Design History

The author of the Washington Post’s hugely influential ""Plum Line"" sounds the alarm on the subversion of our democracy by self-interested politicians, greedy plutocrats, foreign government hacking, racial prejudice, media propaganda and our own lack of vigilance, and what must be done to...

An intimate, myth-shattering new biography of Mary Queen of Scots by a premier historian that draws on a trove of newly discovered sources.Queen of Scots, the first full-scale biography of Mary in more than thirty years, offers a singularly novel, nuanced, and dramatic portrait of one of...

"A casually wondrous experience; it made me feel like the city was unfolding beneath my feet.” —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror In place-names lie stories. That’s the truth that animates this fascinating journey through the names of New York City’s streets and parks, boroughs...

A follow-up to her popular Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, Jenkins' new book offers a string of historical anecdotes structured around the hours of the day, celebrating the unusual, fantastic, and beautiful ways people have spent time throughout the ages.

Sixty years ago, cars and airplanes were still deathtraps waiting to happen. Today, both are safer than ever, thanks in part to one pioneering air force doctor’s research on seatbelts and ejection seats. The exploits of John Paul Stapp (1910–1999) come to thrilling life in this biography of...

WHAT IS IT THAT DRIVES THE SUCCESS OF AMERICA AND THE IDENTITY OF ITS PEOPLE? ACCLAIMED WRITER AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO THIS AMERICAN LIFE JACK HITT THINKS IT’S BECAUSE WE’RE ALL A BUNCH OF AMATEURS. America’s self-invented tinkerers are back at it in their metaphorical...

Great for individual or group use Includes provocative discussion questions and practical action steps Features four-color art plates and literary quotesIt’s not easy being an Artist in the church.But whatever your passion—music, visual art, drama, dance, writing, technical...

Lost Discoveries, Dick Teresi's innovative history of science, explores the unheralded scientific breakthroughs from peoples of the ancient world -- Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians, Africans, New World and Oceanic tribes, among others -- and the non-European medieval world. They left an...

In the spring of 2005, cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz was called to consult on an unusual patient: an Emperor tamarin at the Los Angeles Zoo. While examining the tiny monkey’s sick heart, she learned that wild animals can die of a form of cardiac arrest brought on by extreme emotional...

A groundbreaking look at the Founding Fathers and their obsession with gardening, agriculture, and botany by the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. “Illuminating and engrossing.” —The New York Times Book Review For the Founding Fathers...

“The amount of knowledge and talent dispersed among the human race has always outstripped our capacity to harness it. Crowdsourcing ­corrects that—but in doing so, it also unleashes the forces of creative destruction.” —From Crowdsourcing First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a...

A collection of the timeless, the priceless and the unforgettable, this beautiful compendium accompanies the beloved BBC One TV series. Antiques Roadshow has graced our screens for forty years and has become one of the nation’s most beloved television programmes and a national institution. It...

This study, based on newspapers, journals, oral interviews, and academic studies examines 19th- and 20th-century cultural changes through the space and place of American baseball parks to expose how public buildings exemplify American culture. The argument put forth by author Connie F. Sexauer is: Connections can be made by examining these places to reveal economic, political, and social conditions of American society to reveal changes to the culture of the day.

From “tomorrow’s greatest designer” (The Atlantic), a personal and deeply researched look at how the choices we build into our environment reflect and determind the way we think, connect, and live. We've been led to believe that purposefully designed spaces are something reserved only for...

With Expand: Stretching the Future By Design, authors Jens Martin Skibsted, a multiple-award-winning designer, entrepreneur, and design philosopher, and Christian Bason, political scientist and CEO of the Danish Design Centre, take listeners beyond "design thinking" to challenge current habits and carve out new space for more sustainable innovation. From transforming the ways we do business and reimagining health care, to creating planet-restoring housing and humanizing our digital lives in an age of AI, Expand explores how expansive thinking across six key areas.

The story of how one woman's long love affair with New York's Central Park led her to organize its rescue from a state of serious decline, returning it to the beautiful place of recreational opportunity and spiritual sustenance that it is today. Elizabeth Barlow Rogers opens with a quick survey...

We may not often think of our clothes as having a function beyond covering our naked bodies and keeping us a little safer from the elements. But to discount the enormous influence of clothing on anything from economic cycles to the future of water scarcity is to ignore the greater meaning of the garments we put on our backs. Disrobed vividly considers the role that clothing plays in everything from natural disasters to climate change to terrorism to geopolitics to agribusiness.

A rich, wide-ranging meditation on the iPhone as direct descendant of the 1930s Bauhaus, one of the twentieth century's most influential schools of art and design (summed up in Mies van der Rohe's dictum, "less is more") whose principle aim was to connect art and industry. From one of the...

The antebellum era and the close of the 19th century frame a period of great agricultural expansion. During this time, farmhouse plans designed by rural men and women regularly appeared in the flourishing Northern farm journals. This book analyzes these vital indicators of the work patterns, social interactions, and cultural values of the farm families of the time. Examining several hundred owner-designed plans, McMurry shows the ingenious ways in which "progressive" rural Americans designed farmhouses in keeping with their visions of a dynamic, reformed rural culture.

Elevate your personal style based on iconic advice from Coco Chanel with this beautiful and practical guide to dressing your best. There is no one more synonymous with style than Coco Chanel. Her pillars of simplicity, elegance, comfort, nautical, monochrome, and the iconic little black dress...