Archives de catégorie : Nonfiction

ZODIAC: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR de Ai Weiwei, illustré par Gianluca Costantini

In this beautifully illustrated and deeply philosophical graphic memoir, legendary artist Ai Weiwei explores the connection between artistic expression and intellectual freedom through the lens of the Chinese zodiac..

ZODIAC: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR
by Ai Weiwei
illustrated by Gianluca Costantini
Ten Speed Graphic, January 2024

As a child living in exile during the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei often found himself with nothing to read but government-approved comic books. Although they were restricted by the confines of political propaganda, Ai Weiwei was struck by the artists’ ability to express their thoughts on art and humanity through graphic storytelling. Now, decades later, Ai Weiwei and Italian comic artist Gianluca Costantini present ZODIAC, Ai Weiwei’s first graphic memoir.
Inspired by the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and their associated human characteristics, Ai Weiwei masterfully interweaves ancient Chinese folklore with stories of his life, family, and career. The narrative shifts back and forth through the years—at once in the past, present, and future—mirroring memory and our relationship to time. As readers delve deeper into the beautifully illustrated pages of ZODIAC, they will find not only a personal history of Ai Weiwei and an examination of the sociopolitical climate in which he makes his art, but a philosophical exploration of what it means to find oneself through art and freedom of expression.
Contemplative and political, ZODIAC will inspire readers to return again and again to Ai Weiwei’s musings on the relationship between art, time, and our shared humanity.

Ai Weiwei leads a diverse and prolific practice that encompasses sculptural installation, filmmaking, photography, ceramics, painting, writing, and social media. Born in Beijing, China, in 1957, he is a conceptual artist who fuses traditional craftsmanship and his Chinese heritage, moving freely between a variety of formal languages to reflect on contemporary geopolitical and sociopolitical conditions. Ai Weiwei’s work and life regularly interact and inform one another, often extending to his activism and advocacy for international human rights.
Gianluca Costantini is an Italian cartoonist, comic journalist, and activist. He has contributed to numerous publications and is the author of several graphic novels. He is well know for his drawing related to human rights campaigns all over the world. He collaborates with organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, ActionAid, and SOS Méditerranée. In 2019, he received the Art and Human Rights Award from Amnesty International.

THE CHASE de Jenny Wood

This playbook by a high-level executive at Google not only tells readers how to achieve better outcomes, but also exactly what to do, step-by-step, to overcome the most common personal and professional obstacles, from negotiating a raise to finding a mentor to landing a first date.

THE CHASE:
An Unconventional, Uninhibited, and Unapologetic Approach to Getting What You Want in Life
by Jenny Wood
Portfolio, TBD
(via Writers House)

Jenny Wood was working at Google for more than ten years when she set her sights on a much bigger role in the company. It took more than six months and sixty internal coffee chats for Jenny to go from Manager of Analytical Leads, a member of a seven-person sales team, to Head of U.S. West Coast Technical Operations, leading a team of forty-five alongside four other managers.
All her previous roles were easy to get. This one was hard. It took effort, intentionality, and grit. When she landed the job, Jenny wrote notes to herself as a kind of “playbook,” figuring she’d want to remember the details the next time she had to go through the process. The doc was also a tool Jenny could use as she mentored others. Soon people were sharing; hundreds and then thousands of employees at Google found “Jenny’s Job Search Tips” to be invaluable. Fast forward less than two years, and Jenny’s side project—which now includes workshops, keynotes, and tips on everything from email to influence to building a personal brand—is a full-blown global phenomenon called Own Your Career. A Google program with a $250,000 annual budget, Own Your Career is now used by 58,000 Googlers (that’s one-third of the company) and distributed by Google to companies like American Express, Spotify, Target, Indeed, and CVS.
Turns out lots of people want to know how to go from entry level at a place like Google to the top 2% of management, and in THE CHASE: An Unconventional, Uninhibited, and Unapologetic Approach to Getting What You Want in Life, Jenny Wood gives readers the playbook for that and more. Reclaiming labels we often attach to people who transgress social norms to get what they want—Weird, Selfish, Shameless, Nosy, Obsessed, to name a few—Jenny shows that “to get there, you have to be a little bit out there,” and her book transforms the labels into powerful mantras for success. Wood not only tells readers how to achieve better outcomes, she tells them exactly what to do, step-by-step, to overcome the most common personal and professional obstacles, from negotiating a raise to finding a mentor to landing a first date.

Before Google, Jenny Wood was a research associate at Harvard Business School, authoring case studies that have been published and sold to MBA programs worldwide. With her smarts, energy, and platform—and with Google’s full support in her tailwinds (she also flies airplanes)—Jenny Wood is poised to deliver the next must-buy book for the same ambitious readers who made Dare to Lead and Atomic Habits huge bestsellers.

THE DICTATORS de Iain Dale

Were the signs that Putin is a ruthless dictator there all along? How should we deal with President Xi of China? THE DICTATORS will contain 64 essays detailing the lives of some of the world’s infamous dictators, going back to 600BC up to the current day.

THE DICTATORS:
A Warning from History
by Iain Dale
Hodder & Stoughton, April 2024
(via Northbank Talent Management)

THE DICTATORS will feature essays on 60 of the most significant and notorious dictators from the 4th century BC to the present day. Unlike the subjects of the previous three books in this series, which were self-selecting, the decision about who to include will be subjective. It will be Iain’s personal choice, and he will include a mixture of ‘usual suspects’ and less familiar figures. The essays will be written by a range of academics, historians, commentators, political journalists and serving politicians. Each contributor will be carefully chosen. Most have either written about their subjects before or have a personal connection of some sort.
THE DICTATORS will be selected according to a defined set of criteria, and will include elected and unelected dictators, wartime and peacetime dictators, those driven by ideology and those with a reputation for sheer brutality. How did these tyrants, autocrats and despots seize power and how did they exercise it? Are there specific character traits that all dictators share? What can we learn from them in order to spot the warning signs in future?
By studying a wide variety of dictators in different parts of the world and throughout history, themes and patterns will inevitably emerge. The book is acutely relevant to world politics today.
As the subtitle states, it will serve as a warning from history.

Iain Dale is an accomplished broadcaster, presenting his own daily radio show on LBC, and several podcasts including the Iain Dale Book Club and The Presidents and Prime Ministers to accompany the Hodder books. He is a regular on CNN, Question Time, Newsnight, Good Morning Britain, the Jeremy Vine Show on Channel 5, The Andrew Marr Show, Politics Live and a myriad of other political programmes too. He is a regular columnist for the Telegraph, Evening Standard and the ‘i’ newspaper and has a weekly column in the Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times.

MISBELIEF de Dan Ariely

The renowned social scientist, professor, and bestselling author of Predictably Irrational delivers his most urgent and compelling book—an eye-opening exploration of the human side of the misinformation crisis—examining what drives otherwise rational people to adopt deeply irrational beliefs.

MISBELIEF:
What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
by Dan Ariely
HarperCollins, September 2023
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

Misinformation affects all of us on a daily basis—from social media to larger political challenges, from casual conversations in supermarkets, to even our closest relationships. While we recognize the dangers that misinformation poses, the problem is complex—far beyond what policing social media alone can achieve—and too often our limited solutions are shaped by partisan politics and individual interpretations of truth.
In MISBELIEF, preeminent social scientist Dan Ariely argues that to understand the irrational appeal of misinformation, we must first understand the behavior of “misbelief”—the psychological and social journey that leads people to mistrust accepted truths, entertain alternative facts, and even embrace full-blown conspiracy theories. Misinformation, it turns out, appeals to something innate in all of us—on the right and the left—and it is only by understanding this psychology that we can blunt its effects. Grounded in years of study as well as Ariely’s own experience as a target of disinformation, MISBELIEF is an eye-opening and comprehensive analysis of the psychological drivers that cause otherwise rational people to adopt deeply irrational beliefs. Utilizing the latest research, Ariely reveals the key elements—emotional, cognitive, personality, and social—that drive people down the funnel of false information and mistrust, showing how under the right circumstances, anyone can become a misbeliever.
Yet Ariely also offers hope. Even as advanced artificial intelligence has become capable of generating convincing fake news stories at an unprecedented scale, he shows that awareness of these forces fueling misbelief make us, as individuals and as a society, more resilient to its allure. Combating misbelief requires a strategy rooted not in conflict, but in empathy. The sooner we recognize that misbelief is above all else a human problem, the sooner we can become the solution ourselves.

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight; co-creator of the film documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies; and a three-time New York Times bestselling author. His books include Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, Irrationally Yours, Payoff, Dollars and Sense, and Amazing Decisions. His TED talks have been viewed more than 27 million times. Dan has what appears to be bad luck in terms of the troubles he gets into, but also the good fortune to learn and develop from these challenges.

HARD BODY de Robert James Russell

A graphic narrative of body dysmorphia; a memoir of obsession, shame, and what it means to face the physical space you take up in the world.

HARD BODY:
A Personal History of the Self on Display
by Robert James Russell
Simon & Schuster, 2024
(via The Lark Group)

In the vein of graphic memoirs from Meichi Ng, Alison Bechdel, and Adrian Tomine, HARD BODY by Robert James Russell is a graphic narrative – a blend of comics, memoir, and history – about the author’s experience of male body dysmorphia. From personal stories about how the author’s body has been a commodity for others – while modeling or working at the cult-like Abercrombie & Fitch or teaching – to examining the history and current climate of “get fit” culture, the rise of personal fitness in the early 20th Century (Muscular Christianity, anyone?), and our collective obsession with our appearance throughout history, HARD BODY is a memoir of obsession, shame, and what it means to face the physical space you take up in the world.

Robert James Russell is a wellpublished, former creative writing professor who has taught national workshops for fiction, nonfiction, and graphic narratives across the country. He is the founder of two national literary brands (Midwestern Gothic and CHEAP POP).