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.
Jan Tschichold, Master Typographer
Cees W. de Jong
Thames & Hudson’s tome to Jan Tschichold is as oversized as he was.
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.
Proust and the Squid
Maryanne Wolf
Wolf addresses the ways in which the brain adapts—or fails to adapt—to reading.
Designing with Web Standards
Jeffrey Zeldman & Ethan Marcotte
The manual of web standards returns for a third edition, this time with the addition of the talented Ethan Marcotte.
Small Is Beautiful
E. F. Schumacher
Schumacher brilliantly interrogates modern economics and proposes an alternative: a Buddhist economics that takes as its imperative the quality of human life, not the quantity of profit.
Book Typography
Michael Mitchell & Susan Wightman
A thorough and beautiful guide to typography and typesetting, worthy of any designer’s desk.
Why There Are Pages and Why They Must Turn
Robert Bringhurst
A short essay about the future of the book from the inimitable Robert Bringhurst.
A Humument
Tom Phillips
The fourth in Tom Philips ongoing project to recompose an old, unknown Victorian novel. Weird and fascinating and beautiful.
Content Strategy for the Web
Kristina Halvorson
The book on the new(ish) field of content strategy, or, how we’re going to save the web.
How to Tell When You’re Tired
Reg Theriault
A fabulous little book, written by a lifelong worker.
Handcrafted CSS
Dan Cederholm & Ethan Marcotte
An excellent, practical overview that demonstrates how to use CSS3 properties today, as well as other methods of “handcrafted” design.
Life Inc.
Douglass Rushkoff
A passionate, well-written text that argues that our centralized currency system is the key to the corporatism that has infected not only our government but our daily lives.
The Vintage Book of Amnesia
Jonathan Lethem
An eccentric collection of short pieces that touch on the subject of memory loss, from writers as varied as Martin Amis, Jorge Luis Borges, and Oliver Sacks.
The Courage to Create
Rollo May
May sees creativity as the ultimate goal of all people (not merely those traditionally deemed “creative”) and links creativity to well-being and a desire to make the world a better place.
The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
Eisenstein’s tome about the history of the advent of printing has one central argument: that the printing press enabled a stability of text which in turn drove rapid advances in science and learning.
With Borges
Alberto Manguel
A slim volume, with Manguel’s youthful memories of evenings spent reading to Borges in his home in Buenos Aires.
There’s Nothing Funny About Design
David Barringer
A clever (and, yes, funny) collection of essays.
Man’s Search for Himself
Rollo May
A work of existential psychology, May’s text is intelligent and engaging, with prose as lovely as the insights are profound.