Emily Feng’s dazzling Let Only Red Flowers Bloom documents how Xi Jinping’s efforts to narrow Chinese identity endanger the extremely diverse country’s people.
Emily Feng’s dazzling Let Only Red Flowers Bloom documents how Xi Jinping’s efforts to narrow Chinese identity endanger the extremely diverse country’s people.
Fat chance: help for healthy living “Focus on permanent, not temporary changes” is the recommendation of Jeffery and Norean Wilbert. “Remember the rule of thumb: Don’t do anything on a diet you’re not willing to do the rest of your life.” This common sense advice appears in their new book, Fattitudes: Beat Self-Defeat and Win Your War with Weight. The Wilberts believe that all too often, those who want to lose weight are their own worst enemy: “Recognize that the universal obstacle to healthy weight management is self-defeating behavior.” Their remedy is to learn to recognize and change your fattitude, which they define as a “thought or pattern of thinking that leads to self-defeating behavior in weight management efforts.” You may not even be aware that you have a fattitude. According to the Wilberts, an adjustment is probably in order if you’re unable to stay on a healthy eating track, if you sabotage your own weight loss success, or if your exercise habits last only a few weeks. In Fattitudes, the Wilberts tackle the complexities of emotional eating, warn you about how certain relationships can set you up for failure, and show you how to establish emotional freedom from the fattitudes that have been at work in your life for a long time. This book will help you find out a lot about yourself and your love/hate relationship with food.
Pat Regel race-walks in Nashville.
Fat chance: help for healthy living "Focus on permanent, not temporary changes" is the recommendation of Jeffery and Norean Wilbert. "Remember the rule of thumb: Don't do anything on a diet you're not willing to do the rest of your life." This common sense advice…
YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE Lenin grads Lenin’s Embalmers, by Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson, is the story of the eccentric crew who were handed the scientifically and politically volatile assignment of mummifying Lenin’s body a task somewhere between deifying a pharaoh and preserving the bones of a saint. Naturally the book is illustrated with fascinating photos of characters living and dead.
Ilya Zbarsky, the son of one of Lenin’s embalmers, tells the outrageous story of his father, the era, and the secret goings-on behind the mausoleum walls. Zbarsky’s Kafkaesque portrait of the insanely secretive Soviet regime is both terrifying and bitterly amusing. It fortifies his account of the scientific challenge the embalmers faced, and of his father’s and his own surprising survival through such a dangerous time. For all of his arcane expertise and high social position, however, Zbarsky’s father was Jewish, and in time Stalin’s fanatical anti-Semitism brought him down. Worth the price of admission here is the information about embalming and mummification, the methods invented by Zbarsky’s father and his colleagues. As grisly as the tale of Tutankhamen, it is yet still timely. The methods used to preserve Lenin are now being exported to preserve leaders in places as far away as Vietnam. Back home in Russia the techniques are applied to the embalming of rich gangsters.
Surprisingly, Lenin’s Embalmers is also a fascinating memoir of one man’s relationship with an exploitative father. And there is a nice thread of celebrity literary gossip thrown in, too. The Zbarskys were friends with a young writer named Boris Pasternak. It seems that the talented Boris had an affair with the author’s mother. In fiction they call that a subplot.
YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE Lenin grads Lenin's Embalmers, by Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson, is the story of the eccentric crew who were handed the scientifically and politically volatile assignment of mummifying Lenin's body a task somewhere between deifying a pharaoh and preserving the bones…
During its 50-year history, NASCAR has metamorphosed from dirt track, Saturday night, fairgrounds racing into a national spectator sport. It has become a very big business, but it has not lost its rural, southern roots. A panel of NASCAR stalwarts assembled a list of stock car racing’s 50 best (and often most colorful) drivers, representing each of the five decades of NASCAR’s history. With NASCAR 50 Greatest Drivers, writers Bill Center and Bob Moore provide a thumbnail history of each driver and his era, along with a sidebar of vital statistics and a collage of photographs from sepia-toned black and whites from the early years to bold color shots of today. Yesteryear’s heroes such as Junior Johnson and Fireball Roberts, current superstars like Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, and the timeless King, Richard Petty they’re all here, and they’re all legends. This is a book that any NASCAR fan would be happy to own.
During its 50-year history, NASCAR has metamorphosed from dirt track, Saturday night, fairgrounds racing into a national spectator sport. It has become a very big business, but it has not lost its rural, southern roots. A panel of NASCAR stalwarts assembled a list of stock…
White Star Lines built the Titanic to make money, but it’s doubtful they ever imagined that the ship would continue to generate profits almost a century after it sank. Millions of words have been written about the ship, its passengers, their fate and the sinking’s place in our history and psyche. Brad Matsen’s new book, Titanic’s Last Secrets: The Further Adventures of Shadow Divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, gives us another look at the famous ship, and a fresh perspective on an old story.
Chatterton and Kohler are the divers who discovered the sunken German U – boat U – 869; their exploration of that vessel off the coast of New Jersey was the subject of their first collaboration, Shadow Divers. This time the two are on the trail of the biggest shipwreck of all time. Specifically, they’re given a clue by an acquaintance of Chatterton’s that indicates there was more than an errant iceberg to blame for the ship’s quick sinking. This bait they find irresistible, and they eventually find themselves aboard a Russian ship, scheduled for a dive to the wreck.
While their quest to the bottom of the ocean – and what they find there – is the reason for this book, the real heart of the story is Matsen’s detailed and fascinating look at the men who dreamed, schemed, designed and built the Titanic. There’s the unscrupulous American billionaire J.P. Morgan, who saw the Titanic as a means to gain control of the transatlantic passenger trade; the brilliant designer Thomas Andrews, destined to go down with his creation; the senior captain of White Star, Edward Smith, whose highly regarded reputation might not have been wholly deserved; and finally the Titanic’s builder, J. Bruce Ismay, a reluctant tycoon who would forever after be the goat of the Titanic’s story. Their actions drive the two divers’ thesis – the loss of so many lives didn’t have to happen. Was there a cover – up? And can they find concrete proof of their theory?Titanic’s Last Secrets is a good title, and a good book. Whether that title proves to be the truth remains to be seen. James Neal Webb admits to being something of a Titanic geek.
White Star Lines built the Titanic to make money, but it's doubtful they ever imagined that the ship would continue to generate profits almost a century after it sank. Millions of words have been written about the ship, its passengers, their fate and the sinking's…
Ten Thousand Sorrows is the autobiography of Elizabeth Kim, a journalist from Southern California who began her life with a harrowing incident witnessing the murder of her mother in Korea. Having disgraced the family by bearing a mixed-race child with an American G.I., Kim’s mother was hanged in an "honor-killing" conducted by her grandfather and uncle. As her mother explained to Kim, according to her own Buddhist beliefs, "life was made up of ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows, and all of them were stepping-stones to ultimate peace." Her mother’s fate, albeit tragic, was not atypical; Korean society, particularly during the Korean War era, was very unforgiving of interracial relationships, particularly with American G.I.s. Murder in these instances was considered justifiable, or, as in her mother’s case, was labeled as a suicide.
Having escaped the filth and neglect of a Korean orphanage, Kim is adopted into a strict fundamentalist family incapable of conveying warmth or compassion. She describes the stigma of not being accepted into either Korean society or her adopted American home. Leaving her American family behind, she falls into an abusive marriage with a "godly man" who forces her to suffer routine beatings and bear indignities such as sleeping in the doghouse with the family pet. Years of rejection cause her to feel unworthy of the love and acceptance she once had with her biological mother (her "Omma"); at this point, Kim’s life is full of shame and self-loathing. Despite the dark circumstances of her life, the book is imbued with hope, which is transferred to Kim from her mother and later embodied in Kim’s relationship with her own daughter. Carrying this heritage from her Omma, she realizes that the love and acceptance for which she was searching can be found within, the beginning of her stepping stone to peace.
Jeannie Q. Joe, a Korean American attorney, practices corporate law in Austin, Texas.
Ten Thousand Sorrows is the autobiography of Elizabeth Kim, a journalist from Southern California who began her life with a harrowing incident witnessing the murder of her mother in Korea. Having disgraced the family by bearing a mixed-race child with an American G.I., Kim's mother…
Debbie Millman couldn’t have predicted that when she debuted her “Design Matters” podcast in 2005, it would so deeply satisfy her soul. Podcasts were brand-new in the early 2000s, so the show was a let’s-try-this-and-see endeavor, a creative experiment that she felt primed to conduct. “I had achieved a great deal,” she writes in the introduction to Why Design Matters: Conversations With the World’s Most Creative People, “but there was an echoing vacuum of meaning and purpose in my life.”
Certainly, Millman has an impressive resume as a design leader, serving clients like 7UP, Burger King and Star Wars during her 20 years at the helm of Sterling Brands; co-founding the graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City; writing six previous books; placing her art in museums as well as in the New York Times and Fast Company; and much more.
In its early years, the podcast was “very much a show about graphic design, graphic designers talking to graphic designers, very inside baseball,” Millman says during a phone call to the Manhattan brownstone she shares with her wife, author Roxane Gay. But as Millman shifted her focus from looking at human behavior through the lens of branding to instead connecting with individuals, people responded. They wanted in, both as listeners and interviewees, and her interviews quickly became a central element of her life and a pursuit that has been endlessly fascinating and rewarding.
“The show evolved in two ways,” she reflects. “First, my courage in reaching out to people increased. And then I also started getting publicists reaching out to me about their clients being on the show, or fans I didn’t know were fans wanting to be on the show.”
These interviewee-fans, more than 450 of them (and counting) over the course of 16 years (and counting), run the creative gamut. They’re standouts in the fields of design, writing, fine art, street art, acting, music, marketing, cooking—and the list goes on. Each guest is smart, thoughtful and, most importantly, game to join Millman on a conversational journey from childhood to adulthood, from past to present. They’re open to plumbing the sometimes painful events, decisions and emotions that have shaped what they do and who they’ve become.
“They’ve lived their lives so differently, and the ways they’ve coped with obstacles have been so varied.”
For Why Design Matters, characterized in its introduction as “a love letter to creativity, a testament to the power of curiosity,” Millman distills that library of interviews into 50-plus Q&A conversations in five categories: Legends, Truth Tellers, Culture Makers, Trendsetters and Visionaries.
Choosing 50 interviews from more than 450 was a challenge for Millman. “I ended up going through all of them in one way or another, whether it be listening or transcribing and reading,” she says. “I wanted there to be a timelessness to what they were talking about . . . [and] an evergreen quality to the interviews, so they could be relevant whenever they were being read and experienced.”
The book’s veritable parade of fascinating, accomplished people begins with late design legend Milton Glaser (best known for his “I Heart NY” logo) and ends with Eve Ensler (who now goes by “V”) of The Vagina Monologues fame, with the likes of Alison Bechdel, Chanel Miller, Malcolm Gladwell, Amanda Palmer, Saeed Jones, Marina Abramović and David Byrne occupying the pages in between. Millman points to how each interviewee has shaped their career, life and body of work with fierce individuality. “They’ve lived their lives so differently,” she says, “and the ways they’ve coped with obstacles have been so varied.”
For example, James Beard Award-winning chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton (Blood, Bones & Butter) reveals that in opening her restaurant, Prune, she set aside her long-held dream of writing fiction. Shepard Fairey, known for his OBEY street art, talks politics and explains why he won’t call himself an artist. And in discussing her short stories, Carmen Maria Machado quips that “a novel is like being beat up over the course of a day, and a short story is like one punch to the nose.”
There are full-page portraits and illustrations, playful type treatments and blocks of text that don’t always go in a straight line, just like in any good conversation. Millman has previously compared a successful interview to a game of pool, but through the design of this book, a new metaphor comes forward: the scribble. Striking hand-drawn scribbles scrawled by Millman herself appear on the cover and throughout the book, hinting toward the notion of interplay, of thoughts and conversational paths that ricochet off and tumble toward one another. “For me, [the scribble] really portrays conceptually the arc of a conversation,” she says. “You know it could go anywhere; it could be an infinite loop. It is an infinite loop!”
Another infinite pursuit, of course, is creativity itself. But where does creative success come from? What pushes a person into the stratosphere of, per the book’s subtitle, the “World’s Most Creative People”? Millman believes it’s “faith in their own work, self-awareness of what they’re capable of and a relentless sort of restlessness, a real restlessness about constantly evolving and growing and uncovering new ground.”
That restlessness is something Millman also possesses, whether she’s learning from her compassionate exploration of the human condition in her “Design Matters” interviews, working with students at the School of Visual Arts or pursuing her ever-percolating new projects.
“There are so many things I want to do,” Millman says, “including two more books I have in mind. Stirrings of a lot of different new things I want to try.” But she demurs at the thought of including herself on a “Most Creative” list: “I think I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to earn that title.”
Photo of Debbie Millman by John Madere
In Why Design Matters, Debbie Millman dives deep into revelatory conversations from her groundbreaking podcast.
Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
