An essential guidebook on innovation in higher education—and how we can ensure student success in college by looking to the history of American invention.Invent Ed is a much-needed contribution to the broad ecosystem of innovation, creativity, and higher education in America. Our country’s many generations of inventors, from Benjamin Franklin to modern visionaries like Steve Jobs, have made important new discoveries by putting existing knowledge into unexp...

Most professionals, especially those who own all or part of their firm, find it difficult to think about retirement. Many of those who practise their chosen profession into their sixties and seventies are reluctant to contemplate life without the mental stimulation, companionship, excitement and sense of fulfilment that their work provides. To a great extent, we are what we do; winding down raises questions about self-esteem and our value to society. Professional life increasingly conditio...

What is a hotel? As Caroline Field Levander and Matthew Pratt Guterl show us in this thought-provoking book, even though hotels are everywhere around us, we rarely consider their essential role in our modern existence and how they help frame our sense of who and what we are. They are, in fact, as centrally important as other powerful places like prisons, hospitals, or universities. More than simply structures made of steel, concrete, and glass, hotels are social and political institutions ...

“In this timely and thought-provoking analysis of modern coupledom, Pamela Haag paints a vivid tableau of the ‘semi-happy’ couple. Written with wit and aplomb, this page turner will instigate an insurrection against our marital complacency.” —Esther Perel, author of Mating in CaptivityWritten with the persuasive power of Naomi Wolf and the analytical skills of Susan Faludi, Pamela Haag’s provocative but sympathetic look at the state of marriage tod...

One of The Globe and Mail's Globe 100: Best Books of 2014Every weekend, in cities around the world, bleary-eyed diners wait in line to be served overpriced, increasingly outré food by hungover waitstaff. For some, the ritual we call brunch is a beloved pastime; for others, a bedeviling waste of time. But what does its popularity say about shifting attitudes towards social status and leisure? In some ways, brunch andother forms of conspicuous consumption have blind...

In this witty and bestselling look at the cultural consequences of the information age, David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today’s upper class—those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture.Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do yo...

Winner of the 2008 American Alliance for Theatre and Education "Book of Distinction" Award.Theatre is a primal language that used to be spoken by everyone; everyone included the "living community".Weaving together Systems Theory and the groundbreaking work of Fritjof Capra , Theatre of the Oppressed and the revolutionary work of Augusto Boal , and his own 25 years of practical experience in community-based popular theatre, David Diamond creates a silo-busting book that embr...

For his thirtieth birthday, Hal Niedzviecki received what his parents thought was the perfect card for their rebellious son. On the front it depicted a crowd scene-dour grey men in suits, hats, and overcoats. Inside it said: "Happy Birthday to a non-conformist." Niedzviecki had a moment of crisis. "If I'm a rebel sanctioned by society, encouraged by my parents, and cheered on by Hallmark, what is left to rebel against?"In Hello, I'm Special, the guru of indie cultu...

The author of the acclaimed bestseller Bobos in Paradise, which hilariously described the upscale American culture, takes a witty look at how being American shapes us, and how America's suburban civilization will shape the world's future.Take a look at Americans in their natural habitat. You see suburban guys at Home Depot doing that special manly, waddling walk that American men do in the presence of large amounts of lumber; super-efficient ubermoms who ch...

Extraordinary architecture addresses so much more than mere practical considerations. It inspires and provokes while creating a seamless experience of the physical world for its users. It is the rare writer that can frame the discussion of a building in a way that allows the reader to see it with new eyes. Writing About Architecture is a handbook on writing effectively and critically about buildings and cities. Each chapter opens with a reprint of a significant essay written by a ...

The Consumer Society Reader features a range of key works on the nature and evolution of consumer society. Included here is much-discussed work by leading critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Susan Bordo, Dick Hebdige, bell hooks, and Janice Radway. Also included is a full range of classics, such as Frankfurt School writers Adorno and Horkheimer on the Culture Industry; Thorstein Veblen's oft-cited writings on "conspicuous consumption"; Betty Friedan on the housewife's central role i...

What does it mean to be a designer in today’s corporate-driven, overbranded global consumer culture? Citizen Designerattempts to answer this question with more than 70 debate-stirring essays and interviews espousing viewpoints ranging from the cultural and the political to the professional and the social. Edited by two prominent advocates of socially responsible design, this innovative reference responds to the tough questions today’s designers continue to ask themselves: How can a designe...