Category Archives: Books

Honda Design

“Honda Design: Motorcyle Part 1 1957-1984″ is a great new book that was just published and is a must buy for anyone interested in the history behind motorcycle designs. It documents just about every model that Honda and its teams have produced up until the mid 80’s and a DVD is included with interviews [...]

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My Favourite Shirt: A History of Ben Sherman Style

Before it became the mall brand we know today, Ben Sherman had a long history of producing some of the most popular shirts throughout the 60’s and 70’s. The now out of print book, “My Favourite Shirt” by Paolo Hewitt and Terry Rawlings, explores the history of the company, the man behind it, and [...]

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Ad Hoc at Home

Thomas Keller’s latest cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home, is his most approachable one yet. It’s very true to its subtitle of “family-style recipes” and all of them are easy to do (I’ve successfully tried about a dozen of them so far). Best yet is that no fancy equipment is needed and just about [...]

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Destino – Disney and Dalí

Old news for some, but I just learned about this short animation today: Destino.

From wikipedia:
Destino (the Galician, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian word for “destiny”) was storyboarded by Disney studio artist John Hench and artist Salvador Dalí for eight months in late 1945 and 1946; however, financial concerns caused Disney to cease production. The Walt Disney [...]

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Esquire Big Black Book – Fall 2009

Esquire’s fall 2009 edition of their Big Black Book is out in stores now, and available to purchase online for about $10. Like their last spring edition, I felt they missed the mark again in delivering good content. The essays on menswear are long gone, the photography is boring, and even the watches [...]

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Yosemite in the Sixties

Get this book. From an old WSJ review:
In 1959, Glen Denny, a relatively inexperienced mountain climber who was working as a busboy at the Yosemite Lodge in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, was invited to assist the renowned climber Warren Harding as he attempted the first ascent of an improbably steep granite prow [...]

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The Sapeurs of the Congo

Browsing through recent entries on Paul Smith’s blog led me to this photography book due to be released soon, titled the Gentlemen of Bacongo. It covers the Sapeurs, a subculture of dandy men that love to dress up in fine clothing despite living in near poverty conditions in Africa. I hope to have [...]

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Illustrations from Works by William Bruce Leffingwell

Hunting season is quickly approaching and I spent part of this afternoon reading up on upland hunting.  I naturally got distracted by reading up on bird dogs instead, which then led me to a series of books by the author William Bruce Leffingwell.   The books which are available to read online, were written in [...]

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Shoe Fitting Manual for the Military

A Manual on Foot Care and Shoe Fitting for Officers of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, from 1920. Read the entire thing online if you want to: http://books.google.com/books?id=3QuFX-gCuewC

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Brooklyn Gang

The book is not easily available, but I found that you can check out some of the pictures taken by Bruce Davidson of a young group of kids in the 1950’s on magnumphoto.com.

From wikipedia:
Bruce Davidson’s 1959 project Brooklyn Gang is an intimate photographic study of a rebellious Brooklyn teenage gang, who called themselves The Jokers. [...]

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Tom Kundig – Houses

I came across this book recently featuring a few homes designed by local architect Tom Kundig. I usually tend to dislike these sorts of books, but this one is actually pretty good.

He’s has been getting lots of press lately on a number of different projects including the Outpost and the 1111 Pike condos.

Also posted in Home, Architecture, and Design |

Old Plane Manuals

From back when manuals were actually easy to read…

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