In this exceptional book on the London based studio 6a architects, architecture critic Irenee Scalbert looks at the role of narrative, history, appropriation and craft in the work of Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald. The book traces an architectural approach avoiding style, signature, theory and even concept in favour of metis, an ancient form of intelligence combining 'flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, varied skills, and experience.' Structured around notions of situation, intervention, making, comedy, bricolage, chance and anthropology, the text is mirrored in a visual essay of archive photographs, artworks, film stills and recent projects by the practice.

With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith. What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour’s analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming—and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture—and so, between our culture and others, past and present. Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape, We Have Never Been Modern blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.

During the past thirty years, Native American dance has emerged as a visible force on concert stages throughout North America. In this first major study of contemporary Native American dance, Jacqueline Shea Murphy shows how these performances are at once diverse and connected by common influences. Demonstrating the complex relationship between Native and modern dance choreography, Shea Murphy delves first into U.S. and Canadian federal policies toward Native performance from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, revealing the ways in which government sought to curtail authentic ceremonial dancing while actually encouraging staged spectacles, such as those in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows. She then engages the innovative work of Ted Shawn, Lester Horton, and Martha Graham, highlighting the influence of Native American dance on modern dance in the twentieth century. Shea Murphy moves on to discuss contemporary concert dance initiatives, including Canada’s Aboriginal Dance Program and the American Indian Dance Theatre. Illustrating how Native dance enacts, rather than represents, cultural connections to land, ancestors, and animals, as well as spiritual and political concerns, Shea Murphy challenges stereotypes about American Indian dance and offers new ways of recognizing the agency of bodies on stage. Jacqueline Shea Murphy is associate professor of dance studies at the University of California, Riverside, and coeditor of Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance.

Joel Beath and Elizabeth Price explore this question drawing inspiration from a diverse collection of apartment designs, all smaller than 50m2/540ft2. Through the lens of five small-footprint design principles and drawing on architectural images and detailed floor plans, the authors examine how architects and designers are reimagining small space living. Full of inspiration we can each apply to our own spaces, this is a book that offers hope and inspiration for a future of our cities and their citizens in which sustainability and style, comfort and affordability can co-exist. Never Too Small proves living better doesn’t have to mean living larger.

Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England investigates a paradox in the history of early modern England: although one third of adult women were never married, these women have remained largely absent from historical scholarship. Amy Froide reintroduces us to the category of difference called marital status and to the significant ways it shaped the life experiences of early modern women. By de-centring marriage as the norm in social, economic, and cultural terms,her book critically refines our current understanding of people's lives in the past and adds to a recent line of scholarship that questions just how common 'traditional' families really were.This book is both a social-economic study of singlewomen and a cultural study of the meanings of singleness in early modern England. It focuses on never-married women in England's provincial towns, and on singlewomen from a broad social spectrum. Covering the entire early modern era, it reveals that this was a time of transition in the history of never-married women. During the sixteenth century life-long singlewomen were largely absent from popular culture, but by the eighteenth century theyhad become a central concern of English society.As the first book of original research to focus on singlewomen on the period, it also illuminates other areas of early modern history. Froide reveals the importance of kinship in the past to women without husbands and children, as well as to widows, widowers, single men, and orphans. Examining the contributions of working and propertied singlewomen, she is able to illustrate the importance of gender and marital status to urban economies and to notions of urban citizenship in the early modernera. Tracing the origins of the spinster and old maid stereotypes she reveals how singlewomen were marginalized as first the victims and then the villains of Protestant English society.

Seven essays celebrating the beauty of the imperfect marriage. We hear plenty about whether or not to get married, but much less about what it takes to stay married. Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still want to sleep with other people. Sometimes your partner will bore the hell out of you. And when stuck paying for your spouse’s mistakes, you might miss being single. In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which “the first twenty years are the hardest.” Calhoun’s funny, poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity, existential anxiety, and the many other obstacles to staying together. Both realistic and openhearted, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers a refreshing new way to think about marriage as a brave, tough, creative decision to stay with another person for the rest of your life. “What a burden,” Calhoun calls marriage, “and what a gift.”

“It’s ‘Friends’ meets ‘Almost Famous’ meets the beach read you’ll be recommending all summer.” –TheSkimm From the author of the New York Times bestsellers All Adults Here and This Time Tomorrow, a smart, highly entertaining novel about a tight-knit group of friends from college— and what it means to finally grow up, well after adulthood has set in. Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities of their youth. But nothing ages them like having to suddenly pass the torch (of sexuality, independence, and the ineffable alchemy of cool) to their own offspring. Back in the band's heyday, Elizabeth put on a snarl over her Midwestern smile, Andrew let his unwashed hair grow past his chin, and Zoe was the lesbian all the straight women wanted to sleep with. Now nearing fifty, they all live within shouting distance in the same neighborhood deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and the trappings of the adult world seem to have arrived with ease. But the summer that their children reach maturity (and start sleeping together), the fabric of the adult lives suddenly begins to unravel, and the secrets and revelations that are finally let loose—about themselves, and about the famous fourth band member who soared and fell without them—can never be reclaimed. Straub packs wisdom and insight and humor together in a satisfying book about neighbors and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the excitement of youth, the shock of middle age, and the fact that our passions—be they food, or friendship, or music—never go away, they just evolve and grow along with us.

This book takes an engaging look at the significance of traditional proverbs and their variation in the modern world. From sales pitch to propagandistic tool, Wolfgang Mieder looks at how we adapt proverbs to rapidly changing social attitudes - the original wording of proverbs changes to fit modern advertising slogans or political rhetoric, misogynist sayings become feminist slogans, and late medieval woodcuts illustrating proverbs find their modern equivalents in political cartoons and comic strips. The book is richly illustrated and contains name, subject, and proverb indexes.

“Charming. . . . A moving testament to the diversity and depths of love.” —Publishers Weekly You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be swept away—in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. Here are 175 true stories—honest, funny, tender and wise—each as moving as a lyric poem, all told in no more than one hundred words. An electrician lights up a woman’s life, a sister longs for her homeless brother, strangers dream of what might have been. Love lost, found and reclaimed. Love that’s romantic, familial, platonic and unexpected. Most of all, these stories celebrate love as it exists in real life: a silly remark that leads to a lifetime together, a father who struggles to remember his son, ordinary moments that burn bright.

*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INDIE NEXT PICK* Writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers Amber Ruffin writes with her sister Lacey Lamar with humor and heart to share absurd anecdotes about everyday experiences of racism. Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of The Amber Ruffin Show, Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one's First Black Friend and everyone is, as she puts it, "stark raving normal." But Amber's sister Lacey? She's still living in their home state of Nebraska, and trust us, you'll never believe what happened to Lacey. From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She's the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think "I can say whatever I want to this woman." And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.