Object Compendium

Collects the first three sold-out monographs by Swedish illustrator, Kilian Eng.

Blending architecture, design, and technology, a visual tour through futures past via the objects we have replaced, left behind, and forgotten. So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused—superseded, unfashionable, or simply forgotten. Extinct gathers together an exceptional range of artists, curators, architects, critics, and academics, including Hal Foster, Barry Bergdoll, Deyan Sudjic, Tacita Dean, Emily Orr, Richard Wentworth, and many more. In eighty-five essays, contributors nominate “extinct” objects and address them in a series of short, vivid, sometimes personal accounts, speaking not only of obsolete technologies, but of other ways of thinking, making, and interacting with the world. Extinct is filled with curious, half-remembered objects, each one evoking a future that never came to pass. It is also a visual treat, full of interest and delight.

The Illustrated Compendium of Weirdly Specific Words is an illustrated dictionary of the 300+ most specific words in the English language, along with their definitions, roots, and (hilarious) usage quotes! Have you ever been lying in your bed, surrounded by crumbs and wrappers, feasting on your fifth pop tart and thought, “I wish there was a word for this”? Well, there is! Accubationis - the practice of eating and drinking while lying down. The English language is populated by many words that have a regular place in everyday conversation, and The Illustrated Compendium of Weirdly Specific Words celebrates these words by featuring definitions, origins and usage, and coupling illustrations. Words include: Badling (noun) - a group of ducks. Crapulence (noun) - sickness resulting from eating too much. Guddle (verb) - fishing only with your hands. Kaiju (noun) - A film genre characterized by giant, terrifying monsters. Slugabed (noun) - A lazy person who stays in bed late. Wegotism (noun) - The excessive use of the word ‘we’. With more than 300 insanely specific words, you’d think that you would know a few of them, right? Well, think again! We’re willing to wager that you don’t know a single one of these words! Unless, of course, you have a special interest in the smell of horse urine (the word for that particular odor is jumentuous). The Illustrated Compendium of Weirdly Specific Words not only captures these words through equally specific illustrations, it also tells you what they mean! And like so many great reference books before it, it is organized in alphabetical order, from aglet to zopissa. Readers will close this book a little bit smarter than they were when they picked it up!

The Trotula was the most influential compendium on women's medicine in medieval Europe. Scholarly debate has long focused on the traditional attribution of the work to the mysterious Trotula, said to have been the first female professor of medicine in eleventh- or twelfth-century Salerno, just south of Naples, then the leading center of medical learning in Europe. Yet as Monica H. Green reveals in her introduction to this first edition of the Latin text since the sixteenth century, and the first English translation of the book ever based upon a medieval form of the text, the Trotula is not a single treatise but an ensemble of three independent works, each by a different author. To varying degrees, these three works reflect the synthesis of indigenous practices of southern Italians with the new theories, practices, and medicinal substances coming out of the Arabic world. Arguing that these texts can be understood only within the intellectual and social context that produced them, Green analyzes them against the background of historical gynecological literature as well as current knowledge about women's lives in twelfth-century southern Italy. She examines the history and composition of the three works and introduces the reader to the medical culture of medieval Salerno from which they emerged. Among her findings is that the second of the three texts, "On the Treatments for Women," does derive from the work of a Salernitan woman healer named Trota. However, the other two texts—"On the Conditions of Women" and "On Women's Cosmetics"—are probably of male authorship, a fact indicating the complex gender relations surrounding the production and use of knowledge about the female body. Through an exhaustive study of the extant manuscripts of the Trotula, Green presents a critical edition of the so-called standardized Trotula ensemble, a composite form of the texts that was produced in the mid-thirteenth century and circulated widely in learned circles. The facing-page complete English translation makes the work accessible to a broad audience of readers interested in medieval history, women's studies, and premodern systems of medical thought and practice.

How do you find a book when you can't recall the title...or the author? This homage to a common reader's dilemma is a gift the booklover in your life won't soon forget. Readers know all too well the comedy and tragedy of forgetting the name of a must-find book. Inspired by this torturous predicament, artist Marina Luz creates paintings of books based on the descriptions we use when we can't remember their titles—mining Internet book-search forums for the quirky, vague, and often hilarious language we come up with in these moments. This volume collects dozens of these imaginary books into a library all their own: Titles like "Cat, Possibly Named Henry," "It Was All a Dream," or "Something-Something, Beverly Hills" inspire dreaming up their contents, often as entertaining as trying to guess the real book behind them. A celebration of book love unlike any other, this petite book is a clever gift for bibliophiles that will spark knowing smiles. PERFECT GIFT FOR BOOKLOVERS: The collection will spark recognition for everyone who has encountered this phenomenon (so, virtually every reader) and especially those who have worked in a bookstore, who know intimately well how often this dilemma arises. This impulse-priced delight is an excellent way to make book-loving friends feel seen. A UNIQUE APPRECIATION OF BOOK LOVE: This is a loving tribute to the wonderful and bizarre ways that books leave impressions on our souls, if not always perfectly in our memories. It's a fun and fresh appreciation of bibliophilia that still delivers long after the first read. Perfect for: • Bibliophiles • Booksellers • People seeking gifts for the booklovers in their life

From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon. The Weird is the winner of the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.