Download or read book Inventing the California Look written by Philip E. Meza and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The influential rooms of Elkins, Taylor, Dickinson, and other great talents—as photographed by Fred Lyon—represent the innovation and splendor of postwar Northern California interiors, which continue to inspire the work of designers today. From the 1940s to the 1980s, some of the best resi-dences in Northern California were decorated by a coterie of designers whose names were once recognized only by the cognoscenti of interior design. From Frances Elkins and Tony Hail, with their aristocratic aesthetics, to Michael Taylor and John Dickinson, with their bold fantasies, these designers created revolutionary settings that were idiomatic of their time and place—fresh, luxurious spaces complementing the various terrains and lifestyles of the northern part of the state. Fred Lyon (b. 1924) is perhaps the only photographer who knew and documented the work of this talented group. Akin to what Julius Shulman was doing in Southern California, Lyon worked closely with the designers and magazine editors to help shape the look for posterity. In the years following the work of these giants, most of the spaces they created are gone or vastly changed, replaced by different tastes and new styles. Now re-appreciated for their artistry, we can relive this exciting era through Lyon’s superb photography.
Download or read book Inventing the Dream written by Kevin Starr and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1985 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the elements whose confluence defined Southern California including Spanish/Mexican influences, climate, and the rise of Hollywood.
Download or read book Material Dreams written by Kevin Starr and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1990 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Material Dreams, Starr turns to one of the most vibrant decades in the Golden State's history, the 1920s, when some two million Americans migrated to California, the vast majority settling in or around Los Angeles. Although he treats readers to intriguing side trips to Santa Barbara and Pasadena, Starr focuses here mainly on Los Angeles, revealing how this major city arose almost defiantly on a site lacking many of the advantages required for urban development, creating itself out of sheer will, the Great Gatsby of American cities. He describes how William Ellsworth Smyth, the Peter the Hermit of the Irrigation Crusade, propounded the importance of water in Southern California's future, and how such figures as the self-educated, Irish engineer William Mulholland (who built the main aquaducts to Los Angeles) and George Chaffey (who diverted the Colorado River, transforming desert into the lush Imperial Valley) brought life-supporting water to the arid South. He examines the discovery of oil ("Yes it's oil, oil, oil / that makes LA boil," went the official drinking song of the Uplifters Club), the boosters and land developers, the evangelists (such as Bob Shuler, the Methodist Savanarola of Los Angeles, and Aimee Semple McPherson), and countless other colorful figures of the period. There are also fascinating sections on the city's architecture (such as the remarkably innovative Bradbury Building and its eccentric, neophyte designer, George Wyman), the impact of the automobile on city planning, the great antiquarian book collections, the Hollywood film community, and much more. By the end of the decade, Los Angeles had tripled in population and become the fifth largest city in the nation. In Material Dreams, Kevin Starr captures this explosive growth in a narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose.
Download or read book Embattled Dreams written by Kevin Starr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume deals with the years of World War II and after. In the 1940s California changed from a regional centre into the dominant economic, social and cultural force it has been in America ever since.
Download or read book The Invention of Solitude written by Paul Auster and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'One day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.' So begins Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section, 'Portrait of an Invisible Man', reveals Auster's memories and feelings after the death of his father. In 'The Book of Memory' the perspective shifts to Auster's role as a father. The narrator, 'A', contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather and the solitary nature of writing and story-telling.
Download or read book Frances Elkins written by Stephen M. Salny and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 2005 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The career of Frances Adler Elkins (1888-1953), sister of renownedChicago architect David Adler, spanned more than three decades.
Download or read book Golden Dreams written by Kevin Starr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-09 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr's acclaimed multi-volume Americans and the California Dream is an unparalleled work of cultural history. In this volume, Starr covers the crucial postwar period--1950 to 1963--when the California we know today first burst into prominence. Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities, and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence of San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and the decline of political centrism. He explores the Silent Generation and the emergent Boomer youth cult, the Beats and the Hollywood "Rat Pack," the pervasive influence of Zen Buddhism and other Asian traditions in art and design, the rise of the University of California and the emergence of California itself as a utopia of higher education, the cooling of West Coast jazz, freeway and water projects of heroic magnitude, outdoor life and the beginnings of the environmental movement. More broadly, he shows how California not only became the most populous state in the Union, but in fact evolved into a mega-state en route to becoming the global commonwealth it is today. Golden Dreams continues an epic series that has been widely recognized for its signal contribution to the history of American culture in California. It is a book that transcends its stated subject to offer a wealth of insight into the growth of the Sun Belt and the West and indeed the dramatic transformation of America itself in these pivotal years following the Second World War.
Download or read book Endangered Dreams written by Kevin Starr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-11 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: California, Wallace Stegner observed, is like the rest of the United States, only more so. Indeed, the Golden State has always seemed to be a place where the hopes and fears of the American dream have been played out in a bigger and bolder way. And no one has done more to capture this epic story than Kevin Starr, in his acclaimed series of gripping social and cultural histories. Now Starr carries his account into the 1930s, when the political extremes that threatened so much of the Depression-ravaged world--fascism and communism--loomed large across the California landscape. In Endangered Dreams, Starr paints a portrait that is both detailed and panoramic, offering a vivid look at the personalities and events that shaped a decade of explosive tension. He begins with the rise of radicalism on the Pacific Coast, which erupted when the Great Depression swept over California in the 1930s. Starr captures the triumphs and tumult of the great agricultural strikes in the Imperial Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, Stockton, and Salinas, identifying the crucial role played by Communist organizers; he also shows how, after some successes, the Communists disbanded their unions on direct orders of the Comintern in 1935. The highpoint of social conflict, however, was 1934, the year of the coastwide maritime strike, and here Starr's narrative talents are at their best, as he brings to life the astonishing general strike that took control of San Francisco, where workers led by charismatic longshoreman Harry Bridges mounted the barricades to stand off National Guardsmen. That same year socialist Upton Sinclair won the Democratic nomination for governor, and he launched his dramatic End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign. In the end, however, these challenges galvanized the Right in a corporate, legal, and vigilante counterattack that crushed both organized labor and Sinclair. And yet, the Depression also brought out the finest in Californians: state Democrats fought for a local New Deal; California natives helped care for more than a million impoverished migrants through public and private programs; artists movingly documented the impact of the Depression; and an unprecedented program of public works (capped by the Golden Gate Bridge) made the California we know today possible. In capturing the powerful forces that swept the state during the 1930s--radicalism, repression, construction, and artistic expression--Starr weaves an insightful analysis into his narrative fabric. Out of a shattered decade of economic and social dislocation, he constructs a coherent whole and a mirror for understanding our own time.
Download or read book Rivers in the Desert written by Margaret Leslie Davis and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise and fall of William Mulholland, and the story of L.A.’s disastrous dam collapse: “A dramatic saga of ambition, politics, money and betrayal” (Los Angeles Daily News). Rivers in the Desert follows the remarkable career of William Mulholland, the visionary who engineered the rise of Los Angeles as the greatest American city west of the Mississippi. He sought to transform the sparse and barren desert into an inhabitable environment by designing the longest aqueduct in the Western Hemisphere, bringing water from the mountains to support a large city. This “fascinating history” chronicles Mulholland’s dramatic ascension to wealth and fame—followed by his tragic downfall after the sudden collapse of the dam he had constructed to safeguard the water supply (Newsweek). The disaster, which killed at least five hundred people, caused his repudiation by allies, friends, and a previously adoring community. Epic in scope, Rivers in the Desert chronicles the history of Los Angeles and examines the tragic fate of the man who rescued it. “An arresting biography of William Mulholland, the visionary Los Angeles Water Department engineer . . . [his] personal and public dramas make for gripping reading.” —Publishers Weekly “A fascinating look at the political maneuvering and engineering marvels that moved the City of Angels into the first rank of American cities.” —Booklist
Download or read book Inventing the Medium written by Janet H. Murray and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-11-23 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A foundational text offering a unified design vocabulary and a common methodology for maximizing the expressive power of digital artifacts. Digital artifacts from iPads to databases pervade our lives, and the design decisions that shape them affect how we think, act, communicate, and understand the world. But the pace of change has been so rapid that technical innovation is outstripping design. Interactors are often mystified and frustrated by their enticing but confusing new devices; meanwhile, product design teams struggle to articulate shared and enduring design goals. With Inventing the Medium, Janet Murray provides a unified vocabulary and a common methodology for the design of digital objects and environments. It will be an essential guide for both students and practitioners in this evolving field. Murray explains that innovative interaction designers should think of all objects made with bits—whether games or Web pages, robots or the latest killer apps—as belonging to a single new medium: the digital medium. Designers can speed the process of useful and lasting innovation by focusing on the collective cultural task of inventing this new medium. Exploring strategies for maximizing the expressive power of digital artifacts, Murray identifies and examines four representational affordances of digital environments that provide the core palette for designers across applications: computational procedures, user participation, navigable space, and encyclopedic capacity. Each chapter includes a set of Design Explorations—creative exercises for students and thought experiments for practitioners—that allow readers to apply the ideas in the chapter to particular design problems. Inventing the Medium also provides more than 200 illustrations of specific design strategies drawn from multiple genres and platforms and a glossary of design concepts.
Download or read book Magnetic Los Angeles written by Greg Hise and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1999-08-20 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suburban development is often considered synonymous with enhanced personal mobility, single-family housing, and life cycle homogeneity. According to this view, individual suburbs are residence-only enclaves, isolated commuter-sheds for a managerial and mercantile elite. Magnetic Los Angeles challenges this common vision of the expanding, twentieth-century city as the sprawling product of dispersion without planning, lacking any discernable order.
Download or read book Inventing English written by Seth Lerer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of English from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem, “written with real authority, enthusiasm and love for our unruly and exquisite language” (The Washington Post). Many have written about the evolution of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Seth Lerer situates these developments within the larger history of English, America, and literature. This edition of his “remarkable linguistic investigation” (Booklist) features a new chapter on the influence of biblical translation and an epilogue on the relationship of English speech to writing. A unique blend of historical and personal narrative, both “erudite and accessible” (The Globe and Mail), Inventing English is the surprising tale of a language that is as dynamic as the people to whom it belongs. “Lerer is not just a scholar; he's also a fan of English—his passion is evident on every page of this examination of how our language came to sound—and look—as it does and how words came to have their current meanings…the book percolates with creative energy and will please anyone intrigued by how our richly variegated language came to be.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book Inventing Niagara written by Ginger Strand and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-05-06 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strand reveals the hidden history of America's most iconic natural wonder, Niagara Falls, illuminating what it says about our history, our relationship with the environment, and ourselves.
Download or read book The Perfect Kitchen written by Barbara Sallick and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chic, polished guide to creating your dream kitchen from the cofounder of Waterworks, with hundreds of images and practical advice. The kitchen is the heart of the home, the destination of every party, everyone's favorite gathering spot, where style and functionality must go hand in hand. Designing a kitchen is a vastly complicated affair, involving an array of appliances (movable and fixed) and storage zones, not to mention addressing the kitchen's role as a multifunctional social arena to be used from very early in the morning until late into the night. Creating a timeless, high-functioning space is daunting indeed. Where is one to begin? In The Perfect Kitchen, Waterworks cofounder Barbara Sallick explores the process of designing a kitchen in great and beautiful detail, from surfaces and finishes to storage, cabinetry, and hardware. The book is enriched by dozens of images of kitchens by esteemed designers such as Steven Gambrel, Gil Schafer, and Suzanne Kasler; essays by top food icons including Julia Turshen and Melissa Clark about their own kitchens; and important, how-to advice. Combining evocative, informative photography with an authoritative, engaging narrative, The Perfect Kitchen is an essential, lasting resource that will appeal to discerning homeowners and professionals alike looking for upscale visual inspiration and design advice.
Download or read book Inventing the American Astronaut written by Matthew H. Hersch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who were the men who led America's first expeditions into space? Soldiers? Daredevils? The public sometimes imagined them that way: heroic military men and hot-shot pilots without the capacity for doubt, fear, or worry. However, early astronauts were hard-working and determined professionals - 'organization men' - who were calm, calculating, and highly attuned to the politics and celebrity of the Space Race. Many would have been at home in corporate America - and until the first rockets carried humans into space, some seemed to be headed there. Instead, they strapped themselves to missiles and blasted skyward, returning with a smile and an inspiring word for the press. From the early days of Project Mercury to the last moon landing, this lively history demystifies the American astronaut while revealing the warring personalities, raw ambition, and complex motives of the men who were the public face of the space program.
Download or read book Inventing the Future written by Albert Cory and published by . This book was released on 2021-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine a time before everyone stared at a screen, before fonts, icons, mice, and laser printers, before Apple and Microsoft? But in El Segundo and Palo Alto, Xerox engineers were dreaming and secretly building the modern personal computer. Who were they? Why did corporate management just want to sell copiers and printers?The author, Albert Cory,* was one. Inventing the Future is based on the true story of the Xerox Star, the computer that changed everything
Download or read book San Francisco Interiors written by Diane Dorrans Saeks and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 1995-08-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Victorian to neoclassical to Arts and Crafts, San Francisco's interior design style -- like the irrepressible spirit of the city itself -- is innovative, free-thinking, and universally appealing. In San Francisco Interiors, Diane Dorrans Saeks, the California editor of Metropolitan Home, unveils the finest creations of the Bay Area's preeminent interior designers and artists, leading readers on an intimate tour of some of the city's most coveted residences. Peek inside an art collector's Russian Hill studio or an elegant Pacific Heights mansion. With designs by Anthony Hail, Stephen Shubel, Diane Chapman, Arnell Kase John Dickinson, and Scott Lamb; over 200 lavish, full-color photographs; and a designer's resource guide, this lovely volume will inform and inspire anyone who appreciates gracious living.
