The Form of the Book

Jan Tschichold

A collection of essays written between 1949 and 1974, the year of Tschichold’s death.

You Are Not a Gadget

Jaron Lanier

Lanier’s manifesto brings attention to the many ways in which human behavior is being mechanized by technology.

Days of Reading

Marcel Proust

Proust’s meditations on reading, and the gifts that writers leave their readers. Best read slowly.

Food Rules

Michael Pollan

This little book from everyone’s favorite omnivore deftly defines a series of simple rules to eat by, expanding on his mantra from In Defense of Food: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

The Value of Nothing

Raj Patel

Raj Patel argues that the tragedy of the commons is one borne of privatization and corporatism, not an innate fact of the commoners themselves.

My Bread

Jim Lahey & Rick Flaste

Lahey’s simple method for bread making (which trades kneading for time) is worth the hype.

Mediated

Thomas de Zengotita

de Zengotita investigates the ways in which our experience of the world is mediated through traditional media (television, newspapers) as well as the ways in which we self-mediate.

Standard Operating Procedure

Philip Gourevitch & Errol Morris

The book companion to Errol Morris’ movie of the same name. Where Morris tells the story with video and photography, Gourevitch communicates with words alone.

Library

Matthew Battles

Battles’ lively history runs from the ancients to the internet, with tales of libraries built and burned along the way.

Summertime

J. M. Coetzee

With Coetzee’s last few works of fiction, he seems to be making an effort to get out ahead of the biographers who will no doubt pounce on his grave while still warm.

Reading Pictures

Alberto Manguel

Manguel—author of A History of Reading—turns his eye to how we “read” art. A welcome correlative to Berger’s Ways of Seeing.

The Craftsman

Richard Sennet

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.

Ways of Seeing

John Berger

Based on the BBC documentary, Berger begins with a retelling of Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and concludes with a brilliant analysis of modern day advertising and its roots in Renaissance-era oil painting.

The Subversive Copy Editor

Carol Fisher Saller

Carol Fisher Saller’s irreverent guide to copy editing has helpful advice for working with writers, as well as guidance for writers about working with their editor.

Deep Economy

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben indicts the current economic system for it’s single-minded pursuit of “more” without regard for whether or not it is (or can be) “better.”

Graphic Design

Adrian Shaughnessy

Shaugnessy’s irreverent guide—the ABC’s of design—addresses the underside of the designer’s life, with entries on banks, presentation skills, and sacking clients.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis

Davis’ shorts are very short—sometimes only a paragraph—but they leave impressions larger than the tiny space they consume.

Orality and Literacy

Walter J. Ong

Perhaps the only book I’ve discovered that carefully and thoroughly addresses the differences between oral and literate cultures.

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