March 21, 2013

The Amazing Story of an Airship Club That Might Never Have Existed

No one quite knows who rescued the books from their landfill fate, but soon they landed at Fred Washington’s OK Trading Post. There they lay, beneath some carpets, (or maybe they were tarpaulins) until a student at a local university noticed them and brought them to the attention of a Houston art collector. By 1970, all 12 volumes had found more permanent homes. Dealers and historians eventually tracked down some additional Dellschau works, including a series of three journals called Recolections [sic], that also tell the story of the Sonora Aero Club and its inventions, with “ink drawings of fanciful airships that accompany the texts look for all the world as if they had flown off the pages of a Jules Verne novel,” as flight historian Tom D. Crouch describes them.

[…]

What are these scrapbooks? Are they an elaborate fantasy, spun out of the overactive imagination of an aging man? An outright delusion? Or are they earnest recollections of a lost time, a commemoration of the best years of a long, hard life?

[Images: Courtesy of Stephen Romano]

Read more about the mysterious story of the Sonora Aero Club and Charles August Albert Dellschau, whose awe-inspiring work evokes images of a gold-hungry nation “seized with a dream of flight.”

5:25pm
(Notes: 104)
  
Filed under: History Longreads Tech Art Books 
January 3, 2013
Why Are College Textbooks So Absurdly Expensive? You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry has put together this chart showing the egregious, 812 percent rise in the cost of course materials since 1978, as captured in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s consumer price index data. The price of all those Intro to Sociology and Calculus books have shot up faster than health-care, home prices, and, of course, inflation. Read more.

Why Are College Textbooks So Absurdly Expensive?

You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry has put together this chart showing the egregious, 812 percent rise in the cost of course materials since 1978, as captured in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s consumer price index data. The price of all those Intro to Sociology and Calculus books have shot up faster than health-care, home prices, and, of course, inflation.

Read more.

2:44pm
(Notes: 372)
  
Filed under: College Education Books 
December 11, 2012
The Best Book I Read This Year The Atlantic editors and writers share their favorite titles—new, classic, or somewhere in between—from a year of reading.

The Best Book I Read This Year

The Atlantic editors and writers share their favorite titles—new, classic, or somewhere in between—from a year of reading.

4:23pm
(Notes: 449)
  
Filed under: Books 2012 Literature Reviews Entertainment 
November 29, 2012
"If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore."

— Ann Patchett, author and co-owner of Parnassus Books, Nashville’s only independent bookstore. 

9:27pm
(Notes: 186)
  
Filed under: Books Bookstores Longreads Lit Small business Ann Patchett Nashville Parnassus Books 
October 29, 2012
flavorpill: An essential stormy weather reading list 

flavorpill:

An essential stormy weather reading list 

10:11am
(Notes: 417)
  
Filed under: Books Literature Children Novels Education 
October 25, 2012
Busy and Busier In three decades as a writer, speaker, and consultant, David Allen has built a worldwide following for the approach to organization and “stress-free productivity” that he calls Getting Things Done, or GTD. His book Getting Things Done has sold 1.5 million copies since its publication in 2001, and his Twitter account (@gtdguy) has more than 1.2 million followers. Eight years ago in The Atlantic, National Correspondent James Fallows described his attendance at an Allen seminar and subsequent attempt to apply GTD principles to his life. Allen’s approach is based on the idea that stress arises from trying to keep track of obligations in one’s head, rather than finding a trusted system to capture them, whether on paper or electronically, for frequent review. Here, Fallows asks Allen about today’s always-on lifestyle and his forecast for where productivity goes from here. Read more. [Image: Mark Weaver]

Busy and Busier

In three decades as a writer, speaker, and consultant, David Allen has built a worldwide following for the approach to organization and “stress-free productivity” that he calls Getting Things Done, or GTD. His book Getting Things Done has sold 1.5 million copies since its publication in 2001, and his Twitter account (@gtdguy) has more than 1.2 million followers.

Eight years ago in The Atlantic, National Correspondent James Fallows described his attendance at an Allen seminar and subsequent attempt to apply GTD principles to his life. Allen’s approach is based on the idea that stress arises from trying to keep track of obligations in one’s head, rather than finding a trusted system to capture them, whether on paper or electronically, for frequent review. Here, Fallows asks Allen about today’s always-on lifestyle and his forecast for where productivity goes from here.

Read more. [Image: Mark Weaver]

4:00pm
(Notes: 80)
  
Filed under: Technology Writing Books 
October 25, 2012
The Amis Obsession The fame of Martin Amis is peculiar—by which I mean peculiar to Martin Amis. It’s not a broad, old-school writerly fame, a Rider Haggard fame, whereby they’re naming glaciers after you in Canada. Amis sells too few books for that. (He might merit a small pub: the Martin Amis.) It’s not a bitchy, tinnital modern fame, some species of celebrity. Nor is it literary notoriety, exactly—Amis has run with no bulls, head-butted no Gore Vidals, repented for no fake memoirs, staggered blotto from no White Horse Taverns. He has never been carted off to Bellevue, or made a radio broadcast on behalf of an enemy power. He has not committed suicide. Now 63, he has led a writer’s life, sedentary and doggedly productive, the crowning scandal of his career being his failure (so far) to win the Booker Prize. True, now and again from his nicotine cloister he’ll pad forth—moon-rock brow, kippery color—to say something languidly provocative on Charlie Rose. But all the other writers do that too. And yes, he has a second wife. But so do all the other writers. So what is it about Amis? Why is he—rather than, say, A. N. Wilson—the sport and quarry of a feverish commentariat, such that when he goes to the dentist, or leaves his agent, or moves (as he recently did) to Brooklyn, you read about it in Slate, Newsweek, The New York Times, The New Republic, The New York Times again, and the silver-haired Smithsonian? Is it possible—can it be—that he is famous just for writing? Read more. [Image: Mike McGregor/Contour by Getty]

The Amis Obsession

The fame of Martin Amis is peculiar—by which I mean peculiar to Martin Amis. It’s not a broad, old-school writerly fame, a Rider Haggard fame, whereby they’re naming glaciers after you in Canada. Amis sells too few books for that. (He might merit a small pub: the Martin Amis.) It’s not a bitchy, tinnital modern fame, some species of celebrity. Nor is it literary notoriety, exactly—Amis has run with no bulls, head-butted no Gore Vidals, repented for no fake memoirs, staggered blotto from no White Horse Taverns. He has never been carted off to Bellevue, or made a radio broadcast on behalf of an enemy power. He has not committed suicide. Now 63, he has led a writer’s life, sedentary and doggedly productive, the crowning scandal of his career being his failure (so far) to win the Booker Prize. True, now and again from his nicotine cloister he’ll pad forth—moon-rock brow, kippery color—to say something languidly provocative on Charlie Rose. But all the other writers do that too. And yes, he has a second wife. But so do all the other writers. So what is it about Amis? Why is he—rather than, say, A. N. Wilson—the sport and quarry of a feverish commentariat, such that when he goes to the dentist, or leaves his agent, or moves (as he recently did) to Brooklyn, you read about it in Slate, Newsweek, The New York Times, The New Republic, The New York Times again, and the silver-haired Smithsonian? Is it possible—can it be—that he is famous just for writing?

Read more. [Image: Mike McGregor/Contour by Getty]

3:32pm
(Notes: 42)
  
Filed under: Books Writing Education Fame Celebrity 
October 24, 2012
Frankly, My Dear, North Koreans Give a Damn About ‘Gone with the Wind’ North Koreans are a mystery. And that’s perhaps why whenever we see brief glimpses of their wacky roller coasters or their version of “Gangnam Style,” we immediately add those details to our still-developing profiles of these mystery people. We’re still digesting the news today that North Koreans really love Gone with the Wind.The AP’s Tim Sullivan tries to make sense of it all, throwing all kinds of theories up against the wall, from a narrative of how antebellum life in Atlanta is like Pyongyang, to stories of secret feminism, to a slave narrative. “In North Korea only the strong survive … That’s the most compelling message of the novel,” a former NoKo black marketer told Sullivan. ”The weak perish in `Gone With the Wind,’ … That is something that North Koreans understand,” he added. Okay, we’ll buy that.  Read more. [Image: Flickr]

Frankly, My Dear, North Koreans Give a Damn About ‘Gone with the Wind’

North Koreans are a mystery. And that’s perhaps why whenever we see brief glimpses of their wacky roller coasters or their version of “Gangnam Style,” we immediately add those details to our still-developing profiles of these mystery people. We’re still digesting the news today that North Koreans really love Gone with the Wind.The AP’s Tim Sullivan tries to make sense of it all, throwing all kinds of theories up against the wall, from a narrative of how antebellum life in Atlanta is like Pyongyang, to stories of secret feminism, to a slave narrative. “In North Korea only the strong survive … That’s the most compelling message of the novel,” a former NoKo black marketer told Sullivan. ”The weak perish in `Gone With the Wind,’ … That is something that North Koreans understand,” he added. Okay, we’ll buy that. 

Read more. [Image: Flickr]


11:55am
(Notes: 74)
  
Filed under: Gone with the Wind Literature Books North Korea 
October 18, 2012
"Chekhov. I don’t want to know anything in particular — I’d just like to carve up a pheasant with him, served with new potatoes and green beans from the garden. Then we could polish off some dodgy Crimean wine and play a few rounds of Anglo-Russian Scrabble and lose track of time and the score."

— David Mitchell’s answer to “If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know?”, David Mitchell - By the Book - NYTimes.com (via housingworksbookstore)

(via housingworksbookstore)

12:57pm
(Notes: 78)
  
Filed under: Lit Writing Books David Mitchell 
October 15, 2012
A Pig, a Girl, and a Spider: ‘Charlotte’s Web’ at 60 Some books are so much a part of our childhood experience that when we hear their titles we can almost smell the pages of the book itself, remember where we were when we first opened it, and conjure up entire scenes and memories of reading it for the first or many times thereafter. Charlotte’s Web is one of those books. Today, the most famous book by the masterful E.B. White has turned 60. It is no worse for wear in terms of readability and resonance, even amid a world of Y.A. dystopias, fantasies, and futuristic plots and themes. The simple tale of a pig, a girl, and a spider, beginning with a life saved (Wilbur’s, by the girl, Fern, and later by Charlotte the spider) and ending with a death—but then new life—is threaded through with the personal conflicts, conversations, and camaraderie of the various barnyard creatures involved. It’s one for the ages. Read more. [Image: Paramount]

A Pig, a Girl, and a Spider: ‘Charlotte’s Web’ at 60

Some books are so much a part of our childhood experience that when we hear their titles we can almost smell the pages of the book itself, remember where we were when we first opened it, and conjure up entire scenes and memories of reading it for the first or many times thereafter. Charlotte’s Web is one of those books. Today, the most famous book by the masterful E.B. White has turned 60. It is no worse for wear in terms of readability and resonance, even amid a world of Y.A. dystopias, fantasies, and futuristic plots and themes. The simple tale of a pig, a girl, and a spider, beginning with a life saved (Wilbur’s, by the girl, Fern, and later by Charlotte the spider) and ending with a death—but then new life—is threaded through with the personal conflicts, conversations, and camaraderie of the various barnyard creatures involved. It’s one for the ages.

Read more. [Image: Paramount]

6:14pm
(Notes: 283)
  
Filed under: Lit Books Charlotte's Web Reading E.B. White News 
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