Here are 7 books that Inventions of a Present fans have personally recommended if you like
Inventions of a Present.
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Lewis H. Lapham was fascinated and puzzled by money. Particularly by the people who had lots of it. Money and Class in America, subtitled "Notes on the Civil Religion", is a polemic discussion of the power and influence of financial capital on the psychology and emotional character of the wealthy American classes. It follows in the tradition of Thorstein Veblen, combining a journalistic observation of people and experiences with a critical insight of national and class character.
Extensively expanded and revised, with a new foreword by Thomas Frank
In the United States, happiness and wealth are often regarded as synonymous. Consumerism, greed, and the insatiable desire for more are American obsessions. In the native tradition of Twain, Veblen, and Mencken, the editor of Lapham's Quarterly here examines our fascination with the ubiquitous green goddess.
Focusing on the wealthy sybarites of New York City, whom Lewis H. Lapham has been able to observe firsthand in their natural habitat, Money and Class in America is a caustic, and often hilarious, portrait of a segment of the American population who,…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
French Philosopher Jacques Ranciere's latest book about film delves into the concept of time. The camera records the world unfolding at its own pace, yet the cinema demands that this time be fragmented, warped, and shaped to political and explanatory ends. Through a Neo-Marxist interpretation, Modern Times reveals how the movements of the cinematic apparatus replicate the movements of social life and expose the distinction between people who 'have time' (employers) and 'those who do not' (workers).
In this book Jacques Ranciere radicalises his critique of modernism and its postmodern appendix. He contrasts their unilinear and exclusive time with the interweaving of temporalities at play in modern processes of emancipation and artistic revolutions, showing how this plurality itself refers to the double dimension of time. Time is more than a line drawn from the past to the future. It is a form of life, marked by the ancient hierarchy between those who have time and those who do not. This hierarchy, continued in the Marxist notion of the vanguard and nakedly exhibited in Clement Greenberg's modernism, still…
Understanding the world is important for everyone. For me, it takes the form of analyzing colorful images and artifacts in the built environment. In the broad traditions of the global northwest, color is regarded as deceptive and unreliable. For centuries now, and throughout disparate media and technical systems, color has had to maintain this secondary, subordinate status as “other,” linked to falsity, manipulation, and deceit or, to quote David Batchelor, “some ‘foreign’ body". In my work, I argue that we have all inherited this tradition in the global northwest, fetishizing color as both excessive and yet indispensable in its capacity to retroactively confirm the sanctity of what it is not.
Once again, some of our most profound insights into contemporary culture derive from a deep understanding of history. For example, why is there a fundamental distrust of surfaces and shiny “bling”?
In The Republic, and in “Book X” in particular, Plato outlines a theory of images, truth, deception, and appearances that we continue to relive in everyday life.
Long regarded as the most accurate rendering of Plato's Republic that has yet been published, this widely acclaimed work is the first strictly literal translation of a timeless classic. In addition to the annotated text, there is also a rich and valuable essay,as well as indices,which will better enable the reader to approach the heart of Plato's intention. This new edition includes a new introduction by acclaimed critic Adam Kirsch, setting the work in its intellectual context for a new generation of readers.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Understanding the world is important for everyone. For me, it takes the form of analyzing colorful images and artifacts in the built environment. In the broad traditions of the global northwest, color is regarded as deceptive and unreliable. For centuries now, and throughout disparate media and technical systems, color has had to maintain this secondary, subordinate status as “other,” linked to falsity, manipulation, and deceit or, to quote David Batchelor, “some ‘foreign’ body". In my work, I argue that we have all inherited this tradition in the global northwest, fetishizing color as both excessive and yet indispensable in its capacity to retroactively confirm the sanctity of what it is not.
Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism was one of the first accounts of “postmodern aesthetics” and why it continues to matter today.
Circa 1990, Jameson showed how a new age of high-tech and transnational corporations fundamentally transformed how we create and experience art, design, and aesthetics.
Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson's most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of "postmodernism". Jameson's inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from "high" art to "low" from market ideology to architecture, from painting to "punk" film, from video art to literature.
Understanding the world is important for everyone. For me, it takes the form of analyzing colorful images and artifacts in the built environment. In the broad traditions of the global northwest, color is regarded as deceptive and unreliable. For centuries now, and throughout disparate media and technical systems, color has had to maintain this secondary, subordinate status as “other,” linked to falsity, manipulation, and deceit or, to quote David Batchelor, “some ‘foreign’ body". In my work, I argue that we have all inherited this tradition in the global northwest, fetishizing color as both excessive and yet indispensable in its capacity to retroactively confirm the sanctity of what it is not.
Yes, this is an essay, not a book. But it is such a good essay that the entire book has been re-printed with its title!
The essay is an excellent exegesis on understanding why “technology is not really about technology.” For Heidegger, the question concerning technology is a question about “being in the world”: our orientation, proclivities, values, and habits.
As relevant now as ever before, this accessible collection is an essential landmark in the philosophy of science from "one of the most profound thinkers of the twentieth century" (New York Times).
The advent of machine technology has given rise to some of the deepest problems of modern thought. Featuring the celebrated essay "The Question Concerning Technology," this prescient volume contains Martin Heidegger's groundbreaking investigation into the pervasive "enframing" character of our understanding of ourselves and the world.
Understanding the world is important for everyone. For me, it takes the form of analyzing colorful images and artifacts in the built environment. In the broad traditions of the global northwest, color is regarded as deceptive and unreliable. For centuries now, and throughout disparate media and technical systems, color has had to maintain this secondary, subordinate status as “other,” linked to falsity, manipulation, and deceit or, to quote David Batchelor, “some ‘foreign’ body". In my work, I argue that we have all inherited this tradition in the global northwest, fetishizing color as both excessive and yet indispensable in its capacity to retroactively confirm the sanctity of what it is not.
Also one of the most comprehensive philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment and why taste is taste and not something else…Even though it was penned circa 1790, it still has many gems of insight for the present, especially when it comes to our biases and prejudices regarding color, charm, and sense perception.
For example, Kant writes of color: “The colours which give brilliancy to the sketch are part of the charm. They may no doubt, in their own way, enliven the object for sensation, but make it really worth looking at and beautiful they cannot.” (¶14; p. 56)
'beauty has purport and significance only for human beings, for beings at once animal and rational'
In the Critique of Judgement (1790) Kant offers a penetrating analysis of our experience of the beautiful and the sublime, discussing the objectivity of taste, aesthetic disinterestedness, the relation of art and nature, the role of imagination, genius and originality, the limits of representation and the connection between morality and the aesthetic. He also investigates the validity of our judgements concerning the apparent purposiveness of nature with respect to the highest interests of reason and enlightenment.
The work profoundly influenced the artists and writers…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Understanding the world is important for everyone. For me, it takes the form of analyzing colorful images and artifacts in the built environment. In the broad traditions of the global northwest, color is regarded as deceptive and unreliable. For centuries now, and throughout disparate media and technical systems, color has had to maintain this secondary, subordinate status as “other,” linked to falsity, manipulation, and deceit or, to quote David Batchelor, “some ‘foreign’ body". In my work, I argue that we have all inherited this tradition in the global northwest, fetishizing color as both excessive and yet indispensable in its capacity to retroactively confirm the sanctity of what it is not.
In 1810, after decades of color rationalizations in early modern science, romantic poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) attempted to return color to its pre-Socratic, Homeric lifeworld.
His Zür Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors) glorified color for all of its inconsistencies and mysteries, making subjective perception—in marked contrast to Newton’s 1704 color theory—the most central and sacred to human experience, in service of achieving the “highest aesthetic ends.” For Goethe, color arose “in the spectrum” between black and white, a phenomenological observation dating back to Aristotelean antiquity.
Over two centuries later, this is still a fantastic guidebook for anyone interested in the phenomenology of color, light, and scintillations of subjective perception.
By closely following Goethe's explanations of the color phenomena, the reader may become so divorced from the wavelength theory—Goethe never even mentions it—that he may begin to think about color theory relatively unhampered by prejudice, ancient or modern.
By the time Goethe's Theory of Colours appeared in 1810, the wavelength theory of light and color had been firmly established. To Goethe, the theory was the result of mistaking an incidental result for an elemental principle. Far from pretending to a knowledge of physics, he insisted that such knowledge was an actual hindrance to understanding. He based his conclusions exclusively upon…
