny book, he shares his story and explains how you too can tear up the rule book and start a company on your own terms. It’s an anarchic, DIY guide to entrepreneurship—and a new manifesto for business. After spending seven years on the high seas of the North Atlantic, James Watt started BrewDog craft brewery in Scotland with his best friend, Martin Dickie. They didn’t have a business plan. All they had was a mission to revolutionize beer drinking and make other people as passionate about craft beer as they are. They’ve succeeded. Within a few years, BrewDog was huge—a world-famous craft brewery with beer bars around the globe and hundreds of thousands of fans. Those fans became literal backers of their business with the introduction of an unprecedented crowdfunding movement, Equity for Punks. And in rewriting the record books and kickstarting a revolution—James and BrewDog inadvertently forged a whole new approach to business. Business for Punks bottles the essence of James’s methods in an accessible, honest manifesto. Among his mantras: · Cash is motherf*cking king. Cash is the lifeblood of your company. Monitor every penny as if your life depends on it—because it does. · Get people to hate you. You won’t win by trying to make everyone happy, so don’t bother. Let haters fuel your fire while you focus on your hard-core fans. · Steal and bastardize from other fields. Take inspiration freely wherever you find it— except from people in your own industry. · Job interviews suck. They never reveal if someone will be a good employee, only how good that person is at interviews. Instead, take them for a test drive and see if they’re passionate and a good culture fit. Business for Punks rethinks conventional business wisdom so you can go beyond the norm. It’s an anarchic, indispensable guide to thriving on your own terms.
"Well-publicized research in psychology tells us that over half of our attempts to change habitual behavior fail within one year. Even without reading the research, most of us will intuitively sense the truth in this, as we have all tried and failed to rid ourselves of one bad habit or another. The human story of habits and the difficulty of change has been told in many books--most of which will make only a quick reference to dopamine or the 'lizard brain' before moving on to practical tips and tricks for behavior change. In contrast, [this book] will tell the brain's story about why behavior is so hard to change"--
Made to Break is a history of twentieth-century technology as seen through the prism of obsolescence. Giles Slade explains how disposability was a necessary condition for America's rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence. This book gives us a detailed and harrowing picture of how, by choosing to support ever-shorter product lives, we may well be shortening the future of our way of life as well.
Start Finishing provides a system for transforming your ideas into finished projects. Here you’ll learn to focus your effort, identify drag points and pitfalls, build a pack of supporters, and end with momentum to start finishing the life-changing projects that create the future you want to live in.
This study interrogates the breakages that occur in peoples’ lives such as psychological breakdowns, political ruptures, and the effects of history evolving ideologically such that the axioms of the past are overturned and people subsequently lose their sense of identity or purpose. The book combines creative writing pieces in which writers draw from personal experiences to demonstrate the impact of breakages with more discursive essays that question artificial breakdowns between disciplines and the imperative that underpins all knowledge: its provisional nature in conflict with the human need to categorize and define. It focuses on the psychologies that haunt creative autobiographical pieces, as well as the plight of broken minds and bodies in the face of trauma, historical change and political events. It also looks directly at the ideas of thinkers and artists from the past and the impact their work may still have despite shifting paradigms, ruptures and re-formations. Furthermore, it queries new formations by directly asking: why did former ideas break and why the need for salvaging the past (or authenticating the present) by identifying precursors?
Did you know— • It took more than an iceberg to sink the Titanic. • The Challenger disaster was predicted. • Unbreakable glass dinnerware had its origin in railroad lanterns. • A football team cannot lose momentum. • Mercury thermometers are prohibited on airplanes for a crucial reason. • Kryptonite bicycle locks are easily broken. “Things fall apart” is more than a poetic insight—it is a fundamental property of the physical world. Why Things Break explores the fascinating question of what holds things together (for a while), what breaks them apart, and why the answers have a direct bearing on our everyday lives. When Mark Eberhart was growing up in the 1960s, he learned that splitting an atom leads to a terrible explosion—which prompted him to worry that when he cut into a stick of butter, he would inadvertently unleash a nuclear cataclysm. Years later, as a chemistry professor, he remembered this childhood fear when he began to ponder the fact that we know more about how to split an atom than we do about how a pane of glass breaks. In Why Things Break, Eberhart leads us on a remarkable and entertaining exploration of all the cracks, clefts, fissures, and faults examined in the field of materials science and the many astonishing discoveries that have been made about everything from the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger to the crashing of your hard drive. Understanding why things break is crucial to modern life on every level, from personal safety to macroeconomics, but as Eberhart reveals here, it is also an area of cutting-edge science that is as provocative as it is illuminating.
Why couldn’t I occupy the world as those model-looking women did, with their flowing hair, pulling their tiny bright suitcases as if to say, I just arrived from elsewhere, and I already belong here, and this sidewalk belongs to me? When her marriage suddenly ends, and a diary documenting her beloved Opa’s escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of 1942 is discovered, Naomi Lewis decides to retrace his journey to freedom. Travelling alone from Amsterdam to Lyon, she discovers family secrets and her own narrative as a second-generation Jewish Canadian. With vulnerability, humour, and wisdom, Lewis’s memoir asks tough questions about her identity as a secular Jew, the accuracy of family stories, and the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations.
