Often I get asked a lot of times about which books I'd recommend for the designers in their lives. Here is a short list.
Designer Book List
What to get the designer in your life.
Books — The Field Study Handbook by Jan Chipchase
The Field Study Handbook is from Jan Chipchase, founder, Studio D Radiodurans, writing at the intersection of design, tech, human behaviour & culture.
From the emergence of ad hoc mobile payments in Africa, to the torrent of technology changes rippling across the globe, our understanding of the behaviors come largely through the disciplined and attentive field research. Here is the preeminent text on doing it well.
Book of the Day — Sagas of the Icelanders
These translation in the Sagas of the Icelanders from a thousand years ago, from the Vineland Sagas, The Prose Edda and the Poetry Edda, give us today access to a rich world often obscured to us.
The publication of these volumes is a reminder that the Icelandic Sagas can hold their own with the literature of the Mediterranean." ---Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate, 1995
Book of the Day — Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
Book of the Day — The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages
Learning language is something that every single one of has done. Learning many languages seems like an insurmountable task for many of us. Here, in The Loom of Language, Frederick Bodmer give a practical and exciting approach to learning many languages.
Book of the Day — The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum) by the Venerable Bede written in the 8th century is a key original source on Anglo-Saxon history and in the formation of the English national identity.
Book of the Day — Twentieth Century Pleasures by Robert Hass
The essays on poetry in this book, Twentieth Century Pleasures by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, has been a deep well of insight, mystery, inspiration and thought for me for 15 years.
Book of the Day — The World's Major Languages
"From English, French, Spanish and Russian to Pashto, Tagalog, and Swahili, this is the first comprehensive reference work to provide detailed information about the world's forty major languages. " The World's Major Languages by Bernard Comrie.
Book of the Day — The New Sentence by Ron Silliman
The New Sentence by Ron Silliman turns its bright intelligence onto syntax and linguistics.
Book of the Day - How To Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch
It isn't an uncommon experience, friends asking me how to read a poem. I often quote this book, How to Read a Poem And Fall In Love With Poetry by Edward Hirsch in my answer.
Book of the Day - The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
This is delectably told and imaginative, a thought experiment worked its way all the way out. When humans are sent the plans for an interstellar propulsion system, and the governments dither on in their dithering ways, it is the deeply intellectual Jesuits who act. This science fiction, speculative fiction, reframes a great deal of our past in terms of our potential future actions.
I Put A Spell on You by Nina Simone
“To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that’s not what I play. I play black classical music.”
from wikipedia:
Nina Simone (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003) was anAmerican singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, andcivil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. She worked in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.
Ready for Revoltion by Stokely Carmichael
“There is a higher law than the law of government. That’s the law of conscience.”
Get Ready for Revolution by Stokely Carmichael and Stokely: A Life by Peniel E. Joseph
Kwame Touré, once known as Stokely Carmichael(June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), was a Trinidadian-American activist active in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and later, the global Pan-African movement. Growing up in the United States from the age of eleven, he graduated from Howard University. He rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, and finally as a leader of the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party.[1]
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”
from Wikipedia:
Lucille Clifton (June 27, 1936, Depew, New York – February 13, 2010,Baltimore, Maryland)[1] was an American poet, writer, and educator fromBuffalo, New York.[2][3][4] From 1979 to 1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. Frequent topics in her poetry include the celebration of her African-American heritage, women's experience, and the female body.
She was also nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
“Okay listen, you think I’m so inconsequential? Then try this on for size. All those who see unworthiness when they look at me and are given thereby to denying me value - to you I say, I’m not talking about being AS GOOD as you. I hereby declare myself BETTER than you. ”
Get Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
More from the Black History Month Reading List
Directed by Desire by June Jordan
“And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:
we are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Get Directed by Desire by June Jordan
from Poetry Foundation:
"One of the most widely-published and highly-acclaimed African American writers of her generation, poet, playwright and essayist June Jordan was also known for her fierce commitment to human rights and progressive political agenda. Over a career that produced twenty-seven volumes of poems, essays, libretti, and work for children, Jordan engaged the fundamental struggles of her era: over civil rights, women’s rights, and sexual freedom."
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
“The brightest memory fades faster than the dullest ink.”
Get Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankin
from wikipedia:
Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. She has taught at Case Western Reserve University, Barnard College, University of Georgia, and in the writing program at the University of Houston. As of 2011, Rankine is the Henry G. Lee Professor of Poetry at Pomona College.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ”
Get The Fire Next TIme by James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America, and their inevitable if unnameable tensions.[1]Some Baldwin essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), andThe Devil Finds Work (1976).
More from the Black History Month Reading List
Selected Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks
“What, what am I to do with all of this life?”
from wikipedia:
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an African-American poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 and was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.
S O S: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka
“There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.”
Get SOS: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka
from wikipedia:
Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), formerly known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka,[1] was an African-American writer of poetry,drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo and theState University of New York at Stony Brook. He received thePEN Open Book Award, formerly known as the Beyond Margins Award, in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone.