A compelling biography of the Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski that takes readers to Paris in the Roaring Twenties, to the front lines during WWII, and into the late 20th-century art world. Józef Czapski (1896–1993) lived many lives during his ninety-six years. He was a student in Saint Petersburg during the Russian Revolution and a painter in Paris in the roaring twenties. As a Polish reserve officer fighting against the invading Nazis in the opening weeks of the Second World War, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. For reasons unknown to this day, he was one of the very few excluded from Stalin’s sanctioned massacres of Polish officers. He never returned to Poland after the war, but worked tirelessly in Paris to keep alive awareness of the plight of his homeland, overrun by totalitarian powers. Czapski was a towering public figure, but painting gave meaning to his life. Eric Karpeles, also a painter, reveals Czapski’s full complexity, pulling together all the threads of this remarkable life.

What does an assemblage made out of crumpled newspaper have in common with an empty room in which the lights go on and off every five seconds? This book argues that they are both examples of a 'precarious' art that flourished from the late 1950s to the first decade of the twenty-first century, in light of a growing awareness of the individual's fragile existence in capitalist society. Focusing on comparative case studies drawn from European, North and South American practices, this study maps out a network of similar concerns and practices, while outlining its evolution from the 1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. This book will provide students and amateurs of contemporary art and culture with new insights into contemporary art practices and the critical issues that they raise concerning the material status of the art object, the role of the artist in society, and the relation between art and everyday life.

Existing in myriad forms, containing multitudes in its reflection, and coursing through each and every one of us, water sustains the world around us--and life itself.

A compelling read, Very Little ... Almost Nothing opens up new ways of understanding finitude, modernity and the nature of imagination. Revised edition with a new preface by the author.

The story of a kind of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don't even think exists--from a leading national poverty expert who "defies convention" (New York Times)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) undoubtedly is one of the most significant and influential architects ever. His designs and realized buildings, as well as his thinking and writings, until the present day continue to initiate many controversial debates on achievement and failure in modern architecture. Yet not only architects and urban designers have been inspired or appalled by Mies van der Rohe. This new book demonstrates that his influence reaches far beyond the boundaries of the professional architecture world. Almost Nothing collects work by one-hundred painters, sculptors, photographers, film directors, designers, cartoonists, and architects that comment on or appropriate buildings, designs, and statements by or images of the legendary architect. The works also form a hundredfold re-interpretation of Mies van der Rohe's life and oeuvre. New York-based architect and writer Christian Bjone in his complementing text provides rich background information on the individual artists and the depicted art works. The books' title refers to a statement by Mies van der Rohe himself on one of his celebrated masterpieces, Crown Hall on IIT campus in Chicago, which combines ingeniously simplicity with complexity.

A history of electricity and electronics, and how the electron at first bothered mankind, then gradually became useful, and now dominates our lives.