A working library is an exploration of—and advocate for—All books by yale university press
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A Reader on Reading
Alberto Manguel
A series of essays from the author of A History of Reading that explores the reader’s perspective. The section called “Memoranda” approaches the politics of reading and is worth the cover price alone. Manguel’s skill at connecting true events with their fictional counterpart—and so making them both appear more clearly—is both keen and profound.
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Design and Truth
Robert Grudin
A wide-ranging and philosophical approach to user-centered design. Grudin argues compellingly that design that does not consider the user is dishonest. See also: my review in the Barnes&Noble Review.
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The Craftsman
Richard Sennett
Sennett defines craftmanship as the desire to do a job well for its own sake. In so doing, he frees it of the bounds of carpentry or metalwork and extends the work of craft to that of the programmer, the doctor, and the parent. And he restores materialism—long maligned as being complicit in capitalism’s ills—as that which looks to “cloth, circuit boards, or baked fish as objects worthy of regard in themselves” (page 7).
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The Library at Night
Alberto Manguel
A series of meandering essays on the subject of the library.
