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The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty-one essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture These essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture. Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that benefit both? And, how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments? Through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, and his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality, and happiness of the whole community of creation. .
Price: $9.50
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The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art
Mr. Danto argues that recent developments in the artworld, in particular the production of works of art that cannot be told from ordinary things, make urgent the need for a new theory of art and make plain the factors such a theory can and cannot involve In the course of constructing such a theory, he seeks to demonstrate the relationship between philosophy and art, as well as the connections that hold between art and social institutions and art history. The book distinguishes what belongs to artistic theory from what has traditionally been confused with it, namely aesthetic theory and offers as well a systematic account of metaphor, expression, and style, together with an original account 0f artistic representation. A wealth of examples, drawn especially from recent and contemporary art, illuminate the argument..
Price: $15.50
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Hatch's Order of Magnitude: Methodical Rankings of the Commonplace and the Incredible for Daily Reference by a Man of Extraordinary Genius and Impeccable Taste
Behold--the Profundity! Some people say the universe is unfathomable Now, with the help of Hatch, you will not only fathom, you will command The pages of this book contain the answers to mysteries of our modern world--the manliest beverage, the entire spectrum of chaos and order, the epitome of villain hubris. For vocabulaphiles and mavens of the trivial, this definitive reference arranges everything worth knowing in order of magnitude. In your hands, you hold a catalyst for debate, a handrail for the imagination, and a certification for the obsessive and mildly insane. Hatch has bestowed upon the world his far-reaching knowledge of the Best, Worst, Least, Most, Biggest, Smallest--in short, the Ultimate. You may now proceed to understand the magnitude of the universe, in its most detailed orders..
Price: $1.96
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Brian Healy: Commonplaces
Brian Healy is an architect and educator based in Boston. He established his architectural practice there in 1986, and he has taught graduate design studios at the Yale School of Architecture, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, among many others. In 2007, Healy was selected as the Visiting Artist in Residence at Amherst College. As part of this residency, he was asked to prepare an exhibition and lecture placing his work within the context of contemporary American architecture. This book collects that work in essays, observations, drawings, paintings and photographs spanning the last 20 years, with projects in a dozen states ranging from the Appalachian hills to the vineyards of Northern California; the Catskills in New York to the west side of Chicago; from downtown Boston to the beach communities along the central coast of New Jersey..
Price: $16.47
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England in Particular: A Celebration of the Commonplace, the Local, the Vernacular and the Distinctive
England is a land of extraordinary variety, filled with unique buildings, captivating landscapes, and diverse people and wildlife But this diversity is under siege. Mass production, increased mobility, and the forceful promotion of corporate identity have brought with them standardized stores, farms, factories, and front doors. Filled with the most distinctive tidbits of English culture past and present, England in Particular is a counterblast to uniformity and a celebration of the details and characteristics that cumulatively form England as a people and nation. The culmination of more than twenty years’ work and research, this is a treasure trove of all things truly English. .
Price: $41.04
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Into the Light of Things: The Art of the Commonplace from Wordsworth to John Cage
In this sweeping revision of avant-garde history, John Cage takes his rightful place as Wordsworth's great and final heir. George Leonard traces a direct line back from Cage, Pop, and Conceptual Art through the Futurists to Whitman, Emerson, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Wordsworth, showing how the art of everyday objects, often thought an exclusively contemporary phenomenon, actually began as far back as 1800. In recovering the links between such seemingly disparate figures, Leonard transforms our understanding of modern culture. Selected by the American Library Association's journal, Choice, as "one of the Outstanding Academic Books of the Year" "Leonard's book is a fine example of interdisciplinary studies. He shifts focus persuasively from art theory to literature to religious thought and biography, making his method seem the natural mode of inquiry into culture."—Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review"Provocative and illuminating."— Library Journal"Highly stimulating, impassioned."— Publisher's Weekly"A rich and rewarding study written in a clear and accessible style with excellent references and a very useful index. Highly recommended."— Choice.
Price: $20.50
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On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century (History of Emotions)
"A brilliant . . . analysis of the fragile hegemony and identities of colonial Virginia's elite men. . . . On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage compellingly illuminates the ragged edge where masculinity and colonial identity meet. . . . [the book] will undoubtedly send Jefferson scholars scurrying back to their notes. . . . Most significant, by being among the first to tackle the subject of masculinity in early America, Lockridge forces colonial scholars to reexamine the lives of men they thought they already knew too well."
—William and Mary Quarterly Two of the greatest of Virginia gentlemen, William Byrd II and Thomas Jefferson, each kept a commonplace book--in effect, a journal where men were to collect wisdom in the form of anecdotes and quotations from their readings with a sense of detachment and scholarship. Writing in these books, each assembled a prolonged series of observations laden with fear and hatred of women. Combining ignorance with myth and misogyny, Byrd's and Jefferson's books reveal their deep ambivalence about women, telling of women's lascivious nature and The Female Creed and invoking the fallible, repulsive, and implicitly corruptible female body as a central metaphor for all tales of social and political corruption. Were these private outbursts meaningless and isolated incidents, attributable primarily to individual pathology, or are they written revelations of the forces working on these men to maintain patriarchal control? Their hatred for women draws upon a kind of misogynistic reserve found in the continental and English intellectual traditions, but it also twists and recontextualizes less misogynistic excerpts to intensified effect. From this interplay of intellectual traditions and the circumstances of each man's life and later behavior arises the possibility one or more specific politics of misogyny is at work here. Kenneth Lockridge's work, replete with excerpts from the books themselves, leads us through these texts, exploring the structures, contexts, and significance of these writings in the wider historical context of gender and power. His book convincingly illustrates the ferocity of early American patriarchal rage; its various meanings, however suggestively explored here, must remain contestable. .
Price: $23.00
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