Holiday Gift Suggestions from the University of Chicago Press
Give the gift that’s always the perfect size and color. Give the gift that respects the recipient’s intelligence, their fine sense of humor, and their impeccably good taste. Give them books. And then you can borrow them.
Art, Architecture, and Photography
Mekong Diaries presents never-before-published drawings, poems, letters, and oral histories by ten of the most celebrated Viet Cong war artists. These guerilla artists, some military officers and some civilians, lived clandestinely with the fighters, moving camp alongside them, going on reconnaissance missions, and carrying their sketchbooks, ink, and watercolors into combat.
"Fenske’s prose is academic but clear, enlivened by her interest in the cultural moment: Newspapers and magazines, she notes, started producing views of lower Manhattan’s cluster of skyscrapers—the Woolworth most prominent among them—as the city became known by ‘the world’s first signature skyline.’ This is a definitive take on a 20th-century classic."—Nicholas Desai, Wall Street Journal
"This is the kind of reporting we so desperately need: free of false bravura, free of agenda, free of inflated urgency. … For this reason, the book belongs less with other histories of the war than on the same shelf with Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. This is not trumped-up news coming live from Iraq but the straight story with harrowing snapshots of the American soul. When future generations look back and wonder where we went wrong, where we failed ourselves and them, it will not be hours of television and radio broadcasts that they pore over. It will be a select few texts, and Gilbertson's book deserves to be one of them. He has accepted his charge and climbed the cliff-top. He has told the truth and does not balk."—Ted Genoways, Mother Jones
"I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out … or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In Spiral Jetta, an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn’t magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing."—Tom Vanderbilt, New York Times
"In this thoughtful and meticulously researched account of Lange's career, Spirn focuses on the photographer's largely unpublished 1939 portfolio and champions it as a masterful mix of the visual and the verbal. Lange's stark photographs and accompanying field reports testify to her desire to show real Depression-era Americans as honestly as possible."—Publishers Weekly
"William Allin Storrer has produced the first true and complete catalogue raisonné of Wright's work, and it is stunning. … Mr. Storrer has given us more than a story; he has written an epic. This book, more than any other, makes the remarkable length and breadth of Wright's career clear."—Paul Goldberger, New York Times Book Review, on the first edition
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our art, photography, and design and architecture catalogs.
Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir
"It is one of the many merits of this admirable biography of Proust's mother that it invites one to return to the novel with perhaps a fuller understanding of Proust's heredity, hinterland, and upbringing. … This fascinating book is full of interesting social and cultural observation. … But it is essentially a study of one of the most remarkable and fruitful of mother-son relationships. As such it is a book that every Proustian will want to read."—Allan Massie, Literary Review
"No one who reads Burke's involving biography will ever forget Miller. So visually rich and electrifying is her story, a movie version seems inevitable. … Demonstrating the same clarity of observation and sensitivity to subtleties that distinguish Miller's photographs, Burke indelibly portrays a radiant woman forced to look into the heart of darkness, and an artist who cast light on a brutalized world, illuminating its abiding beauty and grace, and enhancing our empathy and awe."—Donna Seaman, Chicago Tribune
"Part memoir and part disquisition on the psychological impulses behind the urge to accumulate, Collections of Nothing is a wonderfully frank and engaging look at one man's detritus-fueled pathology.… King emerges by book's end a flawed but truly lovable eccentric—an 'antimonk, carefully preserving and sustaining a vital darkness, heavy with various glues, through a forbidding period of enlightenment.' May this darkness reign."—Henry Alford, New York Times Book Review
"What makes this book, bred of a midlife crisis, extraordinary is the way King weaves his autobiography into the account of his collection, deftly demonstrating that the two stories are essentially one.… His hard-won self-awareness gives his disclosures an intensity that will likely resonate with all readers, even those whose collections of nothing contain nothing at all."—New Yorker
"Through a discussion of the objects he has collected, King portrays what it is to be human, to be confused, to be lonely, to make mistakes, and to try to fix them."—Erika Marie Bsumek, Times Higher Education
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our catalog of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs.
Chicago
"Millennium Park is fascinating—and gorgeous. Its 474 pages are adorned with color images. They're worth the $45 sticker price alone. … [Gilfoyle] knows how to tell a good story, and he has one here. … His research and his interviews uncovered a series of lucky breaks and wily moves that made Millennium Park possible, and then filled it with spectacular works of art."—Chicago Tribune
"At its best, nature writing invigorates, educates and motivates. Joel Greenberg's Of Prairie, Woods, and Water is nature writing at its best. This unprecedented anthology of literature about Chicago's environmental beauty inspires our wonder and spurs us to imagine the world at its best, which in turn can lead us to take action to help make it so."—Senator Richard J. Durbin
"I had trouble putting it down. The letters, articles, journal entries and other writings presented a wonderful window on our past… It was like seeing Illinois for the first time—a strange and wild foreign land that is difficult to reconcile with what we see here today."—David L. Thomas, Chief of the Illinois Natural History Survey
The Encyclopedia of Chicago
James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff, editors
›››See our website for the book.
"I also love that you can open this book to pretty much any page and find something incredibly interesting. This is a great coffee-table book—and I don't mean that in a disparaging way at all. I just think it's a book you leave within reach for a long time. It sits on my reading desk, and every so often I open it randomly and read. I love that I never know what I'm going to find. There is a charmingly eccentric pattern, or, more accurately, lack of pattern, to the topics you encounter. It's not a predictable encyclopedia."—Stuart Dybek, Chicago Tribune
"Somehow this vibrant magazine was completely forgotten until a few years ago, when the distinguished cultural historian Neil Harris came upon a set of the magazine’s run in the library of the University of Chicago. It has now been brought back into print, if not to life, by the University of Chicago Press. What a marvelous job they have done! This is a book you will want to own, a coffee-table book nicer and better than most coffee tables. The University of Chicago Press has swung for the fences, producing the book to the highest standards—a nearly 400-page oversize volume, designed with care and attentiveness, to period detail and featuring loads of full-color images. It’s a pleasure to see the ball sail into the bleachers. … Thanks to Neil Harris’s serendipitous discovery and the University of Chicago Press’s superb effort, The Chicagoan takes its rightful place on the top shelf.—Matt Weiland, New York Times Book Review
"Worth the asking price based on the mustaches alone … there are some true relics of Chicago history in here that the photos instantly bring to life. There's a dynamic two-page spread showing Billy Sunday—a former baseball player turned Presbyterian minister—hollering to the high heavens. Another, spookier shot, shows the dead body of Russian immigrant Lazarus Averbuch seated in a chair, with police captain Michael Evans holding up his head. Averbuch was killed by a police officer under suspicious circumstances in 1908. But our favorite is the photo that accompanies the title page to Chapter Seven: Politicos and Preachers. Its caption says it all: 'Alderman wrestling bear.' That's literal, folks."—Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago
"Chicago Gardens captures many of the fascinating stories and names associated with Chicago’s first hundred years of horticulture. From the boasting by its founders in 1833 that Chicago would be an ‘urbs in horto’ (or ‘city in a garden’) to the aftermath of the Century of Progress Exposition in 1933û34, Chicago Gardens traces Chicago’s coming of age as a center of horticulture, gardening and conservation."—Robert E. Grese, Director, Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our catalog of books on Chicago and the University of Chicago.
Difference
"From the dockside pubs and river steps of the East End to the glittering Long Bar of the Trocadero — , Houlbrook's narrative meanders across a capital city as protean as the middle-class men and working-class boys who lived and lusted, loved and (more often than not) loitered and lost within it."—Peter J. M. Wayne, Spectator
"Weiss has got hold of an intrinsically dramatic story, and she tells it well. The dual lives of Thomas Mann’s eldest children combine homosexuality, political conflict, and the unfathomable burden of being the offspring of Germany’s greatest living writer. The chief merit of Weiss’s lively rendering of this story is the way she links the fates of Mann’s progeny not only to one another but to many of the major figures of European culture. Hence her book also tells us a great deal about the lives of anti-fascist intellectuals and artists in the Nazi era."—Paul Robinson, author of Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette
"Theirs is a fascinating tale. Outside the pages of the Manns' own memoirs and essays, or Klaus's deeply personal fiction, it's hard to imagine it more sympathetically told."—Ian Brunskill, Times (UK)
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our gay and lesbian studies catalog.
Fiction and Literature
"Dürrenmatt is a much more interesting writer than his thin English-language profile suggests. It is therefore a pleasure to welcome the University of Chicago Press's three-volume collection of his writings, plays, fictions, and essays. The volumes are splendidly translated by Joel Agee and severally edited and introduced by Kenneth J. Northcott, Brian Everson, and Theodore Ziolkowski. The introductions provide a solid grounding in Dürrenmatt's work, and they help us to understand what it meant to be a German-language Swiss writer in the immediate postwar period."—Kenneth Anderson, Wall Street Journal
"Gardening, to me, is foreign soil.… And yet I find myself completely besotted by a new book titlted Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, by Robert Pogue Harrison. The author … is one of the very best cultural critics at work today. he is a man of deep learning, immense generosity of spirit, passionate curiosity and manifold rhetorical gifts.… As I read this exraordinary, luminous book, I found myself envying my green-thumbed buddies and their serenity-inducing, life-affirming ritualùearthworms and all."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
"In many ways Gardens is a personal essay as much as it is a work of scholarship. Mr. Harrison has planted his own garden of beautiful quotations and provocative speculation, and it is an absorbing and stimulating place to spend time."—Jonathan Rosen, Wall Street Journal
"This book speaks in two different voices, Hazzard writing about the city of Naples as a 'victim' of the still-active Mount Vesuvius, about why sensitive people gravitate to Italy, and about travel as a personal pilgrimate. [Her late husband Francis] Steegmuller, on the other hand, writes more personally, about a mugging he experienced in crime-prone Naples a few years back. But the two voices join in exquisite harmony to celebrate 'those of us who first came to Italy in the 1950s [and] were more than lucky; we were blessed.' Blessed, that is, with indelible impressions, for 'the day was an adventure of discoveries, mortal and immortal, inward or external, and occasionally somber.' A lovely book."—Booklist, starred review
"[An] exquisite companion for the armchair traveler who dreams in the languages of literature and art.… A love letter to an ancient Italian city by the sea."—Mindy Aloff, Washington Post Book World
"Ha Jin is uniquely placed to address the responsibilities and challenges of the displaced writer. Offering both historical context and a strong personal vision of the migrant writer in America today, these essays are thought-provoking, often inspiring, and, above all, unfailingly interesting."—Claire Messud
"Though the issues are weighty, Jin's prose is straightforward and welcoming.… In this poignant and provocative book, Jin takes us on this journey [to our envisioned homelands], revealing paths laid by migrant writers before him and perhaps by those who will follow."—Vanessa Hua, San Francisco Chronicle
"Lerer’s history reminds us of the wealth of literature written during the past 2,600 years.… With his vast and multidimensional knowledge of literature, he underscores the vital role it plays in forming a child’s imagination. We are made, he suggests, by the books we read."—San Francisco Chronicle
"Rooted in his native Montana, where he returned every summer to the cabin he had helped his father build, the man who emerges from these pages is funny, irreverent, and thoughtful. He was homeschooled until he was 11 and absorbed his father's lessons in writing lean, penetrating prose. Of particular interest are Maclean's letters, which give careful, insightful writing advice to friends and former students. This book will appeal to those who love fly-fishing, hunting, the Forest Service, and, above all, good writing."—Library Journal
"Smartly edited … the book brings together manuscripts and letters found among Maclean’s papers after his death in 1990, as well as hard-to-find essays, lectures and interviews. Maclean did not draw a distinction between his life and his fiction, and the material in the Reader, much of it available for the first time, burnishes his achievement."—Wall Street Journal
"Mix a history of Spanish conquistadors in the New World with a porny pulp tale, and the result is this entertaining novel.… While this novel offers a decidfedly goofy point of view, surprisingly, it works."—Publishers Weekly
"Whimsical, erotic and comic all at the same time."—Kirkus Reviews
"A creative attitude to the novel is in abundant evidence across all Siegel's fiction; and this new novel is a worthy addition to a body of work which deserves a wider audience."—Stephen Burn, Times Literary Supplement
"Parker is a brilliant invention.… What chiefly distinguishes Westlake, under whatever name, is his passion for process and mechanics.… Parker appears to have eliminated everything from his program but machine logic, but this is merely protective coloration. He is a romantic vestige, a free-market anarchist whose independent status is becoming a thing of the past."—Luc Sante, New York Review of Books
"Richard Stark’s Parker novels … are among the most poised and polished fictions of their time and, in fact, of any time."—John Banville, Bookforum
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our fiction catalog.
Film and media
"One of the few authentic giants in a field in which self-importance frequently overshadows accomplishment.… His criticism shows a nearly unequalled grasp of film history and technique, and formidable intellectual range, but [Ebert] rarely seems to be showing off. He's just trying to tell you what he thinks, and to provoke some thought on your part about how movies work and what they can do."—A.O. Scott, New York Times
"A film-by-film chronicling of the professional, yet passionate, Ebert-Scorsese relationship. Packaged together are every Ebert review of a Scorsese title, as well as an array of essays, interviews, and the transcript of an on-stage discussion between the director and writer.… Ebert has also gone back to write an additional ‘reconsideration’ of a half-dozen select Scorsese titles.… A work of obvious affection, even adoration, what might surprise readers most is how Scorsese by Ebert emerges as a work of profound identification."—Time
"Schwartz reveals how a series of Franco-American liaisons created the global film industry. This is one of the most perceptive histories ever written about the making of mass culture—and a pleasure to read."—Michael Kazin, Georgetown University
"Vanessa R. Schwartz's account of Franco-American relations in the world of cinema is an erudite analysis of the dialogue between the two filmic powers.… A lively discussion of a rich subject."—Financial Times
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our film catalog.
Food, Sport, and Leisure
"There are many misconceptions about the food of ancient Rome that Faas sets out to correct. The result is half cookbook, half history book and is entirely fascinating to both chef and antiquarian alike."—Washington Times
"Patrick Faas's Around the Roman Table is a smorgasbord of gastronomic wonders and delights."—Independent on Sunday
"Citrus is a delightful and stimulating book, and one which only Pierre Laszlo, with his wide botanical and chemical background, his deep culture and erudition, could write. It is the story of a lifelong love affair with the citrus family, related with elegance and charm: there is history, there is chemistry, there are recipes and personal anecdotes—all compounded into a delectable marmalade of a book."—Oliver Sacks
"A short but brilliant account of 6,000 years of citrus fruits that should be devoured with fervour."—Financial Times
"In often hilarious fashion, Lovegren chronicles hundreds of wacky fads as the nation's cooks moved from frozen fish-sticks and fat-free brownies to Szechwan shrimp alfredo."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"In recent years, the subject of food has been one primarily of seriousness verging on reverence. While that may be wholly justified, it's refreshing to have a good laugh (at ourselves) every now and then."—Library Journal
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our food and gastronomy catalog.
History
"From religious pilgrimages and vacation road trips to depictions of the ocean floor and the magical landscapes of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, maps chart both physical and imaginary worlds. As geographer Denis Cosgrove explains '"World" is a social concept … a flexible term, stretching from physical environment to the world of ideas, microbes, of sin. Arguably, all these worlds can be mapped.' And they are in this compelling and very readable companion volume to the current exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago."—Discover
"This study is serious, creative, important. As an economist I am happy to see economics so professionally applied to illuminate major decisions in the history of warfare."—Thomas C. Schelling, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics
"In bringing economics into assessments of military history, [the authors] also bring illumination.… [The authors] turn their interdisciplinary lens on the mercenary arrangements of Renaissance Italy; the wars of Marlborough, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon; Grant's campaigns in the Civil War; and the strategic bombings of World War II. The results are invariably stimulating."—Martin Walker, Wilson Quarterly
"For grunts fighting the Vietnam War, statements of patriotism and protest found an outlet not on posters but on metal Zippo lighters. Vietnam Zippos, illustrated with objects from the collection of the artist Bradford Edwards, documents what the author, Sherry Buchanan, calls 'amulets and talismans bringing the keeper invulnerability, good luck and protection against evil.' Sadly, these personalized mementos also served as last testaments for many who were killed in action. … This book, well designed and photographed by Misha Anikst, offers a rare personal dimension. The mottoes on these lighters, like 'When I die I will go to heaven because I spent my time in hell,' provide candid insight into what these soldiers thought of the war."—New York Times Book Review
"Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri narrates a wonderfully engaging story that raises fascinating questions about identity and memory in the Middle Ages."—Times Higher Education
"A fascinating story and an engaging read. Unlike an Agatha Christie mystery, where all is revealed in the end, Carpegna Falconieri emphasizes the knots and twists of the skein of the tale, and we are as wrapped in it at the end as we were at the beginning."—R. Howard Bloch, author of A Needle in the Right Hand of God
"From romantic obsessions to artistic obsessions to the neural underpinnings of obsessive-compulsive disorder, no aspect of the word or concept is left unexplored.… Beautifully written."—Kirkus Reviews
"Davis begins with a gripping story of his own boyhood compulsions. Taking examples from literature, history, art, and medicine, he shows how society both aggravates and aggrandizes obsessiveness, notably in sex education, science, and psychoanalysis.… Profound, brilliant, and engaging, the book deplores the separation of medicine and psychology from their historical and social contexts."—Library Journal
"As much a work of art as a historical record, the Poesiealbum (autograph album) of Prague-born Jew Marianka Zadikow documents the lives of those held from 1944-1945 at transit camp Theresienstadt, a 150-year-old fortress at Terezin, Czechoslovakia.… With a generously-donated stack of paper bound by a friend, the industrious 21-year-old Marianka—vividly captured in Dwork’s biographical introduction—collected thoughts, wisdom, artwork, notes and other contributions from fellow prisoners and survivors, providing a map to the population’s tight-knit community and inextinguishable sense of culture.… The end result is a stirring, illuminating example of Zadikow’s cherished belief that art has the power to transcend, regenerate and reunite."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Fascinating.… This year—when Americans are suddenly parking their gas guzzlers and lining up for the bus—is the right year to read this book, and to try and figure out what our century-long affair with the car says about us and about our future."—Bill McKibben
"The work of Autophobia is precisely about looking again at what has been said, by whom and for what reason, and why none of the voluminous critiques of the car—by any number of estimable figures—seem to have much mattered. [Ladd] does this with equanimity and scholarly aplomb (particularly on the European response to motorization), and for a slender volume, this book has a lot under the hood.—Tom Vanderbilt, New York Times Book Review
"Meiselas offers a sensitive and sophisticated work.… The unusual form of her dedicated efforts not only represents a paradigm for a new kind of photographic book, but also poignantly demonstrates how the stories we tell and the images we make produce, rather than reflect, our sense of identity and understanding of what constitutes history."—Debra S. Singer, Aperture
"As the great philosopher George Santayana would have said, 'those who cannot remember the past … should simply read Jan Van Meter's Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.' Van Meter's greatest hits collection of slogans is the catchiest ever retelling of American history."—Mo Rocca, author of All the Presidents' Pets
"An utterly fascinating and timely glimpse into how the presidential debates were created, how they have evolved through the years, and the indispensable role they continue to play in our democracy. Minow and LaMay's book is a gem."—Walter Cronkite
"Minow, an early organizer of the televised debates and the current vice chairman of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, is [their] greatest champion and most clear-eyed critic.… [His] perspectives are peerless, and the timeliness and importance of the topic make for worthwhile reading."—Publishers Weekly
"Amid the mountains of war materiél accumulating in southern England in the spring of 1944 were crates of a slender, highly classified book intended to give Allied soldiers a sense of the country they would soon overrun. One million copies of what was then titled A Pocket Guide to France had been requested by the War Department in a top secret message, making the little volume among the most ambitious publishing ventures of World War II."—Rick Atkinson, from the Introduction
"Ms. Wyke's concern is how we have created and adapted Caesar's image and historical importance over the past 2,000 years—from Caesar's camp at Arles to Caesars Palace, Las Vegas; from Mussolini, seeking a Caesarian mandate for his own grand ambitions, to Asterix, using the Roman dictator for satirical purposes in comic-book form; from the Caesar coins minted in tribute by Brutus (before he revised his opinion) to the taunts leveled at George W. Bush as an empire-seeker in recent years."—Peter Stothard, Wall Street Journal
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our history catalog.
Humor
"Every November, the University of Chicago celebrates the coming holiday season with a take-no-prisoners, academic smackdown. For an entire evening, disciplines are attached and defended, the political becomes personal and a particular issue is argued with a fervor not seen since Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe at the United Nations. … The issue: the relative merits of the latke and the hamantash."—Jewish Herald-Voice
"So, is this book funny? Of course it's funny, even laugh-out-loud funny. It's Mickey Katz in academic drag, Borscht Belt with a PhD."—David Kaufmann, Forward
"In this eye-opening dual biography of the first and only interracial American comedy team, Reid and Dreesen share their own unique upbringings—overcoming the stigmas of poverty and prejudice and through sheer determination making a difference in many people's lives through a shared talent to entertain and educate.… A heartfelt memoir and a nice capsule history of growing up different, fighting the odds, and becoming successful on one's own terms."—Library Journal
"Part showbiz survival 101, part civil rights testimony, the story of Tim and Tom is a moving chronicle of the courage, conviction and commitment it took to wade through floods of bigotry and bias with bell-bottoms. Although racism is no laughing matter, Tim and Tom proved that a little humanity and humor can go a long way to reminding us that people are more alike than we are different."—Tavis Smiley
Music
"This enthralling and important book offers vital reading for anyone with a serious interest in opera. Its author, Philip Gossett, describes himself as 'a fan, a musician, and a scholar.' … This volume is his life's work. Written with unfailing clarity and waspish wit, it charts the musical problems, both theoretical and practical, presented by the autograph manuscripts, printed scores, and performances of this great corpus."—Rupert Christiansen, Spectator
"With A Power Stronger Than Itself, Lewis exceeds expectations. For rather than merely recount the ascent of the AACM, he elegantly sets it against the backdrop of cultural, racial and social changes that shook the twentieth century.… Lewis unreels this tale with dramatic flourish and scholarly authority."—Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
"Lewis's landmark book … goes deeper into the formation and development of the AACM than any previous history, and as a formal acknowledgement of the group's enormous importance and influence it's long overdue."—Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our music catalog.
Philosophy and Religion
"This is a book for many sorts of readers. It offers a full-scale biography of one of the greatest American philosophers and public intellectuals of the twentieth century; an important contribution to the history of pragmatism; and a pathbreaking new approach in the sociology of ideas."—Hans Joas, University of Chicago
"At a time when glib enthusiasts for Buddhism and science claim vindication through the other, Lopez is the wise historically sensitive voice who asks us to reflect on which science, which Buddhism we are talking about."—Owen Flanagan, Duke University
"[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away … the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard."—President-elect Barack Obama
"Mapping Paradise aspires to be nothing less than a history of earthly paradise, starting with the early Christian era and continuing to the present day. Extensively illustrated, it is an atlas of the imagination, a guide to a landscape that remains just the slightest bit out of reach. … Juxtaposing medieval illuminated manuscripts with satellite imagery and cartographic treasures—one map of the world, drawn in 1086, uses portraits of the Apostles to signify the territories they evangelized¹Mapping Paradise is, in the end, a record not of place but of desire. Or, as Scafi puts it: 'Whether the approach is openly religious or not, mankind still longs for a paradise on earth.'"—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our philosophy and religion catalogs.
Poetry
"Erotic, impassioned and necrophilic, the sixty works gathered in Surrealist Love Poems celebrate the idea of obsessive and transformative love. … Caws places poems by major surrealist writers like André Breton and Paul Eluard, along with the poetry of Picasso, Dalí, and Frida Kahlo, side by side with fourteen lushly printed and alluring black-and-white photos by the likes of Man Ray, Lee Miller, and Claude Cahun."—Publishers Weekly
"I thought of Frost as I read these bracing poems, written in heavily cadenced language, full of concrete images that summon a vision of the natural world. …Wallace Stevens once wrote: 'Description is revelation.' If this is so, then Pack's is a poetry of revelation."—Jay Parini, Middlebury Alumni Magazine
"No one has captured the intensity and strangeness of childhood and the turbulent longings of adolescence with such disturbing power as Rimbaud. … Seth Whidden, by updating Fowlie's edition to respond to fresh information and greater access to manuscripts and facsimiles over the last forty years, will allow new generations to share the intoxicating otherness of Rimbaud's vision."—Rosemary Lloyd, author of Baudelaire's World
"What we cannot fail to hear, in Red Rover, is a wise and troubled lullaby for what may yet prove to be the infancy of our species."—Nation
"Stewart offers sequences and serial poems that move across historical time, and continually reveal the ominous hiding in the innocuous, or vice versa ("burning bread smells like / baked earth").… This gathering of poems, with their masterful cadences, allegorically pitched narratives and various speakers "bound / deep to old griefs and wonder," build toward an indictment of aggression and war."—Publishers Weekly
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our poetry catalog
Science and Nature
"This is perhaps the most accessible book that I have ever read about how humanity is changing Earth's climate, and what can be done about it."—David Archer, author of Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast
"Science is often presented to the public as an unchanging and unchallengeable system of truths wrested by cabalistic means from nature. This book attempts something different. The authors' aim is to remove the aura of mystery by taking the reader into the back rooms of science—showing how science is actually done—and thereby fostering a better understanding of what lies behind the (sometimes inflated) accounts found in popular science articles and news reports. I really enjoyed reading this book."—Werner Israel, University of Victoria, British Columbia
"In Science on the Air, Marcel LaFollette brings to life the ephemeral world of radio and television and offers a compelling look into how the demands of entertainment, the need for corporate sponsors, and changing cultural and political values shaped the content, format, and programming of science for generations of American listeners and viewers."—Gregg Mitman, author of Reel Nature
A visual celebration of these natural feats of engineering and ingenuity, Architecture by Birds and Insects allows readers a peek inside a wide range of nests. Inspired by the vast nest collection at the Field Museum, Peggy Macnamara's paintings are enhanced by text written by museum curators.
"A very useful (and fairly quick) read on the topic of changing coastlines.… Anyone interested in an informative and entertaining read on climate change via the science of cartography and map-making should peruse Monmonier's geographic treatise on coastlines."—Randy Cerveny, Weatherwise
"Coastlines take on a completely different meaning after reading Mark Monmonier's five-century-long odyssey on the challenges and tricks that mapmakers have used to tell us where land and sea meet. That line is far from obvious, it turns out. With the prospect of rising global sea levels, the technique of mapping changing bays, estuaries, and deltas requires imagination as much as mathematics."—Christopher Hallowell, author of Holding Back the Sea
"At nearly 900 pages, this is a suitably monumental book about the biggest subject of all: the cosmos."—P.D. Smith, Guardian
"[Cosmos] is the remarkable story of the sustained human endeavor to understand our place in the universe."—Sir Bernard Lovell
"Each squid, jellyfish, and deepsea worm is posed in all its baroque extravagance against a stark black background, occupying a full or double-page spread. The effect is startling, like a series of underwater mug shots crafted by Fabergé. Ms. Nouvian … has enlisted 15 scientists from such research institutes as the Smithsonian, Woods Hole, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium itself, to contribute brief but lively reports on everything from 'sharks of the dark' to methane seeps and hydrothermal vents. There is a handy depth chart keyed to each image, a glossary, a page of interesting oceanic statistics, and a good bibliography. Good as the texts and aids are, the images carry the book; they are simply spectacular.""—Eric Ormsby, New York Sun
"Prager, chief scientist of the world's only undersea station, in Florida, presents a well-organized introduction to marine science enlivened by the story of her own personal path into the profession. Through dozens of anecdotes of wave scientists, marine geologists, tsunami researchers, underwater archaeologists, and many others, Prager casually reveals the vast number and variety of interests pursued in the sea.… Prager's ability to zero in on astonishing facts makes for an enormously appealing book."—Booklist
"Shapin here examines science as a vocation. The practice of science, once a calling from God or, perhaps, a mere amateur's hobby, has come into its own as a profession, particularly following World War II. Shapin's sociological history documents this vocational evolution as he raises the following questions: How does the practice and authority of science relate to the virtues of its practitioners? Is academic science superior to the commercialization of science? How does industry compete for the best minds in science? Can the practice of scientific research be organized, team driven, and accountable to investors? Shapin addresses all these questions without weighing in with his personal opinions on the topic. The result is a thought-provoking challenge to the assumptions of scientific objectivity by science's practitioners and an acknowledgment of just how important the morality of scientists may be in the advancement and authority of knowledge."—Library Journal
"This book presents an absolutely unique understanding of cartography and mapping, what they are and what they do. Their ideas are groundbreaking, but the presentation is clear and readable—and the book is drop-dead gorgeous."—Tom Koch, author of Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine
›››For more gift ideas along these lines, see our catalogs on biology and natural history and the history of science.
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