2,200 Radical Political Posters Digitized: A New Archive

in Archives, History, Politics | July 2nd, 2015

I recent­ly heard some­one say his col­lege-bound nephew asked him, “What’s a union?” Whether you love unions, loathe them, or remain indif­fer­ent, the fact that an osten­si­bly edu­cat­ed young per­son might have such a sig­nif­i­cant gap in their knowl­edge should cause con­cern. A his­toric labor con­flict, after all, pro­vid­ed the occa­sion for Ronald Rea­gan to prove his bona fides to the new con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment that swept him into pow­er. His crush­ing of the Pro­fes­sion­al Air Traf­fic Con­trollers Orga­ni­za­tion (PATCO) in 1981 set the tone for the ensu­ing 30 years or so of eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, with the labor move­ment fight­ing an uphill bat­tle all the way. Pri­or to that defin­ing event, unions held sway over pol­i­tics local and nation­al, and had con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er blocks in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape through decades of strug­gle against oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing work­ing con­di­tions.

In prac­ti­cal terms, unions have stood in the way of cap­i­tal’s unceas­ing search for cheap labor and new con­sumer mar­kets; in social and cul­tur­al terms, the pol­i­tics of labor have rep­re­sent­ed a for­mi­da­ble ide­o­log­i­cal chal­lenge to con­ser­v­a­tives as well, by way of a vibrant assem­blage of anar­chists, civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans, anti-colo­nial­ists, com­mu­nists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, paci­fists, fem­i­nists, social­ists, etc. A host of rad­i­cal isms flour­ished among orga­nized work­ers espe­cial­ly in the decades between the 1870s and the 1970s, find­ing their voice in newslet­ters, mag­a­zines, pam­phlets, leaflets, and posters—fragile medi­ums that do not often weath­er well the rav­ages of time. Thus the advent of dig­i­tal archives has been a boon for stu­dents and his­to­ri­ans of work­ers’ move­ments and oth­er pop­ulist polit­i­cal groundswells. One such archive, the Joseph A. Labadie Col­lec­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Library, has recent­ly announced the dig­i­ti­za­tion of over 2,200 posters from their col­lec­tion, a data­base that spans the globe and the spec­trum of left­ist polit­i­cal speech and iconog­ra­phy.

We have clev­er­ly-designed visu­al puns like the Chica­go Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World poster just above, titled “What is what in the world of labor?” Pro­mot­ing itself as “One Big Union of All Labor,” the IWW made some of the most ambi­tious pro­pa­gan­da, like the 1912 poster (mid­dle) in which an “Indus­tri­al Co-Oper­a­tive Com­mon­wealth” replaces the tyran­ny of the cap­i­tal­ist, who is told by his “trust man­ag­er” peer, “Our rule is end­ed, dis­mount and go to work.” In this post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary fan­ta­sy, the IWW promis­es that “A few hours of use­ful work insure all a lux­u­ri­ous liv­ing,” though it only hints at the details of this utopi­an arrange­ment. Up top, we have an ornate May Day poster from 1895 by Wal­ter Crane, hop­ing for a “Mer­rie Eng­land” with “No Child Toil­ers,” “Pro­duc­tion for Use Not For Prof­it,” and “The Land For the Peo­ple,” among oth­er, more nation­al­ist, sen­ti­ments like “Eng­land Should Feed Her Own Peo­ple.”

“While all of the posters were scanned at high res­o­lu­tion,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “they appear online as thumb­nails with nav­i­ga­tion to zoom.” You can down­load the images, but only the small­er, thumb­nail size in most cas­es. These hun­dreds of posters rep­re­sent “just a por­tion of the mate­r­i­al in the Labadie Collection”—named for a “Detroit-area labor orga­niz­er, anar­chist, and author” who “had the idea for the social protest archive at the uni­ver­si­ty in 1911.” You can view oth­er polit­i­cal arti­facts in the UMich library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions here, includ­ing anar­chist pam­phlets, polit­i­cal but­tons, and a dig­i­tal pho­to col­lec­tion. The col­lec­tion as a whole gives us a poten­tial­ly inspir­ing, or infu­ri­at­ing, mosa­ic of polit­i­cal thought at its bold­est and most graph­i­cal­ly assertive from a time before online peti­tions and hash­tag cam­paigns took over as the pri­ma­ry cir­cu­la­tors of pop­u­lar rad­i­cal thought.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic (where you can find some oth­er big, visu­al­ly strik­ing posters)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A Look Inside Martin Scorsese’s Vintage Movie Poster Collection

in Film | July 2nd, 2015

When Mar­tin Scors­ese isn’t mak­ing films, he’s busy pre­serv­ing them, from help­ing fund the restora­tion of clas­sics to col­lect­ing the ephemera of his youth, espe­cial­ly posters. A selec­tion of his movie poster col­lec­tion, rep­re­sent­ing the height of film adver­tis­ing from the 1930’s to the 1960s, cur­rent­ly hangs at MoMA through Octo­ber 25, 2015.

The pow­er that a poster held in the imag­i­na­tion decades ago should not be under­stat­ed. For many it was the only knowl­edge they had about the film they were about to see, and many artists, hired in house by the stu­dios, hyped up the sex­i­est parts of the films. It sold tick­ets.

The MoMA exhib­it is cen­tered on the bill­board sized poster for Pow­ell and Pressburger’s Tales of Hoff­mann (1951), a stun­ning work when seen large. (For an under­stand­ing about the impres­sive size of most posters, check out this graph­ic.)

It’s only because of col­lec­tors like Scors­ese and Ira. M. Resnick (for whose book Scors­ese wrote an intro­duc­tion) that the artists behind these posters have been named and rec­og­nized.

Although the MoMA web page pro­mot­ing the exhi­bi­tion is sur­pris­ing­ly stingy when it comes to nam­ing all the artists in the show, some inter­net sleuthing brings up some names. The illus­tra­tor behind the Hoff­mann poster, Marc Stone, was also a painter of World War II pro­pa­gan­da posters in the UK.

The min­i­mal, Risko-esque ren­der­ing of Veron­i­ca Lake for Sullivan’s Trav­els (1941) is cred­it­ed to Mau­rice Kallis, though an anony­mous com­ment on the movie poster blog Cit­i­zen K. cred­its it to Fritz Siebel, the commenter’s father. Siebel, who immi­grat­ed to the U.S. from Vien­na, wound up illus­trat­ing A Fly Went By for Dr. Seuss’ children’s book imprint and cre­at­ing the famous Yul Bryn­ner-looka­like and clean­ing prod­uct mas­cot Mr. Clean.

René Péron, who cre­at­ed the beau­ti­ful Expres­sion­is­tic design for Erich von Stroheim’s The Lost Squadron (1932) start­ed his career with posters for silent clas­sics like Abel Gance’s Napoleon and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (1928). But he’s prob­a­bly best known for the icon­ic car­i­ca­ture of Jacques Tati grac­ing the poster for Mr. Hulot’s Hol­i­day.

Both the poster for Pow­ell and Pressburger’s Black Nar­cis­sus and Kazan’s On the Water­front are by one of the Ital­ian kings of movie posters, Ansel­mo Ballester. His style is lurid and pulpy, and if there is one dame in dis­tress in a movie, he would make her the sell­ing point of the poster. He was also known for his love of Rita Hay­worth, for whom he would pro­duce his best work. (Just look at this poster for Salome, which is way more inter­est­ing than the pic­ture it rep­re­sents.)

Last­ly, Scors­ese has added one of his own film’s posters: Peter Straus­feld’s stun­ning wood­block poster for Mean Streets. The British artist had a very par­tic­u­lar style (text on one side, graph­ic on the oth­er), and was hired by the Acad­e­my Cin­e­ma in Lon­don as their design­er. (Now, *that’s* a job.)

The fact that we can watch trail­ers on our tele­vi­sions and now iPhones has long dimin­ished the pow­er of the poster. How­ev­er, there are still signs of life in the indus­try, and the amount of artists cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful lim­it­ed edi­tion prints of posters for their favorite films increas­es every year.

via Quartz

Relat­ed con­tent:

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

100 Great­est Posters of Film Noir

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Gaze at Glob­al Movie Posters for Hitchcock’sVertigo: U.S., Japan, Italy, Poland & Beyond

The Strange and Won­der­ful Movie Posters from Ghana: The Matrix, Alien & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

George Orwell Blasts American Fashion Magazines (1946)

in English Language, Magazines | June 30th, 2015

While the print mag­a­zine indus­try as a whole has seen bet­ter days, pub­li­ca­tions ded­i­cat­ed to wom­en’s fash­ion still go sur­pris­ing­ly strong. Per­haps as a result, they’ve con­tin­ued to attract crit­i­cism, not least for their high­ly spe­cif­ic, often high­ly altered visions of the sup­pos­ed­ly ide­al body image embla­zoned across their cov­ers. One crit­ic called it an “over­bred, exhaust­ed, even deca­dent style of beau­ty,” with near­ly all of the women on dis­play “immense­ly elon­gat­ed” with nar­row hips and “slen­der, non-pre­hen­sile hands like those of a lizard.”

This hard­ly counts as a recent phe­nom­e­non; that par­tic­u­lar crit­i­cism comes from 1946, the crit­ic none oth­er than Ani­mal Farm and 1984 author George Orwell. He lodged his com­plaint against an “Amer­i­can fash­ion mag­a­zine which shall be name­less” in his “As I Please” col­umn for the British Tri­bune. The New Repub­lic, which sub­se­quent­ly ran Orwell’s broad­side state­side, re-pub­lished it on their web site last year. On the mag­a­zine’s cov­er Orwell sees a pho­to­graph of “the usu­al ele­gant female, stand­ing on a chair while a gray-haired, spec­ta­cled, crushed-look­ing man in shirt­sleeves kneels at her feet” — a tai­lor about to take a mea­sure­ment. “But to a casu­al glance he looks as though he were kiss­ing the hem of the woman’s garment—not a bad sym­bol­i­cal pic­ture of Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion.”

But this would­n’t count as an Orwellian indict­ment of the state of West­ern soci­ety with­out a harsh assess­ment of the lan­guage used, and the author of “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage” does­n’t neglect to make one here. In the fash­ion mag­a­zine Orwell finds “an extra­or­di­nary mix­ture of sheer lush­ness with clipped and some­times very expen­sive tech­ni­cal jar­gon. Words like suave-man­nered, cus­tom-fin­ished, con­tour-con­form­ing, mitt-back, inner-sole, back­dip, midriff, swoosh, swash, cur­va­ceous, slen­der­ize and pet-smooth are flung about with evi­dent full expec­ta­tion that the read­er will under­stand them at a glance. Here are a few sam­ple sen­tences tak­en at ran­dom”:

“A new Shim­mer Sheen col­or that sets your hands and his head in a whirl.” “Bared and beau­ti­ful­ly bosomy.” “Feath­ery-light Mil­liken Fleece to keep her kit­ten-snug!” “Oth­ers see you through a veil of sheer beau­ty, and they won­der why!” “An excla­ma­tion point of a dress that depends on flu­id fab­ric for much of its dra­ma.” “The mir­a­cle of fig­ure flat­tery!” “Molds your bosom into proud fem­i­nine lines.” “Isn’t it won­der­ful to know that Corsets wash and wear and whit­tle you down… even though they weigh only four ounces!” “The dis­tilled witch­ery of one woman who was for­ev­er desir­able… for­ev­er beloved… For­ev­er Amber.” And so on and so on and so on.

From what I can tell by the fash­ion mag­a­zines of 2015 my girl­friend leaves around the house, while the spe­cif­ic ter­mi­nol­o­gy might have changed, the brand-strewn over­all word­scape of mean­ing­less­ness and obscu­ran­tism remains. Orwell sure­ly did­n’t fore­see that lam­en­ta­ble lin­guis­tic and aes­thet­ic sit­u­a­tion chang­ing any time soon — though it might sur­prise him that, despite it all, Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion itself, in its char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly unsleek, inel­e­gant, and pro­vi­sion­al way, has con­tin­ued lum­ber­ing on.

You can read Orwell’s short essay on Fash­ion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf (1940)

The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (Cir­ca 1921)

George Orwell and Dou­glas Adams Explain How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

For 95 Min­utes, the BBC Brings George Orwell to Life

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metropolis (1927)

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | June 26th, 2015

On Mon­day, we brought you evi­dence that Stan­ley Kubrick invent­ed the tablet com­put­er in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Today, we go back forty years fur­ther into cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry to ask whether Fritz Lang invent­ed the video phone in 1927’s Metrop­o­lis. In the clip above, you can watch a scene set in the home of Joh Fred­er­sen, stern mas­ter of the vast, futur­is­tic, tit­u­lar indus­tri­al city of 2026. In order to best rule all he sur­veys — and to com­plete the image of a 20th-cen­tu­ry dystopia — he lives high above the infer­nal roil of Metrop­o­lis, safe­ly ensconced in one of its ver­tig­i­nous tow­ers and equipped with the lat­est hulk­ing, wall-mount­ed, inex­plic­a­bly paper-spout­ing video phone tech­nol­o­gy.

Fred­er­sen, writes Joe Malia in his notes on video phones in film, “appears to use four sep­a­rate dials to arrive at the cor­rect fre­quen­cy for the call. Two assign the cor­rect call loca­tion and two small­er ones pro­vide fine video tun­ing. He then picks up a phone receiv­er with one hand and uses the oth­er to tap a rhythm on a pan­el that is relayed to the oth­er phone and dis­played as flash­es of light to attract atten­tion.”

Not con­tent to infer the mechan­ics of these imag­i­nary devices, Malia would go on to cre­ate the super­cut below, a sur­vey of video phones through­out the his­to­ry of film and tele­vi­sion, from Metrop­o­lis onward, includ­ing a stop at 2001:

The super­cut also includes a clip from Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner, whose (on the whole, aston­ish­ing­ly time­less) design I called out for using video phones in a video essay of my own. In real­i­ty, con­trary to all these 20th-cen­tu­ry visions of the far-flung future, video phone tech­nol­o­gy did­n’t devel­op quite as rapid­ly as pre­dict­ed, and when it did devel­op, it did­n’t spread in quite the same way as pre­dict­ed. Even the rich world of 2015 lacks bulky video phone box­es in every home and on every street cor­ner, but with voice over inter­net pro­to­col ser­vices like Skype, many in even the poor­est parts of the world can effec­tive­ly make bet­ter video phone calls than these grand-scale sci-fi pro­duc­tions dared imag­ine — then again, they do often make them on tablets more or less straight out of 2001.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch an Animation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s New Story, “Love Is Blind and Deaf”

in Animation, Literature | June 24th, 2015

Briefly not­ed: Jonathan Safran Foer (Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close and Every­thing Is Illu­mi­nat­ed) has a new short sto­ry, “Love Is Blind and Deaf,” in the Sum­mer Fic­tion Issue of The New York­er. And, by short, I mean short. His quirky Adam and Eve sto­ry runs 592 words.

You can read the sto­ry free online here (if you haven’t exceed­ed the month­ly quo­ta of The New York­er’s pay­wall). Or, if you’re more visu­al, you can watch an ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the sto­ry above. Direct­ed by Gur Ben­twich and ani­mat­ed by Ofra Koblin­er, the video was pro­duced by Sto­ryvid, a non­prof­it pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that aspires to cre­ate “the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of a music video.”

For more Foer, lis­ten to him read Amos Oz’s sto­ry, “The King of Oz,” which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of 630 Free Audio Books.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

700 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Mor­ri­son & Steven Pinker Cul­ti­vate Thought on Chipotle’s Cups and Bags

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

The Psychology of Messiness & Creativity: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Creative Work Go Hand in Hand

in Art, Creativity, Life | June 19th, 2015

You may have come into con­tact at some point with Tracey Emin’s My Bed, an art instal­la­tion that repro­duces her pri­vate space dur­ing a time when she spent four days as a shut-in in 1998, “heart­bro­ken”: the bed’s unmade, the bed­side strewn with cig­a­rettes, moc­casins, a bot­tle of booze, food, and “what appears to be a six­teen year old con­dom”…. If you were savvy enough to be Tracey Emin in 1998—and none of us were—you would have sold that messy room for over four mil­lion dol­lars last year at a Christie’s auc­tion. I doubt anoth­er buy­er of that cal­iber will come along for a knock-off, but this doesn’t mean the mess­es we make while slob­bing around our own homes are with­out their own, intan­gi­ble, val­ue.

Those mess­es, in fact, may be seedbeds of cre­ativ­i­ty, con­firm­ing a cliché as per­sis­tent as the one about doc­tors’ hand­writ­ing, and per­haps as accu­rate. It seems a messy desk, room, or stu­dio may gen­uine­ly be a mark of genius at work. Albert Ein­stein for exam­ple, writes Elite Dai­ly, had a desk that “looked like a spite­ful ex-girl­friend had a mis­sion to destroy his work­space.” Ein­stein respond­ed to crit­i­cism of his work habits by ask­ing, “If a clut­tered desk is a sign of a clut­tered mind, then what are we to think of an emp­ty desk?”

Mark Twain also had a messy desk, “per­haps even more clut­tered than that of Albert Ein­stein.” To find out whether the messi­ness trait’s rela­tion to cre­ativ­i­ty is sim­ply an “urban leg­end” or not, Kath­leen Vohs (a researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta’s Carl­son School of Man­age­ment) and her col­leagues con­duct­ed a series of exper­i­ments in both tidy and unruly spaces with 188 adults giv­en tasks to choose from.

Vohs describes her find­ings in the New York Times, con­clud­ing that messi­ness and cre­ativ­i­ty are at least very strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed, and that “while clean­ing up cer­tain­ly has its ben­e­fits, clean spaces might be too con­ven­tion­al to let inspi­ra­tion flow.” But there are trade-offs. Read about them in Vohs’ paper—“Phys­i­cal Order Pro­duces Healthy Choic­es, Gen­eros­i­ty, and Con­ven­tion­al­i­ty, Where­as Dis­or­der Pro­duces Cre­ativ­i­ty.” And just above, see Vohs’ co-author Joe Red­den, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Mar­ket­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Minnesota’s Carl­son School of Man­age­ment, dis­cuss the team’s fas­ci­nat­ing results. If con­duct­ing such an exper­i­ment on your­self, it might be best to do so in a space that’s all your own, though, like the rest of us, you’re too late to cre­ative­ly turn the mess you make into lucra­tive con­cep­tu­al art.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Meta Star Wars: All Six Films in One

in Film, Random | June 19th, 2015

We’ve shown our fair share of Star Wars mashups and fan films over the years. I cite for exam­ple:

• Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)
• A 2 Hour Anno­tat­ed Star Wars Film That Reveals the Cin­e­mat­ic Influ­ences Behind George Lucas’ Clas­sic Film
• Fans Recon­struct the Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977.
• Star Wars Recut as Silent Film

The lat­est and maybe not great­est fan rework­ing of Star Wars (now avail­able on YouTube) lets you watch all six Star Wars films online. At once. With one film lay­ered upon the oth­er.

Is there some cul­tur­al val­ue to this lay­er­ing of films? Maybe only inso­far as it gives the keen observ­er the chance to find some meta trends run­ning through the films. One YouTu­ber com­ment­ed, “The real­ly inter­est­ing part is that they’re sim­i­lar­ly paced. If you skip around you’ll almost always find all talk­ing scenes lined up and all action scenes lined up. Just shows how for­mu­la­ic movies are (or at least how for­mu­la­ic George Lucas is).”

Feel free to drop your own obser­va­tions in the com­ments sec­tion below. And, by the way, the per­son who cre­at­ed this mashup has also made avail­able a full gallery of HD still frames on imgur here.

via Twit­ter

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Free: Read 9 Travel Books Online by Monty Python’s Michael Palin

in Television, Travel | June 18th, 2015

Image cour­tesy of Chipps
Most of us come to Michael Palin through his work as a com­ic actor (in the role of dead par­rot sales­man or oth­er­wise), but at this point almost as many know him sec­ond as a found­ing mem­ber of Mon­ty Python, and first as an affa­ble glo­be­trot­ter. That part of his career began in 1988, when he host­ed the Earth-cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ing BBC trav­el series Around the World in 80 Days. (See an episode here.) Its suc­cess has led him, over the sub­se­quent 27 years, onto fur­ther (and far­ther-flung) tele­vised jour­neys: from the North Pole to the South, around the Pacif­ic Rim, in the adven­tur­ous foot­steps of Ernest Hem­ing­way, across the Sahara, up the Himalayas, across the “new” cen­tral and east­ern Europe, around the world again, and most recent­ly through Brazil.

Not con­tent to set a high water­mark for trav­el tele­vi­sion, Palin has also writ­ten a com­pan­ion book for each series, lav­ish­ly col­lect­ing maps, pic­tures, and his own trav­el diaries. Those last reveal a more nuanced side of “the nicest chap in Britain,” whose famous­ly easy­go­ing, def­er­en­tial, and unsur­pris­ing­ly good-humored per­sona place him so well to deal with the world’s stag­ger­ing vari­ety of peo­ple, places, and incon­ve­niences. “I can sum­mon up noth­ing but res­ig­na­tion at the thought of cook­ing with the locals all morn­ing, then hav­ing to lis­ten to music and songs I don’t under­stand for the rest of the after­noon,” he writes after wak­ing up on yet anoth­er island, in an entry excerpt­ed in last year’s Trav­el­ling to Work, the lat­est pub­lished vol­ume of his life’s diaries. “And, worst of all, hav­ing to look as if I’m enjoy­ing it.”

But these books also reveal that most of the time, Palin real­ly is enjoy­ing it. His insa­tiable curios­i­ty (not to men­tion his inex­orable pro­duc­tion sched­ule) dri­ves him con­tin­u­ous­ly ahead, a curios­i­ty in which you, too can share now that he’s made all these books free to read online at palinstravels.co.uk. Click on the links/titles below, and then look for the prompts that say “Dis­cov­er the Series Here” and, below that, “Start Read­ing the Book.”

• Around the World in 80 Days
• Pole to Pole
• Full Cir­cle
• Hem­ing­way Adven­ture
• Sahara
• Himalaya
• New Europe
• 80 Days Revis­it­ed
• Brazil

And if you make a free account at the site, it will even allow you to you keep vir­tu­al “book­marks” in as many of the books as you like, guar­an­tee­ing that you won’t get lost amidst this wealth of trav­el con­tent. But if you choose to fol­low Pal­in’s exam­ple and actu­al­ly get out there into every cor­ner of the world, well, no such anti-lost­ness guar­an­tees exist — but as every fan of Pal­in’s Trav­els knows, those very com­pli­ca­tions make it worth­while. As least you won’t have a five-man crew trail­ing behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Trains and the Brits Who Love Them: Mon­ty Python’s Michael Palin on Great Rail­way Jour­neys

Michael Palin’s Tour of the Best Loved Mon­ty Python Sketch Loca­tions

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Christopher Lee Reads “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 Classic

in Audio Books, Literature | June 16th, 2015

Last Fri­day, after we marked the pass­ing of Christo­pher Lee by fea­tur­ing his read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 nar­ra­tive poem “The Raven,” we stum­bled, by chance, upon Lee’s read­ing of anoth­er Poe classic–“The Tell-Tale Heart.” Oper­at­ing with the the­o­ry that there’s no such thing as too much Edgar Allan Poe, and cer­tain­ly no such thing as too much Christo­pher Lee read­ing Edgar Allan Poe, we’ve fea­tured that sec­ond read­ing above. It’ll be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books…

via the Edgar Allan Poe Face­book Page

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Hear Friedrich Nietzsche’s Classical Piano Compositions: They’re Aphoristic Like His Philosophy

in Music, Philosophy | June 11th, 2015

In March, we fea­tured 43 orig­i­nal tracks of clas­si­cal music by philoso­pher and self-taught com­pos­er Friedrich Niet­zsche, bet­ter known as the author of books like Thus Spoke Zarathus­tra and Beyond Good and Evil. Despite the endur­ing impor­tance of his tex­tu­al out­put, Josh Jones not­ed that “what Niet­zsche loved most was music.” He “found the mun­dane work of pol­i­tics and nation­al­ist con­quest, with its trib­al­ism and moral pre­ten­sions, thor­ough­ly dis­taste­ful. Instead, he con­sid­ered the cre­ative work of artists, writ­ers, and musi­cians, as well as sci­en­tists, of para­mount impor­tance.”

Today we offer more of the eccen­tric, high­ly opin­ion­at­ed 19th-cen­tu­ry Ger­man philoso­pher’s musi­cal side. In the playlist just above, you can hear his piano com­po­si­tions as col­lect­ed on Michael Krück­er’s Friedrich Niet­zsche: Com­plete Solo Piano Works. “Most of the works on this album date from the 1860s, when [Niet­zsche] was a cel­e­brat­ed young pro­fes­sor and philoso­pher,” writes All­Mu­sic’s James Man­heim. “The music is light, often qua­si-impro­visato­ry, and some of it resem­bles the key­board music of the com­pos­er whom Niet­zsche extolled lat­er in life, Georges Bizet. The most sub­stan­tial piece, the 20-minute Hym­nus an die Fre­und­schaft, was essen­tial­ly his last com­po­si­tion, but he lat­er reworked it with texts by his then-love inter­est, Lou Andreas-Salomé; that ver­sion was lat­er arranged for cho­rus and orches­tra by anoth­er com­pos­er.”

Man­heim also notes that this selec­tion of piano pieces, in their brevi­ty, sug­gest that “the apho­ris­tic style of Niet­zsche’s late writ­ings was antic­i­pat­ed by his musi­cal think­ing.” Enthu­si­asts of Niet­zsche’s life and career will cer­tain­ly find them­selves mak­ing even more con­nec­tions between his musi­cal and philo­soph­i­cal work than that. But those look­ing for his moti­va­tion to work in this purest of all arts per­haps need look no fur­ther than this typ­i­cal­ly unequiv­o­cal pro­nounce­ment: “With­out music, life would be a mis­take.”

You can find more Niet­zschean piano com­po­si­tions below, these per­formed by Dorothea Klotz. To hear the music, you will need to down­load Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, if you haven’t already.

Hear Clas­si­cal Music Com­posed by Friedrich Niet­zsche: 43 Orig­i­nal Tracks

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The Phi­los­o­phy of Niet­zsche: An Intro­duc­tion by Alain de Bot­ton

A Free Playlist of Music From The Works Of James Joyce (Plus Songs Inspired by the Mod­ernist Author)

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.