This engaging and wide-ranging biography casts new light on the life and careers of Percival Lowell. Scion of a wealthy Boston family, elder brother of Harvard President Lawrence and poet Amy, Percival Lowell is best remembered as the astronomer who claimed that intelligent beings had built a network of canals on Mars. But the Lowell who emerges in David Strauss's finely textured portrait was a polymath: not just a self-taught astronomer, but a shrewd investor, skilled photographer, inspired public speaker, and adventure-travel writer whose popular books contributed to an awakening American interest in Japan.
Strauss shows that Lowell consistently followed the same intellectual agenda. One of the principal American disciples of Herbert Spencer, Lowell, in his investigations of Japanese culture, set out to confirm Spencer's notion that Westerners were the highest expression of the evolutionary process. In his brilliant defense of the canals on Mars, Lowell drew on Spencer's claim that planets would develop life-supporting atmospheres over time.
Strauss's charming, somewhat bittersweet tale is the story of a rebellious Boston Brahmin whose outsider mentality, deep commitment to personal freedom, and competence in two cultures all contributed to the very special character of his careers, first as a cultural analyst and then more memorably as an astronomer.

Percival Lowell: The Culture and Science of a Boston Brahmin

Biographies & Memoirs

Strauss, David

Historical

Harvard University Press

Before Julia Child’s warbling voice and towering figure burst into America’s homes, a gourmet food movement was already sweeping the nation. Setting the Table for Julia Child considers how the tastes and techniques cultivated at dining clubs and in the pages of Gourmet magazine helped prepare many affluent Americans for Child’s lessons in French cooking. 
David Strauss argues that Americans’ appetite for haute cuisine had been growing ever since the repeal of Prohibition. Dazzled by visions of the good life presented in luxury lifestyle magazines and by the practices of the upper class, who adopted European taste and fashion, upper-middle-class Americans increasingly populated the gourmet movement. In the process, they came to appreciate the cuisine created by France's greatest chef, Auguste Escoffier. 
Strauss’s impressive archival research illuminates themes―gender, class, consumerism, and national identity―that influenced the course of gourmet dining in America. He also points out how the work of painters and fine printers―reproduced here―called attention to the aesthetic of dining, a vision that heightened one’s anticipation of a gratifying experience. 
In the midst of this burgeoning gourmet food movement Child found her niche. The movement may have introduced affluent Americans to the pleasure of French cuisine years before Julia Child, but it was Julia’s lessons that expanded the audience for gourmet dining and turned lovers of French cuisine into cooks.

Setting the Table for Julia Child: Gourmet Dining in America, 1934–1961

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Cooking Education & Reference

Johns Hopkins University Press

Robert Bergman: Selected Portraits

With just a handheld 35 mm camera and natural lighting, Robert Bergman explores his subjects with an evident determination to record a connection, even at the expense of surroundings, which Bergman tends to carefully forfeit as a compositional element. The series documented in this catalogue, produced for Bergman's exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, charts the evolving character of Americans at the turn of the millennium. Of this series, Toni Morrison has written: "Occasionally there arises an event or a moment that one knows immediately will forever mark a place in the history of artistic endeavor. Robert Bergman's portraits represent such a moment, such an event. In all its burnished majesty his gallery refuses us unearned solace and one by one by one each photograph unveils us, asserting a beauty, a kind of rapture, that is as close as can be to a master template of the singularity, the community, the unextinguishable sacredness of the human race."

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

With just a handheld 35 mm camera and natural lighting, Robert Bergman explores his subjects with an evident determination to record a connection, even at the expense of surroundings, which Bergman tends to carefully forfeit as a compositional element. The series documented in this paperback edition of Selected Portraits charts the evolving character of Americans at the turn of the millennium.

MoMA PS1

HTML5 Games Most Wanted gathers the top HTML5 games developers and reveals the passion they all share for creating and coding great games. You'll learn programming tips, tricks, and optimization techniques alongside real-world code examples that you can use in your own projects. You won't just make games you'll make great games. The book is packed full of JavaScript, HTML5, WebGL, and CSS3 code, showing you how these fantastic games were built and passing on the skills you'll need to create your own great games. Whether you're a coding expert looking for secrets to push your games further, or a beginner looking for inspiration and a solid game to build on and experiment with, HTML5 Games Most Wanted is for you. Topics and games covered include building complexity from simplicity in A to B, how to create, save, and load game levels in Marble Run, creating fast 3D action games like Cycleblob, entity interpolation from Snowball Fight, trait-based gaming in Grave Danger, the advanced use of WebGL from the game Bar Fight, tips on combining the entangled web of HTML5 technologies brilliantly shown in Far7, the holy grail of making a unique game like Z-Type, and how to build split-screen games as in the addictive Robots Are People Too. What you'll learn How to create fantastic games using HTML5 How to add 3D to your games with WebGL How to create multiplayer games How to build a level designer for your game Who this book is for Game developers creating amazing games that will work across multiple devices using the HTML5 suite of technologies. Table of Contents The State of Open Web Games Complexity from Simplicity How to Make Multi-Platform HTML5 Games from Scratch Creating, Saving, and Loading Tracks 3D CSS Particle Systems Beginning WebGL CycleBlob: A WebGL Lightcycle Game A Real-Time Multiplayer Game Using WebSockets Hard-Pressed for a Choice of Technology

HTML5 Games Most Wanted: Build the Best HTML5 Games

Computers & Technology

Hawkes, Rob

Danchilla, Brian

Kuryanovich, Egor

Shalom, Shy

Goldenberg, Russell

Paumgarten, Mathias

Lee-Delisle, Seb

Renaudeau, Gatan

Wagner, Jonas

Bergknoff, Jonathan

Games & Strategy Guides

Apress

With retail prices of AR-15's at all time highs and with the accessory market flooded with high quality upgrades and add-ons there has never been a better time to learn how to build your own AR-15 rifle. Let's look at some of the benefits of building your own AR-15 rifle: -Save money by buying parts individually and assembling them yourself. -Avoid paying tax on the rifle from a dealer. -Avoid paying tax on parts bought online or at gun shows. -Build your rifle using only the components and accessories YOU want. -Invaluable knowledge of how the AR-15 works. -Ability to replace parts and repair rifle if needed. -Pride of ownership and the right to say "I built it myself". And best of all building an AR-15 is not nearly as difficult or as technical as you might think. In fact...If you can use a hammer and tighten a screw, then you can easily assemble your own completely legal AR-15 rifle in a matter of hours. The Build Your Own AR-15 Manual is a fully illustrated blueprint that will walk you step-by-step through the entire build process from start to finish. Inside the Build Your Own AR-15 Manual you will find everything you need to assemble your own completely tricked out black rifle in an easy to read format with every step backed up with a corresponding image. If you're serious about building the perfect AR-15 then, this easy-to-follow, step-by-step manual is your ticket to the custom AR-15 you've always wanted.

Build Your Own AR-15 Rifle: In Less Than 3 Hours You Too, Can Build Your Own Fully Customized AR-15 Rifle From Scratch...Even If You Have Never Touched A Gun In Your Life!

History

Military

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit is the first in-depth exploration of this world-renowned artist's approach to the body. Throughout her career, Mann has fearlessly pushed her exploration of the human form, tackling often difficult subject matter and making unapologetically sensual images that are simultaneously bold and lyrical. This beautifully produced publication includes Mann's earliest platinum prints from the late 1970s, Polaroid still lifes, early color work of her children, haunting landscape images, recent self-portraits and nude studies of her husband. These series document Mann's interest in the body as principal subject, with the associated issues of vulnerability and mortality lending an elegiac note to her images. In bringing them together, author and curator John Ravenal examines the varied ways in which Mann's experimental approach, including ambrotypes and gelatin-silver prints made from collodian wet-plate negatives, moves her subjects from the corporeal to the ethereal. Ravenal also supplies a comprehensive introduction as well as individual entries on each series, and essays by David Levi Strauss ("Eros, Psyche, and the Mendacity of Photography") and Anne Wilkes Tucker ("Living Memory") add different, but equally illuminating perspectives to this work. Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit is a must for any serious library of photographic literature, students, scholars, collectors and others interested in her work. Sally Mann (born 1951) is one of America's most renowned photographers. She has received numerous awards, including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim Foundation grants, and her work is held by major institutions internationally. Mann's many books include What Remains (2003), Deep South (2005), and the Aperture titles At Twelve (1988), Immediate Family (1992), Still Time (1994) and Proud Flesh (2009). She lives in Lexington, Virginia.

Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit

Ravenal, John

Tucker, Anne

Aperture/Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

GATHER BY THE GHOST LIGHT: YEAR TWO is a complete companion book for the "Gather by the Ghost Light" podcast and includes all of the audio play scripts from the second year - the same scripts that the voice actors used when recording with music cue and sound effect notes. Each script also includes detailed background information along with commentary from the playwrights and producer.

Gather by the Ghost Light: Year Two

Literature & Fiction

Davis, Rick

Cook, Jonathan

Preuss, Ken

Mullen, Scott

Goodrum, Don

O'Neill-Butler, Marj

McSherry, Devon

Mabey, John

Kaminski, Ryan

Literary

ARDNEH

Between the Eyes: Essays On Photography And Politics

David Levi Strauss is a writer whose visual and intellectual sensibilities are both acute and expansive. His trenchant writings on photography and photographers have been collected for this volume from a broad range of magazines, including Aperture, Artforum and The Nation. In Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, Strauss tackles subjects as diverse as “Photography and Propaganda,” the imagery of dreams, Sebastiao Salgado's epic social documents and the deeply personal photographic revelations of Francesca Woodman. The timely issue of photographic legitimacy is addressed in the essay “Photography and Belief,” and in “The Highest Degree of Illusion,” Strauss discusses the media frenzy surrounding the events of September 11. As our world is shaped more and more by images and their slipperiness, what he calls a media “pandemonium” in its root meaning of “the place of all howling demons,” we need a mind and voice like Levi Strauss' to bring clarity to our vision.

Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics

BERGER, JOHN

Aperture

David Levi Strauss is a writer whose visual and intellectual sensibilities are both acute and expansive. His trenchant writings on photography and photographers have been collected for this volume from a broad range of magazines, including Aperture, Artforum and The Nation. In Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, Strauss tackles subjects as diverse as “Photography and Propaganda,” the imagery of dreams, Sebastiao Salgado's epic social documents and the deeply personal photographic revelations of Francesca Woodman. The timely issue of photographic legitimacy is addressed in the essay “Photography and Belief,” and in “The Highest Degree of Illusion,” Strauss discusses the media frenzy surrounding the events of September 11. As our world is shaped more and more by images and their slipperiness, what he calls a media “pandemonium” in its root meaning of “the place of all howling demons,” we need a mind and voice like Levi Strauss' to bring clarity to our vision.

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Books by Strauss, David