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In the wise and beautiful second collection from the acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author of All the Light We Cannot See, and Cloud Cuckoo Land, "Doerr writes about the big questions, the imponderables, the major metaphysical dreads, and he does it fearlessly" (The New York Times Book Review). Set on four continents, Anthony Doerr's new stories are about memory, the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others. Every hour, says Doerr, all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear. Yet at the same time children, surveying territory that is entirely new to them, push back the darkness, form fresh memories, and remake the world. In the luminous and beautiful title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In "The River Nemunas," a teenage orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. "Village 113," winner of an O'Henry Prize, is about the building of the Three Gorges Dam and the seed keeper who guards the history of a village soon to be submerged. And in "Afterworld," the radiant, cathartic final story, a woman who escaped the Holocaust is haunted by visions of her childhood friends in Germany, yet finds solace in the tender ministrations of her grandson. Every story in Memory Wall is a reminder of the grandeur of life--of the mysterious beauty of seeds, of fossils, of sturgeon, of clouds, of radios, of leaves, of the breathtaking fortune of living in this universe. Doerr's language, his witness, his imagination, and his humanity are unparalleled in fiction today.
The Science and the Story of the Future of Learning Educators have been trying to harness the "promise" of technology in education for decades, to no avail, but we have learned that children in groups—when given access to the Internet—can learn anything by themselves. In this groundbreaking book, you’ll glimpse the emerging future of learning with technology. It turns out the promise isn’t in the technology itself; it’s in the self-directed learning of the children who use it. In 1999, Sugata Mitra conducted the famous "Hole in the Wall" experiment that inspired three TED Talks and earned him the first million-dollar TED prize for research in 2013. Since then, he has conducted new research around self-organized learning environments (SOLE), building "Schools in the Cloud" all over the world. This new book shares the results of this research and offers • Examples of thriving Schools in the Cloud in unlikely places • Mitra’s predictions on the future of learning • How to design assessments for self-organizing learning • How to build your own School in the Cloud • Clips from the documentary, The School in the Cloud Discover the future of learning by digging deep into Mitra’s thought-provoking experiences, examples, and vision.
Rustic or refined, traditional or whimsical, functional or just plain fun, these imaginative thrones, rockers and chaises have one thing in common; more than merely places to sit, they are sculptural works of art. The work of today's top furniture artists, will charm, provoke and inspire you and make you rethink the very meaning of 'chair'.
"Filled with fascinating details about the art world and colorful real-life characters, this novel may appeal to historical fiction fans who enjoyed Natasha Solomons's The House at Tyneford and Tatiana de Rosnay's Sarah's Key."--Library Journal An exquisite, haunting exploration of the complex mind of Marc Chagall through the eyes of his daughter -- great for fans of Mrs. Poe and The Paris Wife Beautiful Ida Chagall, the only daughter of Marc Chagall, is blossoming in the Paris art world beyond her father's controlling gaze. But her newfound independence is short-lived. In Nazi-occupied Paris, Chagall's status as a Jewish artist has made them all targets, yet his devotion to his art blinds him to their danger. When Ida falls in love and Chagall angrily paints an empty wedding chair (The Bridal Chair) in response, she faces an impossible choice: Does she fight to forge her own path outside her father's shadow, or abandon her ambitions to save Chagall from his enemies and himself? Brimming with historic personalities from Europe, America and Israel, The Bridal Chair is a stunning portrait of love, fortitude, and the sharp divide between art and real life. "Only Gloria Goldreich could write a novel so grounded in historical truths yet so exuberantly imaginative. The Bridal Chair is Goldreich at her best, with a mesmerizing plot, elegant images, and a remarkable heroine who...will remain with you long after the last page."--Francine Klagsburn, Jewish Week columnist and acclaimed author of Voices of Wisdom "In prose as painterly and evocative as Chagall's own dazzling brushstrokes, Gloria Goldreich finely evokes one of the most significant masters of modern art through the discerning eyes of his] loyally protective daughter."--Cynthia Ozick, award-winning author of Foreign Bodies
Have you ever wondered where rocking chairs came from, or why cheap plastic chairs are suddenly everywhere? In Now I Sit Me Down, the distinguished architect and writer Witold Rybczynski chronicles the history of the chair from the folding stools of pharaonic Egypt to the ubiquitous stackable monobloc chairs of today. He tells the stories of the inventor of the bentwood chair, Michael Thonet, and of the creators of the first molded-plywood chair, Charles and Ray Eames. He reveals the history of chairs to be a social history--of different ways of sitting, of changing manners and attitudes, and of varying tastes. The history of chairs is the history of who we are. We learn how the ancient Chinese switched from sitting on the floor to sitting in a chair, and how the iconic chair of Middle America--the Barcalounger--traces its roots back to the Bauhaus. Rybczynski weaves a rich tapestry that draws on art and design history, personal experience, and historical accounts. And he pairs these stories with his own delightful hand-drawn illustrations: colonial rockers and English cabrioles, languorous chaise longues, and no-nonsense ergonomic task chairs--they're all here. The famous Danish furniture designer Hans Wegner once remarked, "A chair is only finished when someone sits in it." As Rybczynski tells it, the way we choose to sit and what we choose to sit on speak volumes about our values, our tastes, and the things we hold dear.
Narnia ... where giants wreak havoc ... where evil weaves a spell ... where enchantment rules. Through dangers untold and caverns deep and dark, a noble band of friends are sent to rescue a prince held captive. But their mission to Underland brings them face-to-face with an evil more beautiful and more deadly than they ever expected.
*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
First-ever monograph on Carlo Mollino as an architect. Demonstrates Mollino's prowess in architectural design. Based on extensive new research and drawing on rich archival material. Lavishly illustrated with previously unpublished images, plans, drawings, and documents. Today, Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino (1905-73) is known chiefly for his furniture designs. He is famous also for his erotic polaroid photography of the 1960s, which has been subject of many exhibitions and has lost nothing of its great appeal to the fashion world today. Much less attention has so far been given to Mollino's architecture, and a comprehensive critical study of his work in this field has been lacking. Yet his built work, although relatively small, constitutes a seminal contribution to modernism that is uniquely marked by a strong relationship with Surrealism. Based on years of research and drawing on rich archival material as well as on Mollino's own writings, this new book is the overdue tribute to an extraordinary personality in 20th-century architecture. It features an exemplary selection of his key designs, both built and unrealised, lavishly illustrated with images and reproductions of previously unpublished plans, drawings, and documents. Rounded out with scholarly essays by expert authors, this is a long-awaited addition to the library of architecture lovers, professionals, and scholars.
In recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in "design classics", both in their increased availability and affordability through re-issues, and in their widespread re-interpretation by contemporary designers and artists. Focusing on chairs, this book examines this significant aspect of contemporary design practice. It does so, not only in terms of works by well-known designers, but also relative to ubiquitous designs such as the monobloc, Thonet number 14, and Ming chairs. These varied examples of re-imagining and re-working are examined from an international perspective as designers and artists across the globe seek to bring new formal, material, and narrative interpretations to these iconic designs.00Renewed interest in do-it-yourself, together with the growth of hacking, open-source design and digital fabrication, have all contributed to an expansion of the concepts of re-imagine and re-make in the new millennium. Embraced by professionals, amateurs and companies alike, these developments further attest to the diverse practice of re-interpretation in contemporary design.
