Ethan Allen and HGTV may have plenty to say about making a home look right, but what makes a home feel right? In House Thinking, journalist and cultural critic Winifred Gallagher takes the reader on a psychological tour of the American home. By drawing on the latest research in behavioral science, an overview of cultural history, and interviews with leading architects and designers, she shows us not only how our homes reflect who we are but also how they influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions. How does your entryway prime you for experiencing your home? What makes a bedroom a sensual oasis? How can your bathroom exacerbate your worst fears? House Thinking addresses provocative questions like these, enabling us to understand the homes we've made for ourselves in a unique and powerful new way. It is an eye-opening look at how we live . . . and how we could live.

Thinking Home challenges and extends the existing scholarship on the subject of ‘home’ in a period which has seen unprecedented levels of movement cross the globe. Sanja Bahun and Bojana Petric have collated essays that revisit existing ideas to introduce new ways of thinking on home, from the individual and local, through communal, to the international levels. While home informs our feelings of belonging and displacement, and our activities, such as migration, housing, and language learning, Bahun, Petric and contributors look to specific under-studied areas and encompass them within a major framework that allows for assessment through multiple disciplinary and expressive lenses. Thinking Home examines examples such as temporary homes, homes on the road, new and emergent modes of home-making, and minority groups in home and housing debates. Fresh, timely and topical, Thinking Home is rooted in activism and policy-making in the sector of 'home'; the essays both challenge and extend the existing scholarship on this subject. This collection combines perspectives of aesthetics, anthropology, cultural and literary studies, law, linguistics, philosophy, sociology, psychoanalysis, political science and activist responses in one whole. It will be essential reading for students of anthropology, literary studies, cultural studies and philosophy.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE NAUTILUS GOLD AWARD “A powerful and provocative testament to the diverse coalition of minds we’ll need to face the mounting challenges of the twenty-first century.” —Steve Silberman “An absolute eye-opener.” —Frans de Waal A landmark book that reveals, celebrates, and advocates for the special minds and contributions of visual thinkers A quarter of a century after her memoir, Thinking in Pictures, forever changed how the world understood autism, Temple Grandin— “an anthropologist on Mars,” as Oliver Sacks dubbed her—transforms our awareness of the different ways our brains are wired. Do you have a keen sense of direction, a love of puzzles, the ability to assemble furniture without crying? You are likely a visual thinker. With her genius for demystifying science, Grandin draws on cutting-edge research to take us inside visual thinking. Visual thinkers constitute a far greater proportion of the population than previously believed, she reveals, and a more varied one, from the photo-realistic “object visualizers” like Grandin herself, with their intuitive knack for design and problem solving, to the abstract, mathematically inclined “visual spatial” thinkers who excel in pattern recognition and systemic thinking. She also makes us understand how a world increasingly geared to the verbal tends to sideline visual thinkers, screening them out at school and passing over them in the workplace. Rather than continuing to waste their singular gifts, driving a collective loss in productivity and innovation, Grandin proposes new approaches to educating, parenting, employing, and collaborating with visual thinkers. In a highly competitive world, this important book helps us see, we need every mind on board.

Over the past 100 years, the home has been a battleground for ideas of future living. Fueled by the electrification of cities, the move from the country to cities, post-war recovery and the development of the internet, the way we live at home (alone or with others) has changed beyond recognition. Science fiction writing, the entertainment industry, art, and modern interior design and architecture movements have also contributed to defining our aspirations around a future and now more present and possible ‘smart’ home. From the decade-old smart fridge that tells you if you have run out of milk to smart speakers that let you shop hands-free, some visions of the ‘smart’ home are yet to excite us while others are becoming a reality and will shape how we will live at home very soon. This book breaks down the historical, societal and political context for the changes in focus of that ‘smartness’ from affordability, efficiency, convenience to recently experimentation. These key points in time include: The development and marketing of electrical appliances in early 20th century War-time design the impact of military ergonomics Modernist interior design and building practices of the 1920s The space race and new materials of the post-war era Compact urban living in the 1960s & 70s Connected home entertainment in the 1980s-90s Phones and mobility in the 90s Smart energy & utilities in the early 2000s The internet-connected fridge in 2000 Remote care in a global world economy The sharing economy and new ways to shop at home Invisible ‘smart’ design in the home The second half of the book breaks down what current developments tell us about what our homes will look like in the next 10 years through the lens of spaces, services, appliances and behaviours in our homes. What You'll Learn Understand the historical context for current ‘smart home’ products Understand the social context of home product development Understand what in home technologies are being developed Understand what products are currently available Understand what behaviours are being constantly leveraged Understand how this may affect longer term market trends for consumer products Many new and innovative products are being developed in the consumer and industrial spaces with a copy-paste mindset based on following larger businesses such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Many opportunities in the homespace however will come from understanding the history and multiple players that have contributed to the development of the home in general. For everyone working in product design and development, in R&D or in trends research as well as for everyone interested in the IoT for the home, this book will be a valuable resource and an enjoyable read. This book will give product business owners ideas about what has been done before and and avenues for future development.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later—the night before New Year’s Eve—the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.

A refreshing and invigorating exploration of what really matters and what really works in higher education teaching. Dr Erik Blair's Independent Thinking on Teaching in Higher Education: From theory to practice is a refreshing and invigorating exploration of what really matters and what really works in higher education teaching. This book offers an insight into an area of higher education that has become more significant of late: the art of teaching. It focuses on the actual work of teaching and gives thought-provoking and perceptive guidance on how to teach in a meaningful and engaging manner.Independent Thinking on Teaching in Higher Education doesn't bamboozle with abstract terminology. Instead, Erik guides readers through topic-driven chapters that offer practical answers supported by rationales drawn from everyday experience. Alongside the core themes, he also provides bite-sized 'nuggets of wisdom' that prompt readers to implement flexible and effective strategies as part of their daily practice. The book offers a deeper understanding of the roles and responsibilities of those who teach in higher education, and also covers the three areas measured in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF): teaching quality, the learning environment, and the educational and professional outcomes achieved by students. Furthermore, Erik goes beyond the lecture theatre and seminar room by including a section dedicated to teaching online - that is, how to get the best out of delivering content to students remotely via the virtual learning environment. Ideal for those new to teaching in higher education as well as more experienced practitioners who want to continue honing their craft, Independent Thinking on Teaching in Higher Education embraces teaching and learning as a personal and human activity - and encourages educators to reflect on how the suggested approaches can be applied in their particular teaching environment. Suitable for all educators working in higher education.

The classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes "Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.