Pippa Garner: Better Living Catalog

Pippa Garner: Better Living Catalog
Author: Pippa Garner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-08
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Pippa Garner's Better Living Catalog, originally published in 1982, takes the form of a mail order catalog featuring clever and whimsical inventions that parody consumer goods while simultaneously critiquing America's obsession with ingenuity, efficiency, leisure, and comfort. These works, which were made as prototypes and photographed for the publication, take the form of improbable accessories, clothing, footwear, home appliances, and office gadgets. For example, the "Reactiononometer," a portable wristband, instantly measures social success, while the "Digital Diet Loafers" display the wearer's weight with every step. If the "Munch-o-Matic" reduces deskwork interruptions by flinging a snack right into the user's mouth, other items promise financial solvency (the controlled cash flow "Autowallet"), sustainable waste management, or mess-free companionship (the "Pet-a-Vision" TV console). The artist asserts that all of the products in the book are "absolute necessities for contemporary survival." The Better Living Catalog was a pop hit when it was published, earning Garner spots on nighttime TV talk shows and attention from magazines like Vogue and Rolling Stone. In a meme-filled culture, the works still resonate today, finding their analog in widely-circulating consumer products, and--in the case of the "High Heel Skates"--even appearing unattributed in the runway collection of a major luxury fashion brand. A few years after the Better Living Catalog was published, Garner began her gender transition, which she has characterized as an artistic project that draws conceptual parallels to the altered consumer goods she has continued to create since the 1970s. The artist's practice has always been about hacking--gender hacking, she stated, was "an excellent premise for maverick conceptual art and diametrically opposed to anything I'd ever done." Many of the prototypes Garner created for the publication were repurposed or recycled, making this previously rare gem of an artist book one of the artist's few works to now be widely available.

Art com

Art com
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 502
Release: 1982
Genre: Arts, Modern
ISBN:

Sarah

Sarah
Author: Paul R. Abramson
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2010-03-31
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0791494179

Sarah is the detailed case history of a UCLA undergraduate, written by a UCLA psychology professor. It is a unique case of psychological survival. Despite vicious sexual abuse, Sarah has managed to adapt, survive, and grow. Balancing the intense emotional impact of Sarah's first-person account, Dr. Abramson's commentary is interpolated throughout the record of Sarah's life. Sarah's story was obtained from seven months of interviewing, plus her diaries, drawings, family photographs, and four years of follow-ups, correspondence, and observations. This book is significant in that it documents psychological resolution in the face of endless abuse and trauma. Dr. Abramson provides an unusual perspective by focusing less on the damage associated with abuse and more on Sarah's gradual development of successful means of coping and surmounting negative patterns. He writes: "If you read carefully, in between the abuse and self-destructive behaviors, Sarah emerges as an active, striving individual. Sarah does not give up—she is appalled, angry, depressed and confused, but she keeps fighting to maintain her integrity. The resolution of Sarah's existential dilemma was the emergence of faith in herself."

Treacle Walker

Treacle Walker
Author: Alan Garner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2023-11-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1668025515

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize An extraordinary, “playful, moving, and wholly remarkable” (The Guardian) coming-of-age novel filled with myth and magic from one of England's greatest living writers. An introspective young boy, Joseph Coppock is trying to make sense of the world. Living alone in an old house, he spends his time reading comic books, collecting birds’ eggs, and playing with marbles. When one day a rag-and-bone man called Treacle Walker appears on a horse and cart, offering a cure-all medicine, a mysterious friendship develops and the young boy is introduced to a world beyond his wildest imagination. Luminous, evocative, and sparely told, Treacle Walker is a stunning fusion of myth, folklore, and the stories we tell ourselves.

A Very Stable Genius

A Very Stable Genius
Author: Philip Rucker
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2020-01-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 198487750X

The instant #1 bestseller. “This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date." - Dwight Garner, The New York Times Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s presidency “I alone can fix it.” So proclaimed Donald J. Trump on July 21, 2016, accepting the Republican presidential nomination and promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet as he undertook the actual work of the commander in chief, it became nearly impossible to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. In fact, there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration was loyalty—not to the country, but to the president himself—and Trump’s North Star was always the perpetuation of his own power. With deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reveal the forty-fifth president up close. Here, for the first time, certain officials who felt honor-bound not to divulge what they witnessed in positions of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history. A peerless and gripping narrative, A Very Stable Genius not only reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished but shows how he tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.