Making Ideas Happen
Scott Belsky
Reductively, this is GTD for the Photoshop set. But Belsky defines creativity expansively, as something that people of all vocations are not only capable of, but naturally inclined to.
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes
Almost certainly the greatest novel ever written, and an early precursor to postmodernism.
Graphs, Maps, Trees
Franco Moretti
An academic treatise that argues that rather than reading books, we should be mining them for data.
A Reader on Reading
Alberto Manguel
A series of essays from the author of A History of Reading that explores the reader’s perspective.
Manual of Typography
Giambattista Bodoni & Stephen Füssel
A reproduction of Bodoni’s lifelong project to document as many typefaces as possible, complete with the dedication by his widow, and an essay from Stephan Füssel placing the book in historical context.
A Pattern Language
Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa & Murray Silverstein
A collection of architectural patterns, fascinating for their grasp and depiction of the social experience of a town.
Common as Air
Lewis Hyde
Hyde addresses the history of copyright, and demonstrates that the founding fathers were not at all fans of it.
CSS3 for Web Designers
Dan Cederholm
The second book from A Book Apart, and required reading for anyone who wants to make the web a more beautiful place.
Art Space Tokyo
Ashley Rawlings & Craig Mod
Lovingly illustrated and printed, this is your guide to all the hidden art galleries in Tokyo, complete with notes on where to eat and what neighborhoods to get lost in on your way.
The Gift
Lewis Hyde
The original subtitle of this book defined it as “Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property,” which hints at the real message better than the revision: that real art, no matter the price, is always a gift from the artist to the audience.
The Elements of Editing
Arthur Plotnik
“The editor, not the author, best understands the readership,” Plotnik says. “Authors know their subject. Editors specialize in knowing the audience.”
Bird by Bird
Anne Lamott
Personal musings on the life of the writer. Lamott is primarily a novelist, but I find her writing advice to be just as relevant to nonfiction.
Cognitive Surplus
Clay Shirky
In this follow-up to Here Comes Everybody, Shirky argues that we’re evolving from passive consumers of Seinfeld to creative makers of everything from lolcats to open source software to real-time news reporting.
Made by Hand
Mark Fraunfelder
A chronicle of one man’s attempt to become a DIYer. Frauenfelder learns that making things yourself means mostly making mistakes, but those mistakes can be a source of joy.
The Big Short
Michael Lewis
Infuriatingly good. There isn’t another writer alive who could take the obscurities of subprime mortgages and credit default swaps and deliver a page-turner like this one.
The Design of Design
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
An engineer’s perspective on the design process. His conclusions are familiar, but the means by which he gets there are fascinating.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Alain de Botton
A lengthy and wonderful photo essay with stories of various kinds of work, from biscuit manufacturer to rocket scientist.
Design and Truth
Robert Grudin
A wide-ranging and philosophical approach to user-centered design.
HTML5 for Web Designers
Jeremy Keith
The inaugural book from A Book Apart, the new publisher for which I am co-founder and editor.
The Riverside Shakespeare
Shakespeare
The book I most dreaded carrying around when I was a student (because of its heft), but which I now profess the most nostalgia for.