Deborah Berke’s Book List
I have always loved books—books of all kinds. I like reading books, I like being in rooms where there are books, I get inspiration from books, I like giving books as gifts, I like having a book with me.
My list is an eclectic one of books I have enjoyed and books I have learned from. I always have a large pile of books—fiction and nonfiction, books with images and books without, poetry, plays, collections and surveys, essays—on my nightstand, and always a book in my bag.
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This book includes some of Susan Sontag’s best-known essays. My favorite, “Against Interpretation,” has this to say: “Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.”
The original version of this indispensable guidebook, by Norval White and Elliot Willensky, was the first architecture-related book I received as a gift. That copy was much used and is now really beat-up. Fran Leadon did a great job with Norval White in creating this carefully updated version, still full of opinions as well as useful information. A must-own book for all New Yorkers.
This is a very serious collection of essays that had a huge impact on the way I think about the world and about art and architecture. Ken Frampton’s essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance” is one every architect should be familiar with, but the value of this volume is also in the essays of Rosalind Krauss and Fredric Jameson, among others.
I have enjoyed her stories and her essays, but connect best to Grace Paley’s poetry. Read anything by her.
This is a great book about a New York that doesn’t really exist anymore. Mitchell’s observations and descriptions of it are perfect. Very few of us write as well as Joseph Mitchell did, but this book should be an encouragement to go out and carefully observe your city, wherever it may be.
Amy Hempel writes with such exquisite precision that one savors every carefully selected word and each elegantly constructed sentence.
I first discovered Banham through his incredible book on Los Angeles. As a New Yorker I appreciated the way he parsed and explained that city. However, as a way to connect with Banham’s broader architectural thinking and insights, this book of collected essays is the one to dip into.
This wonderful book examines all types of infrastructure. As a child my favorite part of trips headed out of New York was the industrial and infrastructural detritus along the New Jersey Turnpike. Perhaps because of this, this book really appeals to me. It’s a field manual for all that—old and new. The author is a scientist or maybe a scientific writer—I don’t know for sure—but he gets this stuff and he photographs it with real care and affection. Great images and descriptions.
Alan Colquhoun is one of the great architectural writers and critics around. Too little known in the United States, in my opinion, this collection is a great way to experience his writing and thinking.
This is a riff on, a tribute to, the word “blue.” It is really beautifully written. Reading it makes you focus on what you know, what you see, and how you think about it.
Walk away from your desk, go outside, keep your eyes open and remember what you see and ask why it is that way. A great exhortation to all of us to be questioning observers.
I always enjoy reading Hertzberg’s column in The New Yorker and find this collection of essays to contain some of his best.
Beautiful as an object and impossible to put down as a read. And while I love my library, it made me wish I also could spend a few days in Richard Prince’s library from time to time.
This book is fun to read and covers a broad range of design-related subjects in some very brief essays—perfect for those with short attention spans or limited time to read. There are pieces in the collection that make you laugh. Can’t say that about very many design books.
The subtitle tells all: “On the relationship between where art is made and where art is displayed.” A beautiful object and a compelling little book.
In everything she does A.M. Homes shows us the dark and the weird in late 20th- and early 21st-century America. Her writing is brilliantly funny.
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Understanding Understanding: New from Richard Saul Wurman
Understanding Understanding
by Richard Saul Wurman
Publisher: Richard Saul Wurman and Jack Dangermond
Published July 30, 2017
From the author of Information Architecture, who says about his newest book: “This is a book for people to dip into, as they would walk in and out of the room of a dinner party and embrace their interests. . . Before the rules on how to organize information, before you learn grammar, before you work hard at expanding your vocabulary and go through the exercises of parallel meanings of things as using a Thesaurus and as one writes papers in class, before any learning one must understand.”
The Hard Life by Jasper Morrison
The Hard Life
by Jasper Morrison
Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
Published in US: May 22, 2017
Photographs taken by designer Jasper Morrison of objects in the collection of the National Museum of Ethnology in Lisbon, Portugal. “The objects photographed and described may be appreciated both for their beauty and for the example they set of design at its purest. The Hard Life is a continuation of Morrison’s celebration of the ordinary and offers a new perspective on his design philosophy.”
Paula Scher: Works - Order from Unit Editions
Paula Scher: Works
Editors: Tony Brook & Adrian Shaughnessy
Design: Spin
Publisher: Unit Editions
Published April 2017
New book covering the career of of master designer Paula Scher, called “the most influential woman graphic designer on the planet.” (Ellen Lupton), This definitive, chronological visual record spans Paula’s early days in the music industry as an art director with CBS and Atlantic records; the launch of her first studio, Koppel & Scher; and her 25-year engagement with Pentagram.
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Type Tells Tales: New from Steven Heller and Gail Anderson
Type Tells Tales
by Steven Heller and Gail Anderson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published May 30, 2017
Reveals how type can become both content and illustration, as letters take the form of people, animals, cars, or planes. With numerous illustrations by F. T. Marinetti, Bruno Munari, and Francis Picabia, among others, as well as by contemporary designers such as Richard Eckersley, John Hendrix, Maira Kalman, and Corita Kent.
The Moderns: Midcentury American Graphic Design: New from Steven Heller and Greg D’Onofrio
The Moderns
by Steven Heller and Greg D’Onofrio
Publisher: Abrams
Published September 19, 2017
Featuring more than 60 designers whose magazine, book, and record covers; advertisements and package designs; posters; and other projects created the visual aesthetics of postwar modernity in America. Some were émigrés from Europe; others were homegrown; all were intoxicated by elemental typography, primary colors, photography, and geometric or biomorphic forms. Some are well-known, others are honored in this volume for the first time, and together they comprised a movement that changed our design world.
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