Saturday, May 15, 2010

Cathy's Recommendations for "Browsable" Books

Sleeping Beauties
Tracy Raver and Kelley Ryden's portraits of sleeping babies caused a national sensation when they appeared on television last year. Their work is now available in a stunning collection: their lens has captured newborns as they inhabit magical dreamscapes.



Based on the award-winning 10-million-plus-hit blog 1000awesomethings.com, The Book of Awesome is a high five for humanity and a big celebration of life's little moments:

* Popping Bubble Wrap
* Wearing underwear just out of the dryer
* Fixing electronics by smacking them
* Getting called up to the dinner buffet first at a wedding
* Watching The Price Is Right when you're home sick
* Hitting a bunch of green lights in a row
* Waking up and realizing it's Saturday

Sometimes it's easy to forget the things that make us smile. With a 24/7 news cycle reporting that the polar ice caps are melting, hurricanes are swirling in the seas, wars are heating up around the world, and the job market is in a deep freeze, it's tempting to feel that the world is falling apart. But awesome things are all around us-sometimes we just need someone to point them out.

The Book of Awesome reminds us that the best things in life are free (yes, your grandma was right). With laugh-out-loud observations from award- winning comedy writer Neil Pasricha, The Book of Awesome is filled with smile-inducing moments on every page that make you feel like a kid looking at the world for the first time. Read it and you'll remember all the things there are to feel good about.

The Book of Awesome reminds us of all the little things that we often overlook but that make us smile. With touching, warm, and funny observations, each entry ends with the big booming feeling you'll get when you read through them: AWESOME!

Show Me How is a revolutionary reimagining of the reference genre, one part how-to guide, one part graphic art showpiece, and one part pure inspiration. In a series of 500 nearly wordless, highly informative step-by-step procedurals, readers learn how to do hundreds of useful (and fascinating and important and sometimes downright bizarre) tasks, including: Perform CPR, dance the tango, pack a suitcase, win a bar bet, play the blues, make authentic sushi rolls, fight a shark . . . and 493 more essentials of modern life. Packed with useful hands-on reference material, Show Me How is a work of art that just happens to also be an indispensable real-life resource.


Laugh your way to a better you! For those too busy to go to the gym, try some of the fitness advice provided in this 1908 classic revisited. In today’s challenging business environment, the achieving executive needs every possible advantage, fitness included. If gym fees and personal trainers do not fit into your schedule or budget, Exercises for Gentlemen offers just what the trainer would have ordered. With excerpts and original illustrations from The School of Health—the classic health reference of the early 1900s—here is a "practical course in physical culture" designed as a fitness program not even requiring a pair of exercise shorts, let alone joining a health club. What results is both an entertaining glimpse of times gone by, and an exercise regime ideally suited to the modern man with neither the time nor the inclination to change clothes when he steps out from the busy office. This book contains detailed guidance on everything from knee bends and arm bends to proper posture, bathing, and homeopathic remedies—all to be taken with a suitable dose of humor. A daily regime of a mere fifteen minutes of be-suited exercise is guaranteed to "reduce undue fullness at the waist, square the shoulders, round out the arms, improve leg development, and, in short, make a more graceful, strong, and symmetrical man."


Sometime about 30,000 years ago, somebody stuck a sharp rock into a split stick—and presto! The axe was born. Our inquisitive species just loves tinkering, testing, and pushing the limits, and this delightfully different book is a freewheeling reference to hundreds of customs, notions, and inventions that reflect human ingenuity throughout history.

From hand tools to holidays to weapons to washing machines, An Uncommon History of Common Things features hundreds of colorful illustrations, timelines, sidebars, and more as it explores just about every subject under the sun. Who knew that indoor plumbing has been around for 4,600 years, but punctuation, capital letters, and the handy spaces between written words only date back to the Dark Ages? Or that ancient soldiers baked a kind of pizza on their shields—when they weren’t busy flying kites to frighten their foes?

Every page of this quirky compendium catalogs something fascinating, surprising, or serendipitous. A lively, incomparably browsable read for history buffs, pop culture lovers, and anyone who relishes the odd and extraordinary details hidden in the everyday, it will inform, amuse, astonish—and alter the way you think about the clever creatures we call humans.


The history of Time—from its inception to its iconic status today—recounted by its world-famous editors, art directors, and stellar cast of contributors.

Time is a fascinating look at the history of the world's most influential newsweekly. The complete compendium is illustrated with hundreds of covers and archival photographs, featuring the work of the twentieth century's most respected journalists, editors, and photographers—from Eddie Adams, Neil Leifer, Dirck Halstead, and David Hume Kennerly, to David Burnett, Gregory Heisler, Matt Mahurin, James Nachtwey, and Diana Walker, who together won more major photo awards for Time than all other publications combined. This volume explores Time's documentation of seminal moments in history, including the moon landing, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and September 11th. It investigates the reasons behind Time's "Man of the Year," transitions in design, the creation of the symbolic red frame, the important designers and illustrators, the covering of both hot and soft news, as well as the magazine's changeover to the 21st century and the creation of Time's international editions.


"What I want to say to you is that sometimes life catches you by surprise and you feel unequipped to handle what it brings you, but every bit of life you've lived before that moment equips you to live through it. That's what I would give to you." -Fanni Victoria Green-Lemons, in conversation with her daughter, Danyealah Green-Lemons

In Mom, Dave Isay-StoryCorps's founder and the editor of the project's bestselling collection, Listening Is an Act of Love-presents a celebration of American mothers. Featuring StoryCorps's most revelatory stories on the subject, Mom looks across a diversity of experience to present an entirely original portrait of motherhood.

Through conversations between parents and children, husbands and wives, siblings and friends, the life of the American mother unfolds. In stories that take us from the woods of New Hampshire to urban Detroit and beyond, we meet mothers and children from all walks of life-an immigrant mother instilling in her children the importance of education, adult children caring for an elderly parent, a woman remembering the sound of her mother's laugh, and mothers and children of all ages learning to grow into new roles over time. Visiting families in moments of profound joy and sadness, courage and despair, struggle and triumph, we learn new truths about that most primal and sacred of bonds-the relationship between mother and child.

With this vital contribution to the American storybook, StoryCorps has created a tribute to mothers that honors the wealth of our national experience. An appreciation of the wisdom and generosity passed between mothers and children, this generation to the next, Mom offers powerful lessons in the meaning of family and the expansiveness of the human heart.

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