When Phoebe Ayers isn’t hanging out at ROFLcon she’s probably doing something related to Wikipedia, so I’m looking forward to reading How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It.

Extra points: Phoebe and her co-authors somehow convinced their publisher to release the entire work under the GFDL, the same license Wikipedia uses. You could read the entire thing online for free, but that’s the easy part. What will you do to return the value? (Remember, Andrew Keen is watching.)

Via Ryan: Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies at Centripetal Notion.

awesome, book, books, art, sculpture

Sure it’s a promo for his new book, but Bob Sutton is offering us all a chance to see if we’re assholes with the Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE).

After 24 questions like “You secretly enjoy watching other people suffer and squirm” (hey, what’s wrong with a little schaedenfreud?) you’ll find yourself placed somewhere on the scale from possible liar to full-blown certified asshole.

• You don’t sound like a certified asshole, unless you are fooling yourself.
• You sound like a borderline certified asshole, perhaps the time has come to start changing your behavior before it gets worse.
• You sound like a full-blown certified asshole to me, get help immediately. But, please, don’t come to me for help, as I would rather not meet you.

And if that isn’t enough self-abuse, another quiz asks “do you make air travel miserable for everyone else?”

I take some offense at the suggestion in one question that asking for extra refreshments is bad behavior, as I feel I can never get enough to drink on a plane, but at least the scale seems a little easier:

• You are too perfect to be true, I don’t believe you.
• You sound like a generally civilized passenger to me.
• You are a borderline “Flying ARSE,”
• You are a certified “Flying ARSE.” I hope that you don’t sit near me.
• You are a certified “Flaming Flying ARSE.” I wish that airlines could ban you from flying.

quiz, personality test, asshole, Bob Sutton, Robert I. Sutton, The No Asshole Rule, book

Tony Day is June 28th, but today is the day I received my copy of Joe Monninger’s latest work, Two Ton: One Night, One Fight — Tony Galento v. Joe Louis.

I learned a lot about the characters and times during the two years of research Joe invested in the book, but other than sneaking peaks at the manuscript, I’ve not had a chance to learn the whole story of how Tony Galento ended up in the ring against Joe Louis — and knocked him down.

Beetle-browed, nearly bald, a head that rode his collarbones like a bowling ball returning on rails, his waist size more than half his five-foot-eight height, Two Ton Tony Galento appeared nearly square, his legs two broomsticks jammed into a vertical hay bale. By all measures he stood no chance when he stepped into the ring against the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis, the finest heavyweight of his generation, in Yankee Stadium on a June night in 1939. “I’ll moida da bum,” Galento predicted, and though Louis was no bum, Tony, the Falstaff of boxing, lifted him from the canvas with a single left hook and entered the record books as one of the few men to put the great Louis down. A palooka, a thug, a vibrant appetite of a man, he scrapped his way out of the streets and into the brightest light in American life. For two splendid seconds he stood on the canvas at Yankee Stadium, the great Joe Louis stretched out before him, champ of the world, the toughest man alive, the mythical hero of the waterfront, of Orange, New Jersey, of an American nation little more than a year away from war. Joe Monninger’s spellbinding portrait of a man, a moment, and an era reminds us that sometimes it is through effort, and not the end result, that people most enduringly define themselves.

book, boxer, boxing, heavyweight, joe louis, Joe Monninger, joe monninger, Joseph Monninger, prizefight, title fight, tony galento, two ton, two ton tony

Geography Made Easy : Being An Abridgement Of The American Universal Geography, Containing Astronomical Geography, Discovery And General Description Of America, General View Of The United States, Particular Accounts Of The United States Of America, And Of All The Kingdoms, States And Republics In The Known World, In Regard To Their Boundaries, Extent, Rivers, Lakes, Mountains, Productions, Population, Character, Government, Trade, Manufactures, Curiosities, History, &c. : To Which Is Added, An Improved Chronological Table Of Remarkable Events, From The Creation To The Present Time, Illustrated With Maps Of The Countries Described : Calculated Particularly For The Use And Improvement Of Schools And Academies In The United States Of America

is it really the longest book title ever? i don’t know.

longest book title, title, book

I read enough of this to get a good laugh, but not enough to understand if it was serious or not. Some of it reads like satire, but other parts as are dry as, well, they’re dry (who really needs a simile anyway, they’re just dry, okay?).

alcohol, book, books, drink, drinking, libraries, library, notes from a library supervisor, punch, supervision, the vodka in the punch, vodka

Most people may recognize Zhang Huan from his “My New York” work that had him dressed in a beefy muscle suit. Above is “My Boston,” but I have a feeling it might get repurposed elsewhere during finals this spring to represent the agony of study.

Ups to Ryan for the pointer.

art, book, books, boston, fine art, head in books, my boston, photography, zhang huan

How’s a guy supposed to feel when his manager gives him a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done?

book, david allen, getting things done, management, tps report

library, libraries, book, books, page, pages, book leaf, open book, flower, art, photo, library mistress, black and white, b and w

Daniela Turudich knows vintage fashion. Her books include not only hair, but how to recreate a vintage wedding, vintage recipes and candy making, and Beauty Secrets of History’s Most Notorious Courtesans.

Here’s the description from Art Deco Hair:

Art deco has long been associated with uncompromising style and sophistication, and this guide to recreating the sassy, controversial styles of the ’20s and ’30s offers a glimpse back at the hairstyles of this era. The instructions needed to replicate these fashions on the modern woman-from the controversial bob of the Roaring Twenties flapper to the luxurious finger waves of Hollywood’s early screen stars-are provided, and the techniques behind Marcel and water waves, the simple bob, and Eton and shingle cuts are also included. Hundreds of vintage illustrations, photographs, step-by-step instructions, and diagrams take readers through the history of the hairstyles that laid the groundwork of style for the modern American woman.

Update: Here’s some great hair from 1927 in the LeastWanted gallery.

tags: 1920s, 1930s, art deco, book, books, daniela turudich, design, fashion, hair, hairstyle, hairstyles, retro, retro fashion, vintage, vintage fashion

“I want all the books that I’m interested in on one shelf.”

tags: book, books, libraries, library, read, reading

I love libraries, and I love books, but there the needs of our students and limitations of our budgets have no room for misplaced romantic attachments. That’s why I’ve found myself paraphrasing something from Ibiblio’s Paul Jones (via Teleread):

That smell of an old book, that smell of old libraries? That’s the smell of the books rotting.

We must remember that libraries catalog and share information and knowledge, not books. Our students and faculty have already voted with their feet and demonstrated that our paper (and microform) collections of periodicals are useless compared to the online, fully searchable versions. How long before the same happens for books as well?

Connections: some people don’t get this, but there are a number who do (too many to list, actually). This issue is bigger than ebooks alone, but OpenReader deserves a plug here too.

Technorati Tags: book, books, budgets, education, ibiblio, information, libraries, library, paul jones, romantic attachments, rot, rotting, smell