"Putting a brush in the hands of new artists, young and old, heightens their awareness of the power and beauty of nature."

Over the past thirty years, visionary anthropologist Michael Taussig has crafted a highly distinctive body of work. Playful, enthralling, and whip-smart, his writing makes ingenious connections between ideas, thinkers, and things. An extended meditation on the mysteries of color and the fascination they provoke, What Color Is the Sacred? is the next step on Taussig’s remarkable intellectual path. Following his interest in magic and surrealism, his earlier work on mimesis, and his recent discussion of heat, gold, and cocaine in My Cocaine Museum,this book uses color to explore further dimensions of what Taussig calls “the bodily unconscious” in an age of global warming. Drawing on classic ethnography as well as the work of Benjamin, Burroughs, and Proust, he takes up the notion that color invites the viewer into images and into the world. Yet, as Taussig makes clear, color has a history—a manifestly colonial history rooted in the West’s discomfort with color, especially bright color, and its associations with the so-called primitive. He begins by noting Goethe’s belief that Europeans are physically averse to vivid color while the uncivilized revel in it, which prompts Taussig to reconsider colonialism as a tension between chromophobes and chromophiliacs. And he ends with the strange story of coal, which, he argues, displaced colonial color by giving birth to synthetic colors, organic chemistry, and IG Farben, the giant chemical corporation behind the Third Reich. Nietzsche once wrote, “So far, all that has given colour to existence still lacks a history.” With What Color Is the Sacred? Taussig has taken up that challenge with all the radiant intelligence and inspiration we’ve come to expect from him.

At a time when race and inequality dominate national debates, the story of West Charlotte High School illuminates the possibilities and challenges of using racial and economic desegregation to foster educational equality. West Charlotte opened in 1938 as a segregated school that embodied the aspirations of the growing African American population of Charlotte, North Carolina. In the 1970s, when Charlotte began court-ordered busing, black and white families made West Charlotte the celebrated flagship of the most integrated major school system in the nation. But as the twentieth century neared its close and a new court order eliminated race-based busing, Charlotte schools resegregated along lines of class as well as race. West Charlotte became the city's poorest, lowest-performing high school—a striking reminder of the people and places that Charlotte's rapid growth had left behind. While dedicated teachers continue to educate children, the school's challenges underscore the painful consequences of resegregation. Drawing on nearly two decades of interviews with students, educators, and alumni, Pamela Grundy uses the history of a community's beloved school to tell a broader American story of education, community, democracy, and race—all while raising questions about present-day strategies for school reform.

Black-and-white drawings portray famous men and women of the Wild West.

Cowboys, desperados, prospectors, and pioneers abound in this big book of coloring fun. Packed with captivating details, it features 118 full-page illustrations of dramatic historical events and real-life characters.

Introduces various types of dinosaurs, demonstrating how to mix different colors to show what the dinosurs looked like.

Painting Shawls is a collection of thirteen knitted shawl patterns designed by Stephen West. Each pattern features Westknits' signature architectural style and bold graphic color combinations. The instructions are easy to follow and appropriate for adventurous beginners and advanced knitters alike. This hardcover book is filled with inspirational photos, showing multiple samples of each design to inspire your own color interpretations. In addition to patterns, this book includes several technique chapters like how to substitute yarns and customize the size of each shawl along with how to swatch and weave in your ends. There are also several cast on photo tutorials and video links throughout the book to teach and guide you through the artistic shawl knitting process. Each book includes a free download code, so you can access individual PDFs of all thirteen shawl patterns. Dive into the woolly world of Westknits and use these playful shawl designs as landscapes to paint with yarn. If you're going to make it by hand, make it grand!