Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Graphic Designer / United States / The Sheila Studio

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville’s Book List

W. G. Sebald, Herbert Gans, Ruari McLean.

7 books
W. G. Sebald

A masterpiece of literature in which the narrative appears to describe the images, but the images are not what the narrative describes. This disconnection between image and text astonished me, and validated all the disconnections and gaps my work has used to create an invitation to others to participate in the signification of a work.

C. Wright Mills

The description of class in America, and the circumscription of ordinary people—particularly designers—caught in the middle between their public and their clients made an indelible impression on me in my teens.

Herbert J. Gans

I read this book preparing for a project I did about Boston’s West End, and came to understand how the stories of greedy people in positions of power have been used to dismiss and devalue the homes and lifestyle of mutual help in immigrant and working-poor communities.

Ruari McLean

I was a fan of Jan Tschichold’s Asymmetric Typography. In this book the section of letters from Max Bill caught my attention. The anger Bill displays appeared to me to be indicative of a not unfamiliar rigidity among those who dismiss changes in the way a creative person makes his or her work because of preferring the values and forms embodied by that person’s previous ideas and ways of making.

Michael Hardt
Antonio Negri

The section “There Is No More Outside” was a revelation, making it possible for me to avoid modern dialectical thinking. I thank Michael Rock for pointing out this book to me.

Paulo Freire

Before I began to teach, this book helped me see teachers and students as equals; each brings knowledge and experience to the conversation.

Eva Figes

Given that my parents and grandparents worked, it was very helpful to me to have the history and the root causes of the inequality between the sexes explained, in all the ways reading Betty Friedan’s revelations of suburban boredom did not.

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