Books for the Culture Vulture

Nairn’s Paris
Nairn’s Paris

Ian Nairn

Out of print since 1968, this is a unique guidebook from the late, great architectural writer, Ian Nairn. Illustrated with the author’s black and white snaps of the city, Nairn gives his readers an idiosyncratic and unpretentious portrait of the ‘collective masterpiece’ that is Paris.

Smoke
Smoke

John Berger Selçuk Demirel

John Berger, art critic, novelist and long-time smoker, joins forces again with Turkish writer and illustrator Selçuk Demirel. This charming pictorial essay reflects on the cultural implications of smoking, and suggests, through a series of brilliantly inventive illustrations, that society’s attitude to smoke is both paradoxical and intolerant.

Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment – Signed Copy
Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment – Signed Copy

A. J. Lees

In this extraordinary memoir, neuroscientist Andrew Lees explains how William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and troubled drug addict, played an unlikely part in his medical career.

Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment
Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment

A. J. Lees

In this extraordinary memoir, neuroscientist Andrew Lees explains how William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and troubled drug addict, played an unlikely part in his medical career.

Nairn’s Towns
Nairn’s Towns

Ian Nairn

These essays show the late, great architectural critic Ian Nairn, writing about cities and towns as a whole rather than as collections of individual buildings.

Junkspace with Running Room
Junkspace with Running Room

Rem Koolhaas Hal Foster

In Junkspace, architect Rem Koolhaas itemised in delirious detail how our cities are being overwhelmed. His celebrated jeremiad is here updated and twinned with Running Room, a fresh response from architectural critic Hal Foster.

Still Life With A Bridle
Still Life With A Bridle

Zbigniew Herbert

A gathering of artful essays by one of Poland’s most translated post-war writers. Poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert takes an intriguing look at the cultural, artistic, and aesthetic legacy of 17th-century Holland.

Noriko Smiling
Noriko Smiling

Adam Mars-Jones

Mars-Jones gives a virtuoso performance as the lost figure of the film explainer, drawing out a host of meaning from the reticence of Yasujirō Ozu’s classic Japanese movie Late Spring.

Cataract
Cataract

John Berger Selçuk Demirel

What happens when an art critic loses some of his sight to cataracts? What wonders are glimpsed once vision is restored? In this impressionistic essay written in the spirit of Montaigne, John Berger, whose treatises on seeing have shaped cultural and media studies for four decades, records the effects of cataract removal operations on each of his eyes.

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