Humanities

Andy Warhol, Yale Press-Style

Yale University Press celebrated Andy Warhol’s birthday earlier this month by trying out The Andy Warhol Museum’s D.I.Y. POP app on our staff. The app takes its inspiration from what Arthur C. Danto calls “the Warhol aesthetic” in his Andy Warhol, part of YUP’s Icons of America series. Warhol was

Continue reading…

Why Evil Became Glamorous: Terry Eagleton’s On Evil

Google famously used “Don’t be evil” as their (informal) corporate slogan during the last decade. Recently though, the company has faced more and more accusations that it mimics any other giant, greedy corporation, from its making privacy difficult on Google+ to preventing customers from using competitive operating systems. Whether or

Continue reading…

From Puppeteer to Sculptor: Ron Mueck’s Hyperrealism

In 1996, sculptor Ron Mueck presented the world with a very different version of Pinocchio per the request of—of all people—his mother-in-law. Mueck’s statue depicts the marionette post-human transformation and gives the line “I’m a real boy!” entirely new meaning. As with all the sculptures in Ron Mueck, by National Gallery of Victoria curator David Hurlston, the figure’s realism is simultaneously astonishing and unsettling.

The Mysteries of the Potato Revealed

Follow @yaleSCIbooks Europe took a very long time to get used to the spud, according to John Reader in Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent. The Bible never mentions potatoes, so European clergymen in the 1700s banned the consumption of the suspiciously anonymous tuber. Doctors in the previous century

Continue reading…

Unlikely Beginnings: Knoll Textiles and WWII

The founders of the Knoll furniture company, Hans Knoll and Jens Risom, would never have assumed that they were beginning a leading, imaginative firm that would influence other designers for decades. In their early careers, their methods were more patchwork quilt than handmade upholstery. When the two men began collaborating,

Continue reading…

Hank Greenberg: Always an Accidental Hero

The Detroit Tigers could really use Hank Greenberg right about now. The Cleveland Indians win on August 9 added up to an unlucky 13th straight loss for the Tigers against the team. Of course, wishing for a star player from half a decade ago would probably only contribute to the

Continue reading…

Restoring Ishimoto’s Vision of Katsura

When photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro asked modernist architect Tange Kenzō to write an essay for his book of Katsura photographs, he inadvertently pitted architectural and photographic approaches against each other. Kenzō’s enthusiastic reaction was akin to Dad “helping” with his child’s science fair by reshaping the vision of the project; instead of merely contributing an essay, he cropped, resized, and reorganized the pictures into what became the “landmark” work.

Impossible Outfit: Summer Wedding Edition

Going to a summer wedding? (Or going to four, as the case may be for Yale University Press’s Paper Doll?) Check out the outfit she has put together, and if you like it, let her know in the comments section, and she may coordinate a personal ensemble just for you!

How Love Replaced God

If you Google the phrase “movies with the word ‘love’ in the title,” you could spend an amazingly long time reading list after list of endless films. Hollywood knows that the word “love” is like pouring gasoline on your marketing campaign’s fire—it could go very badly, but it is going

Continue reading…

Contradictions in Love of Land: American Georgics

Follow @yaleSCIbooks No matter where you are in the U.S. this summer, you have probably felt the effects of the record-setting heat. While most of us are just sweating a little more than usual, our country’s agricultural community faces a depressing situation. The heat arrived with an extreme drought throughout

Continue reading…