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.
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.
The Art of Simple Food
Alice Waters
A beautifully designed book that has served me well in the kitchen.
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.”