I have had the great luck to combine my love of writing with my love of photography that in turn combines my great loves of art and of science. Oh, I have another love: to share what I know; some call it teaching. That is why I’ve lectured and talked more times than I can remember, and written millions of words in magazine features and forty books. In the early years, my attention centred on photographic techniques, but I’ve become increasingly focused on creativity and the conditions that enable full expression of the individual. My choice of books refracts that range—I hope—into a coherent spectrum of approaches.
After photographers, poets have the sharpest eyes for the goings on and minutiae of life around them.
I love Szymborska’s poetry because with her, I walk down unknown streets, I eavesdrop conversations, I dissect a terrorist bombing. If photography helps open your eyes, Szymborska’s intimate yet vast vision opens a higher mind. She shows me life through her eyes: often puzzled, sometimes bemused, but always loving.
I love Map as it’s a generous collection of her luminous works with her last poems. Map is the final poem; it closes with the lines "… they spread before me a world /not of this world," which aptly sum up her gifts to us.
I admit drawing a big breath before buying this book. At nearly 1200 pages of dense type, it’s no lightweight.
But years before, I had admired Fisk’s war reporting. Here, I found all the qualities I remembered: nuanced geopolitics with humanity, brutal honesty with subtle observation, pointed modern parallels from an erudite grasp of history. Then I delight in the sheer virtuosity of word craft: not surprising from someone who wrote thousands of words to deadline, sometimes shouting his despatches against cannon fire over stuttering phone lines.
Above all, I find myself repeatedly inspired by his ability to observe and note every tiny yet resonant detail: from the serial number on a rocket fragment to the shoes worn by an official.
A sweeping and dramatic history of the last half century of conflict in the Middle East from an award-winning journalist who has covered the region for over forty years, The Great War for Civilisation unflinchingly chronicles the tragedy of the region from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution; from the American hostage crisis in Beirut to the Iran-Iraq War; from the 1991 Gulf War to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. A book of searing drama as well as lucid, incisive analysis, The Great War for Civilisation is a work of major importance for today's world.
LeeAnn Pickrell’s love affair with punctuation began in a tenth-grade English class.
Punctuated is a playful book of punctuation poems inspired by her years as an editor. Frustrated by the misuse of the semicolon, she wrote a poem to illustrate its correct use. From there she realized the other marks…
Of the dozens of self-help books I’ve browsed or read, this book gave me tools to replace past pains and shame with pleasure and pride.
Numerous books helpfully tell you what you lack, gleefully list what you need to change. This one offers an important further step: it provides neural tools that helped me to change and make the changes last. I knew vaguely—like a small pain that is easy to ignore but which limits your movement—my ability to create, to grow ideas had always to battle a thicket of past aches, struggles, and fears.
This book not only helped me through that—it’s a guide, consequently, to lead a longer, richer life. Without a doubt, it’s one of the most transformational books in my life.
With The MindBody Code, Dr. Mario Martinez shares the rewards of an investigation that has spanned generations and cultures to reveal the most effective methods for initiating deep and lasting change. Through fascinating case studies and practical training in the new science of biocognition, Dr. Martinez illuminates the pathways to healing the archetypal wounds of shame, abandonment, and betrayal; how to break through the ceilings of abundance that limit prosperity and create the "subcultures of wellness" that will help you reach your full potential; how to transform "aging consciousness" to continually increase your value and competence as you grow older;…
What do you get when you cross the meditations of a Trappist monk with the teachings of a Taoist master? Wisdom rolled into small. tasty bites.
I find lots to chew on here: precisely honed, almost poetic epigrams and short stories that capture timeless truths and insights. I was enchanted to discover the book in my teens; it suited my short attention span. Now fifty years later, its humour, pithy fables and quotability seem ever pertinent, ever fresh.
I love it for random dips as a way to sign off for a day’s meditation.
Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries B.C., is the chief authentic historical spokesperson for Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (a legendary character known largely through Chuang Tzu's writings). Indeed it was because of Chuang Tzu and the other Taoist sages that Indian Buddhism was transformed, in China, into the unique vehicle we now call by its Japanese name-Zen.
The Chinese sage abounds in wit and paradox and shattering insights…
Gifts from a Challenging Childhood
by
Jan Bergstrom,
Learn to understand and work with your childhood wounds. Do you feel like old wounds or trauma from your childhood keep showing up today? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with what to do about it and where to start? If so, this book will help you travel down a path…
From my school days, Ernst Haas’ photography has been a source of inspiration and exasperation, even intimidation.
Creation is his crowning glory, not only for the peerless elegance of his images, but also for his masterclass in pacing and book design. I love the boldness of a double-page spread with nothing but an arc of light.
I love the quiet studies in which not a blade of grass or minute drop of water is misplaced. It inspired my journey in photography before I even owned a camera, and right now I can shiver from an immersion in its magisterial vision.
THE STORY OF CREATION HAS INSPIRED POETRY, PAINTING AND MUSIC THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES; IN THESE PAGES IT ISTOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME IN PHOTOGRAPHS, OFFERING 'A SORT OF SPIRITUALECOLOGY IN PRAISE OF THE EARTH WHICHMAN INHERITED AND SHOULD SEEK ARDENTLY TO PERFECT'. ERNST HAAS BELIEVES THAT TODAY NO MEDIUM CAN INTERPRET THE CREATION BETTER BETTER THAN THE CAMERA. HIS POINT IS PROVED BY HIS MAGNIFICENT COLOUR PICTURES, ARRANGEDIN FLOWING SEQUENCE THAT REPRESENTS THE SEASONS, THE ELEMENTS, THE CREATURES AND FINALLY THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT-THE BIRTH OF MAN.
A history of photography by a photographer. Is that too much to ask? Art historians or academics compile all the histories of photography. They revel in the art and history but hold their noses at anything smelling of machined metal or darkroom chemicals. In contrast, this book celebrates the stunning technological advances that cracked open multi-layered troves of image-making potential.
The book captivates by reaching parts few dare to venture: from forensic photography to pioneering women of the 19th century, from the artistry of scientific photography to imaging the ends of the universe. Centre-stage with iconic photographers, the book features the Box Brownie, Kodachrome film, classic lenses and cameras—even the iPhone. This book’s eclecticism makes it quietly unique.
