Fall ’18 Book Recommendations

I Wonder by Marian Bantjes
This book features the elaborately crafted word pictures of Marian Bantjes, the most inventive and creative typographic illustrator of our time. Whether intricately hand-drawn or using computer illustration software, Bantjes’s work crosses the boundaries of time, style, and technology. There is, however, another side to Bantjes’s visual work: her thoughtful treatises on art, design, beauty, and popular culture that add a deeper dimension to the decorative nature of her best-known work. Intended to inspire creatives of any persuasion, this is more than a collection of ideas: Bantjes has meticulously illustrated every page of the book in her inimitable style to create an accessible work of art that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann
In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called The Lost City of Z. In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for Z and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.

Six Women of Salem by Marilynne K. Roach
The first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been “afflicted,” 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn’t include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.

Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount
Book lovers rejoice! In this love letter to all things bookish, Jane Mount brings literary people, places, and things to life through her signature and vibrant illustrations. A source of endless inspiration, literary facts and recommendations: Bibliophile is pure bookish joy and sure to enchant book clubbers, English majors, poetry devotees, aspiring writers, and any and all who identify as book lovers.

Corn-Fed: Cul-de-sacs, Keg Stands, and Coming of Age in the Midwest by Melanie LaForce
Poignant, humorous, and honest, Corn-Fed will take you from childhood overnight camp, to a first job at Dairy Queen, to the ultimate culmination of rich and debaucherous adult friendships. Corn-Fed follows LaForce’s growth, struggles, and exhilaration with communities of women over the course of life. Most importantly, this book contains critical references to boobs and butter.

Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne
What does it mean to be a designer in today’s corporate-driven, overbranded global consumer culture? Citizen Designer attempts to answer this question with more than seventy debate-stirring essays and interviews espousing viewpoints ranging from the cultural and the political to the professional and the social. This edition contains a collection of definitions and brief case studies on topics that today’s citizen designers must consider, including new essays on social innovation, individual advocacy, group strategies, and living as an ethical designer.

Do Story: How to tell your story so the world listens by Bobette Buster
Today’s world wants to know you and the real story behind why you do what you do. Whether you have a product to sell, a company mission to share, or an audience to entertain, people are more likely to engage and connect if you deliver a well-crafted story with an emotional core. Find out: how to source, structure and shape your story; ways to discover the essence of your story; why finding the emotional connection with your audience can take a story from good to great. ALSO SEE: Do Lead, Do Sourdough, Do Open, Do Listen, Do Purpose, Do Inhabit, Do Improvise, Do Fly, Do Design, Do Breathe, and Do Grow

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

Creativity Takes Courage: Dare to Think Differently by Irene Smit and Astrid van der Hulst
It’s not always easy to be creative — it takes courage. Organized around a series of twelve “dares” — including Dare to Fail, Dare to Be a Kid, Dare to Be Bored, Dare to Go Offline, Dare to Collaborate — Creativity Takes Courage encourages the reader to be fully present and spend idle time staring out the window. To leave your comfort zone and start a project, without hesitation, and nourish yourself with museum visits and reading time. Each dare includes fill-in pages and prompts to go deeper into what motivates us or hinders us, like mindful questions to identify fears of failure, or a Dare to Commit notebook for recording both daily and weekly projects.

A Few Minutes of Design: 52 Activities to Spark Your Creativity by Emily Campbell
This colorful, handy card deck presents fifty-two exercises and activities to jump-start your creative juices, free you from creative block, start a new project, or finish an existing one. Each exercise offers insight into the innumerable small decisions involved in design: how to establish a pattern, continue a series, how to say it without words, how to name a project, what fits, and what doesn’t? These cards benefit established practicing designers or creatives in any field with activities that are sometimes playful, sometimes challenging, but always enlightening.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.