Yale’s Open Courses Inspire a New Series of Old-Fashioned Books

in Books, Online Courses, Yale | May 6th, 2012

Last month we report­ed on Yale’s addi­tion of sev­en new online cours­es to its grow­ing ros­ter of free offer­ings. Now we’ve learned that Yale is inau­gu­rat­ing a new series of books based on its pop­u­lar open cours­es.

“It may seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive for a dig­i­tal project to move into books and e‑books, because these are a much more con­ven­tion­al way of pub­lish­ing,” Open Yale Cours­es found­ing project direc­tor Diana E.E. Klein­er told The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion last week. But the books are in keep­ing with Open Yale’s mis­sion of “reach­ing out in every way that we could.”

Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press is bring­ing out the first six titles this year. The paper­backs are priced at rough­ly $12 on Ama­zon, with e‑book edi­tions going for clos­er to $10.  The first three vol­umes–The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture by Paul H. Fry, New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture by Dale B. Mar­tin, and Death by Shelly Kagan–are avail­able now, while three addi­tion­al titles–The Moral Foun­da­tions of Pol­i­tics by Ian Shapiro, Intro­duc­tion to the Bible by Chris­tine Hayes, and Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy by Steven B. Smith–will be pub­lished lat­er this year. The pub­lish­er says the books are “designed to bring the depth and breadth of a Yale edu­ca­tion to a wide vari­ety of read­ers.”

For more open edu­ca­tion resources, take a moment to explore our col­lec­tion of 450 free online cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Lit2Go’s 200 Free (and Teacher-Friendly) Audio Books: Ready for Downloads

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature | May 3rd, 2012

A num­ber of sites offer free Mp3s of pub­lic domain books—Lib­rivox and Podi­o­books, for instance. What sets apart Lit2Go, the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of free audio books (Web — iTunes), are the mate­ri­als to help K‑12 teach­ers present lit­er­a­ture in the class­room.

From fairy tales to The Ili­ad (Web — iTunes), Lit2Go orga­nizes more than 200 titles by author and genre (adven­ture, goth­ic, his­to­ry, sci­ence fic­tion) with clear genre descrip­tions and plot sum­maries for young read­ers. The look and feel of the site’s beta ver­sion is user-friend­ly and library-like, with type­writer fonts and illus­tra­tions mak­ing it a plea­sure to browse. There are a few small kinks to be worked out how­ev­er, so teach­ers inter­est­ed in down­load­ing sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als should opt for the orig­i­nal site.

Lit2Go mar­ries the old school library form (each novel’s year of pub­li­ca­tion and orig­i­nal pub­lish­er is includ­ed) with the capac­i­ty of the web (a link takes read­ers direct­ly to the iTunes store, where Lit2Go has its own sec­tion of free down­loads).

Many titles include sup­port mate­r­i­al to kick off class­room dis­cus­sion or to coach stu­dents through devel­op­ing their own char­ac­ter dia­grams. One of the site’s real assets is the way it curates titles into col­lec­tions, includ­ing African-Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, Amer­i­can Founders and the intrigu­ing Hap­pi­ness Col­lec­tion where read­ers find Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Swing” and Shakespeare’s heart-stop­ping scene in which Fri­ar Lau­rence mar­ries Romeo to Juli­et (Web — iTunes).

Anoth­er cura­to­r­i­al bonus: Mate­ri­als are also orga­nized by grade lev­el, using the Flesch-Kin­caid Grade Lev­el index. Teach­ers and stu­dents can also down­load each title’s full text as a PDF, to read along to the audio.

Mean­while, your can find hun­dreds of down­load­able works of lit­er­a­ture in our own meta col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

Shel Silverstein Reads His Poem ‘Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too’ in Animated Video

in Animation, Books, K-12 | May 1st, 2012

You know Shel Sil­ver­stein as the author of the beloved chil­dren’s book, The Giv­ing Tree, which he even­tu­al­ly turned into an ani­mat­ed film in 1973. Sil­ver­stein nar­rat­ed the film him­self and played the accom­pa­ny­ing har­mon­i­ca too. You can watch it online right here.

Now, almost four decades lat­er, comes anoth­er ani­mat­ed video. This time we have the voice of Sil­ver­stein (1930–1999) read­ing his poem, ‘Ick­le Me, Pick­le Me, Tick­le Me Too,’ which orig­i­nal­ly appeared in anoth­er famous col­lec­tion, Where the Side­walk Ends. The ani­ma­tion, you’ll notice right away, uses the same aes­thet­ic as the 1974 book. Hope you enjoy. And props go to Media Bistro for bring­ing it to light.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Man Who Quit Money — and Lived to Tell About It

in Books, Life | April 30th, 2012

If you’re get­ting ready to start yet anoth­er work week, let us give you some food for thought.

12 years ago, Daniel Sue­lo walked into a phone booth, left his only mon­ey there ($30), and has­n’t touched any since — no cash, no loans, no cred­it cards, no bank accounts, no wel­fare pay­ments — nada. Instead, he sleeps in caves in the Utah desert (rent free), lives the life of a hunter-gath­er­er, remains active in his Moab com­mu­ni­ty and proves that much of what we con­sid­er a neces­si­ty real­ly isn’t at all.

Sue­lo was pro­filed in a 2009 piece in Details. He’s now the sub­ject of Mark Sun­deen’s new book, The Man Who Quit Mon­ey.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

Werner Herzog Reads From Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses

in Books, Film, Radio | April 25th, 2012

Rough­ly since the 2005 release of his wide­ly seen doc­u­men­tary Griz­zly Man, Wern­er Her­zog has come into great demand. He does so not just as a film­mak­er (though he has dozens and dozens of movies of many kinds to his name), or as a writer (though sev­er­al vol­umes of his diaries and one long-form inter­view have appeared as books). Many of Her­zog’s newest fans, lured into the fold by the dis­tinc­tive voiceover nar­ra­tion he records for his doc­u­men­taries, sim­ply want to hear him talk. Hav­ing grown up in Bavaria, honed his craft in Ger­man-lan­guage projects through the sev­en­ties, and more recent­ly put down roots in Los Ange­les, Her­zog com­mu­ni­cates in a man­ner some­how more basic and more intel­lec­tu­al, more and less artic­u­late, than any oth­er pub­lic per­son­al­i­ty alive. In one char­ac­ter­is­tic line from Griz­zly Man, he com­pares his view of nature to his hap­less sub­ject, the late bear enthu­si­ast Tim­o­thy Tread­well: “What haunts me is that, in all the faces of all the bears that Tread­well ever filmed, I dis­cov­er no kin­ship, no under­stand­ing, no mer­cy. I see only the over­whelm­ing indif­fer­ence of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored inter­est in food.”

If you’ve nev­er seen the movie, imag­ine those sen­tences spo­ken with a Teu­ton­i­cal­ly inflect­ed delib­er­ate­ness and the non-native Eng­lish speak­er’s slight hes­i­tan­cy about word choice. Then imag­ine it ulti­mate­ly arriv­ing at the kind of grasp of and rev­er­ence for the mean­ing of those words you tend to have to spend a lot of time star­ing into the abyss to achieve. Giv­en his inter­est in the affect­less sav­agery of the world around us, it comes as no sur­prise that Her­zog counts him­self as a fan of the nov­el­ist Cor­mac McCarthy. Pulled from an episode of NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day, the above clip fea­tures Her­zog read­ing, and thrilling to, a pas­sage from McCarthy’s 1992 nov­el, All the Pret­ty Hors­es. “It can­not get any bet­ter,” he adds, “and for decades we have not had this lan­guage in Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.” Crim­i­nal­ly, he did­n’t direct the adap­ta­tion of All the Pret­ty Hors­es, nor has he direct­ed any oth­er. But until the inevitable day that he does, per­haps he could just record McCarthy’s audio­books?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)

An Evening With Wern­er Her­zog

Con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture: An Open Yale Course

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Clive Owen & Nicole Kidman Star in HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn: Two Writers, A Marriage and a Civil War

in Books, Film, History | April 20th, 2012

On the 28th of next month, HBO will air Hem­ing­way & Gell­horn, a fea­ture-length dra­ma based on the tit­u­lar writ­ers’ five-year mar­riage. Direct­ed by well-known adapter of lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry Philip Kauf­man — he of The Right Stuff, Hen­ry & June, and Quills — the film roots itself in the peri­od of 1936 to 1945, begin­ning with the cou­ple’s first encounter in Flori­da and fol­low­ing them into the Span­ish Civ­il War, which pro­vid­ed both of them with vivid mate­r­i­al indeed. Amer­i­cans and Euro­peans — and no doubt much of the rest of the read­ing world — need no intro­duc­tion to Ernest Hem­ing­way, author of such oft-assigned nov­els as The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Ris­es, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. As the quin­tes­sen­tial high-liv­ing, sav­age­ly artis­tic, and aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly respect­ed fig­ure movies love, he’s under­gone a great many cin­e­mat­ic res­ur­rec­tions this last decade and a half: Albert Finney played him in Hem­ing­way, The Hunter of Death; Vin­cent Walsh played him in Hem­ingway: That Sum­mer in Paris; Corey Stoll played him most vis­i­bly in Woody Allen’s Mid­night in Paris; and Antho­ny Hop­kins will play him in next year’s Hem­ing­way and Fuentes. Movie-star buffs must have all kinds of expec­ta­tions for “Papa” as embod­ied in the ever-ris­ing Clive Owen, but some­thing tells me they’ll have even more to say about Nicole Kid­man’s turn as Martha Gell­horn.

If you can’t imme­di­ate­ly place the name of Martha Gell­horn in the life of Ernest Hem­ing­way, it’s per­haps because she, her­self, helped ensure that. After she divorced him in 1945, Gell­horn specif­i­cal­ly request­ed that her inter­view­ers nev­er so much as bring up Hem­ing­way’s name. Though it counts as no fail­ure to fall under Hem­ing­way’s shad­ow in the pub­lic lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tion — most writ­ers do, after all — Gell­horn carved out her own siz­able place in the his­to­ry of for­eign cor­re­spon­dence, report­ing on war not only from Spain but from Eng­land, Hong Kong, Viet­nam, Fin­land, Sin­ga­pore, Ger­many, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Bur­ma, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, and the Mid­dle East. Hem­ing­way & Gell­horn, whose trail­er you can watch above, seems like­ly to fill in plen­ty of bio­graph­i­cal details that many of Hem­ing­way’s read­ers, and even many of Gell­horn’s, don’t know. But you can’t yet watch it on the inter­net, or on DVD — or in any form at all, for that mat­ter — until after May 28th. Then, pre­sum­ably, you can see exact­ly how Martha Gell­horn inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Ernest Hem­ing­way, Fifty Years After His Death

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea Ani­mat­ed Not Once, But Twice

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Alfred Hitchcock Adapts Joseph Conrad’s Novel of Terrorism in Sabotage (1936)

in Books, Film | April 19th, 2012

Just like most of you Open Cul­ture read­ers, I’m a suck­er for cul­tur­al inter­sec­tions, the places where music meets paint­ing, poet­ry meets com­put­ing, lan­guage meets archi­tec­ture, and so on. I feel an even greater thrill when two respect­ed cre­ators team up to accom­plish this; the more unlike­ly and inad­ver­tent the com­bi­na­tion, the bet­ter. The film above, which you can watch free on Archive.org, rep­re­sents not just the inter­sec­tion of cin­e­ma and lit­er­a­ture, but the inter­sec­tion of Alfred Hitch­cock and Joseph Con­rad, titans of their respec­tive forms whose lives only briefly over­lapped. In 1907, Con­rad pub­lished The Secret Agent, a polit­i­cal nov­el of late nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don. (Find it in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion) In 1936, Hitch­cock turned it into the pic­ture Sab­o­tage, also known as The Woman Alone (but not, I should note, Secret Agent, an entire­ly dif­fer­ent Hitch­cock-direct­ed film of that year). Con­rad’s book, a tale of ide­ol­o­gy and ter­ror­ism, saw very fre­quent cita­tion in the after­math of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. Lat­er that decade, Quentin Taran­ti­no cit­ed Hitch­cock­’s film to illus­trate a vital plot point in his own Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds. Both works, it seems, have retained a cer­tain rel­e­vance.

While Hitch­cock and com­pa­ny tai­lored Con­rad’s source mate­r­i­al to fit their sen­si­bil­i­ty, their times, and their medi­um, both the movie and the nov­el cen­ter on a busi­ness­man named Ver­loc. (Spoil­er alert, we talk about the plot here.) Caught in the unen­vi­able posi­tion of belong­ing to a bomb-chuck­ing anar­chist soci­ety and work­ing as an agent provo­ca­teur for a coun­try some­where in shad­owy East­ern Europe, Ver­loc uses his unsus­pect­ing young broth­er-in-law Ste­vie to car­ry out an attack meant to osten­si­bly fur­ther the anar­chist agen­da but to secret­ly strike a blow for the nation that employs him. When the bomb­ing goes awry and takes Ste­vie with it — a death that Hitch­cock report­ed­ly regret­ted includ­ing, though the inevitabil­i­ty with which his plot deliv­ers it strikes me as entire­ly Hitch­cock­ian — Ver­loc finds him­self not at the mer­cy of the anar­chists, nor of the spies, nor of Scot­land Yard, but of his own enraged wife. Even after hav­ing under­gone cin­e­mat­ic sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, Con­rad’s tale eludes almost any posi­tions or mes­sages read­ers would ascribe to it. “Con­rad dis­trust­ed gov­ern­ments as much as he scorned those who sought as a mat­ter of abstract prin­ci­ple to over­throw them,” writes Judith Shule­vitz in a Slate piece on the nov­el­’s post‑9/11 pop­u­lar­i­ty. “He nei­ther advo­cat­ed one kind of state over anoth­er nor proph­e­sied the ongo­ing war against ter­ror­ism, except inso­far as he saw indus­tri­al­ized soci­ety as for­ev­er at odds with the anar­chic human heart.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

We Were Wan­der­ers on a Pre­his­toric Earth: A Short Film Inspired by Joseph Con­rad

Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Hitch­cock (MP3s)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Art of the Book Cover Explained at TED

in Art, Books, TED Talks | April 19th, 2012

Give this one a minute to get going, to get beyond the schtick. And then you’ll enter the world of Chip Kidd, asso­ciate art direc­tor at Knopf, who has designed cov­ers for many famous books. As he will tell you, his job comes down to ask­ing: What do sto­ries look like, and how can he give them a face, if not write a short visu­al haiku for them? In the remain­ing min­utes of his TED Talk, Kidd takes you through his work, reveal­ing the aes­thet­ic choic­es that went into design­ing cov­ers for books by Michael Crich­ton, John Updike, David Sedaris, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, and oth­ers.

When you’re done, we rec­om­mend check­ing out these relat­ed items:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast