15-Year-Old George R.R. Martin Writes a Fan Letter to Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (1963)

in Letters, Sci Fi | June 19th, 2014

The let­ter above goes to show two things. George Ray­mond Richard Mar­tin, oth­er­wise known as George R.R. Mar­tin, or sim­ply as GRRM, had fan­ta­sy and writ­ing in his blood from a young age. Decades before he wrote his fan­ta­sy nov­el series A Song of Ice and Fire, which HBO adapt­ed into Game of Thrones, a 15-year-old George R. Mar­tin sent a fan let­ter to Stan Lee and Jack Kir­by, the leg­endary cre­ators of Spi­der-Man, the Hulk, Thor, the X‑Men and the Fan­tas­tic Four (called “F.F.” in the let­ter). When you read the note, you can imme­di­ate­ly tell that young Mar­tin was steeped in sci-fi and fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture. He could also string togeth­er some fair­ly com­plex sen­tences dur­ing his teenage years — sen­tences that many adults would strug­gle to write. But here’s the cool part for me. Wun­derkind Mar­tin lived in good old Bay­onne, NJ, the town where yours tru­ly has deep fam­i­ly roots. You can find the cov­er of the much-praised F.F. #17 below.

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Lars von Trier’s Ani­mat­ed Movie Made When He Was 11 Years Old

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

Lars von Trier’s Animated Movie Made When He Was 11 Years Old

in Film | June 18th, 2014

Words like “adorable” and “cute” don’t come read­i­ly to mind when talk­ing about Dan­ish direc­tor Lars von Tri­er, but that’s exact­ly how you can describe the stop motion ani­mat­ed film he made when he was 11 years old. Sure, you can also describe the two-minute short — Turen til Squash­land: En Super Pølse Film (The Trip to Squash Land: A Super Sausage Film) — as creepy and vague­ly unset­tling, adjec­tives much more com­mon­ly applied to the film­mak­er.

Von Tri­er is, of course, cinema’s reign­ing bad boy. His Antichrist is a scar­ring descent into mad­ness filled with bad sex, talk­ing fox­es and hor­rif­i­cal­ly graph­ic self-muti­la­tion. Any­one who’s seen the movie will nev­er look at a pair of scis­sors in the same way. His 2011 movie Melan­cho­lia is a glo­ri­ous ode to depres­sion and glob­al anni­hi­la­tion; a beau­ti­ful anti-rev­el­ry on how much every­thing in the world sucks. And his most recent movie, Nympho­ma­ni­ac, is a 4‑hour long movie — divid­ed in two, Kill Bill style — fea­tur­ing some of the most joy­less unsim­u­lat­ed onscreen cou­plings this side of the Paris Hilton sex tape.

Turen til Squash­land, on the oth­er hand, is about a sen­tient sausage who rides a black whale to res­cue a bun­ny rab­bit. The film was shot by the tweenaged Tri­er (he added the ‘von’ to his name in film school) on his Super 8mm cam­era in 1967. In terms of tech­nique and design, it is shock­ing­ly good. The short has a naïve sweet­ness that Wes Ander­son often aspires to while hav­ing the uncan­ny dream-like qual­i­ty of an ear­ly David Lynch movie.

It’s tempt­ing to parse Turen til Squash­land to gain some insight into von Tri­er’s lat­er auteurist obses­sions. Does von Trier’s ten­den­cy to place the vul­ner­a­ble and the love­able in the clutch­es of a cru­el and heart­less vil­lain start here? While the ever-adorable Björk ends up dan­gling from the end of a rope in Dancer in the Dark, the bun­ny in this movie thank­ful­ly makes it out alive. Cas­tra­tion is anoth­er reoc­cur­ring theme in von Trier’s work. Does that have any­thing to do with the free-range sausage pro­tag­o­nist? And does the talk­ing fox in Antichrist have its ori­gins in this movie’s trio of head spin­ning rab­bits?

The one ele­ment, how­ev­er, that has no con­nec­tion to his lat­er work is the short’s end, which shows a plac­ard read­ing “Slut.” That has noth­ing to do with his lat­est movie or von Tri­er’s com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with women. The word “slut” means “The End” in Dan­ish.

More ani­mat­ed films can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films: King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Hear Roger Waters’ Early, Work-in-Progress Recordings of Pink Floyd’s The Wall

in Music | June 17th, 2014

My first expo­sure to Pink Floyd’s rock opera The Wall left me feel­ing noth­ing less than aston­ish­ment. And though I nev­er had the chance to see the out­ra­geous stage show, with its very lit­er­al wall and giant inflat­able pig, the film has always struck me as a suit­ably dark piece of psy­chodra­ma. Over a great many sub­se­quent lis­tens, the melo­dra­mat­ic dou­ble-album can still blow my mind, but I’ve come to feel that some of the strongest mate­r­i­al are those songs penned joint­ly by Roger Waters and David Gilmour, and those are rel­a­tive­ly few. (Mark Blake quotes Gilmour as say­ing “things like ‘Com­fort­ably Numb’ were the last embers of mine and Roger’s abil­i­ty to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly togeth­er.) The bulk of the album belongs to Waters, its auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal details and per­son­al themes, and the album and film can some­times feel as sti­fled and claus­tro­pho­bic as its pro­tag­o­nist does. This is either a cre­ative fail­ing or a bril­liant meld­ing of form and con­tent.

Inspired by an inci­dent in which an exas­per­at­ed Waters spat on a row­dy fan at a sta­di­um show in Mon­tre­al dur­ing the band’s 1977 “In the Flesh Tour,” The Wall doc­u­ments the painful rise and even more painful fall of a fic­tive rock star named, of course, Pink (played by Bob Geld­of in the film ver­sion), whose life close­ly par­al­lels Waters’, down to the spit­ting. It has always seemed an odd irony that Waters respond­ed to the alien­ation of tour­ing mas­sive sta­di­ums by cre­at­ing a sta­di­um show big­ger than any­thing the band had yet done, but it speaks to the bassist and singer’s grandiose per­son­al­i­ty and obses­sive desire to turn his angst into the­ater. Often­times the results were spec­tac­u­lar, oth­er times bom­bas­tic and con­fus­ing (at least to crit­ics, some of whom are eas­i­ly con­fused). The record­ing of the album, as many well know, strained the band almost to break­ing, and by many accounts, Waters’ impe­ri­ous­ness didn’t help mat­ters, to say the least.

All of the behind-the-scenes dra­ma may or may not eclipse the dra­ma of the album itself, depend­ing on your lev­el of fan­dom and inter­est in Pink Floyd biog­ra­phy. Lovers of Waters’ epic rock dra­matur­gy will find edi­fi­ca­tion at the exten­sive online crit­i­cal com­men­tary Pink Floyd The Wall: A Com­plete Analy­sis, an online work in progress that deliv­ers on its title. For a very brief account of the sto­ry behind the sto­ry, co-pro­duc­er Bob Ezrin’s inter­view with Grammy.com offers per­spec­tive from some­one involved in the project who wasn’t a mem­ber of what came to seem like The Roger Waters’ Band. Ezrin describes The Wall as “Roger’s own project and not a group effort,” and his own role as “a kind of ref­er­ee between him and the rest of the band.”

In the begin­ning we had a very long demo that Roger had writ­ten. We start­ed to sep­a­rate out the pieces, and when we looked at the sto­ry­line we real­ized what we need­ed was a through line, some­thing to get us from start to fin­ish.

Ezrin recounts that he “closed [his] eyes and wrote out the movie that would become The Wall,” hand­ed the script out to the band, and marked songs miss­ing from Waters’ demo as “’TBW’—‘to be writ­ten.’” (Among those songs was “Com­fort­ably Numb.”)

The record­ings at the top of the post—which sur­faced in 2001 with the title Under Con­struc­tion—rep­re­sent a step in The Wall’s evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­ment between Waters’ rudi­men­ta­ry demos (short excerpts above) and the com­plet­ed album. (See the Youtube page for a com­plete track­list. Con­trary to the upload­er’s descrip­tion, Roger Waters cer­tain­ly does not play all the instru­ments.) While Under Con­struc­tion has gen­er­al­ly been referred to as a “demo,” Rick Karhu of Pink Floyd fanzine Spare Bricks express­es his doubts about the use of a term he takes to denote “a fair­ly pol­ished record­ing”: “Demos are not rough record­ings or works-in-progress […]. I doubt very much that Under Con­struc­tion is a demo of The Wall.”

It’s too rough around the edges—at times shock­ing­ly so—to be strict­ly con­sid­ered a demo record­ing. At points, things are hap­haz­ard­ly edit­ed togeth­er. Songs cut off abrupt­ly, fade unex­pect­ed­ly or drop out entire­ly for a moment as if some­one at the mix­ing desk hit the wrong but­ton at some point. Vocal tracks peak-out, often caus­ing anguish to the lis­ten­er’s ear drums. Some instru­ment lines (most­ly the bass gui­tar) mean­der through the back­ground as if the per­son play­ing is mak­ing up the part as they go. Equal­iza­tion is nonex­is­tent on most tracks. Over­all, most of it sounds like a 4‑track record­ing by a band who has only the vaguest notion of how the equip­ment works.

Lest we take this descrip­tion as dis­par­age­ment, Karhu clar­i­fies: “It is pre­cise­ly for those rea­sons […] that I love them dear­ly and con­sid­er them one of the most valu­able, unau­tho­rized Floyd record­ings to be unearthed. Ever.” Many Youtube com­menters agree, some even argu­ing that these rough sketch­es are supe­ri­or to the final pol­ished prod­uct. It’s a debate I won’t weigh in on, though I will say that like Karhu, I enjoy the lo-fi ragged­ness of this ver­sion of The Wall. It seems to con­vey the emo­tion­al­ly frayed edges of these songs in a way the slick pro­duc­tion of the stu­dio album may not at times. Either as a mere doc­u­ment of the album’s ear­ly his­to­ry or an alter­nate, fragmented—and hence more traumatized—take on The Wall, this unof­fi­cial ver­sion is haunt­ing and strange. Does it per­haps bet­ter rep­re­sent Waters’ desire to make his psy­chic unease into art? We invite you to judge for your­selves. And if, like me, you can lis­ten to “Com­fort­ably Numb” (and that incred­i­ble gui­tar solo) on repeat for hours on end, you may be inter­est­ed to hear David Gilmour dis­cuss the song’s com­po­si­tion in the inter­view below.

Hear more demo tracks on YouTube here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Gilmour & David Bowie Sing “Com­fort­ably Numb” Live (2006)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

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

Salvador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Destino: See the Collaborative Film, Original Storyboards & Ink Drawings

in Animation, Art, Film | June 12th, 2014

Unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tions in pop music abound: Run DMC and Aero­smith? It works! U2 and Luciano Pavarot­ti? Why not? Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss? Sure! Any­one and Ker­mit the Frog? Yes. They don’t always work out, but the attempts, whether kismet or train­wreck, tend to reveal a great deal about the part­ners’ strengths and weak­ness­es. Unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tions in fea­ture film are some­what rar­er, though not for lack of wish­ing. I would guess the high finan­cial stakes have some­thing to do with this, as well as the sheer num­ber of peo­ple required for the aver­age pro­duc­tion. One par­tic­u­lar­ly salient exam­ple of an osten­si­ble mis­match in ani­mat­ed movies—a planned co-cre­ation by sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí and pop­ulist Walt Disney—offers a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how the two artists’ careers could have tak­en very dif­fer­ent cre­ative direc­tions. The col­lab­o­ra­tion may also have fall­en vic­tim to a film indus­try whose eco­nom­ics dis­cour­age exper­i­men­tal duets.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the ani­mat­ed short— Des­ti­no—at the top of the post. The 6 and a half minute film shows us what Dalí and Disney’s planned project might have looked like. Recre­at­ed from 17 sec­onds of orig­i­nal ani­ma­tion and sto­ry­boards drawn by Dalí and released in 2003 by Disney’s nephew Roy, Des­ti­no gives us an almost per­fect sym­bio­sis of the two cre­ators’ sen­si­bil­i­ties, with Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia-like flights smooth­ly ani­mat­ing Dalí’s flu­id dream imagery. Accord­ing to Chris Pal­lant, author of Demys­ti­fy­ing Dis­ney, work between the two on the orig­i­nal project also moved smooth­ly, with lit­tle fric­tion between the two artists. Meet­ing in 1945, Dalí and Dis­ney “quick­ly devel­oped an indus­tri­ous work­ing rela­tion­ship” and “ease of col­lab­o­ra­tion.” Pal­lant writes that “Disney’s desire for absolute cre­ative con­trol changed, and, for the first time, the ani­ma­tors work­ing with­in the stu­dio felt the influ­ence of oth­er artis­tic forces.” I imag­ine it might prove dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, to micro­man­age Sal­vador Dalí. In any case, the fruit­ful rela­tion­ship pro­duced results:

Des­ti­no reached a rel­a­tive­ly advanced stage before being aban­doned. By mid-1946 the Dis­ney- Dalí col­lab­o­ra­tion encom­passed approx­i­mate­ly ’80 pen-and-ink sketch­es’ and numer­ous ‘sto­ry­boards, draw­ings and paint­ings that were cre­at­ed over nine months in 1945 and 1946.’

Roy E. Dis­ney dis­cov­ered Dalí’s Des­ti­no art­work in the late 90s, lead­ing to his short re-cre­ation of what might have been. Above, you can flip through a slideshow of twelve of those draw­ings and sto­ry­boards, cour­tesy of Park West Gallery, who rep­re­sent the work. The Des­ti­no mate­ri­als went on dis­play at the Draw­ings Room in Figueres, Spain. The exhi­bi­tion fea­tured “1 oil paint­ing, 1 water­colour, 15 prepara­to­ry drawings—10 of which are unpublished—and 9 pho­tographs of Dalí in the cre­ative process of this mate­r­i­al, of the Dis­ney cou­ple in Port Lli­gat in 1957, and the Dalí cou­ple in Bur­bank.” You can see many of those pho­tographs in the exhibit’s pam­phlet (in pdf here, in Span­ish and Eng­lish; cov­er image below), which offers a detailed descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal project, includ­ing its nar­ra­tive con­cept, a “love sto­ry” between a dancer and “base­ball-play­er-cum-god Cronos” meant to rep­re­sent “the impor­tance of time as we wait for des­tiny to act on our lives.”

Inspired by a Mex­i­can song by Arman­do Dominguez, Des­ti­no, on its face, seems like a very strange choice for Dis­ney, who gen­er­al­ly traf­ficked in more rec­og­niz­able (and Euro­pean) folk-tale sources. And yet, the exhi­bi­tion pam­phlet asserts, the co-pro­duc­tion made a great deal of sense for Dalí, “if we con­sid­er that one Dalin­ian con­stant is his bring­ing togeth­er of the elit­ist artis­tic idea and mass cul­ture (and vice ver­sa) […]. Des­ti­no becomes a unique artis­tic prod­uct in which Dalin­ian expres­sive­ness is com­bined with Disney’s fan­ta­sy and sonor­i­ty, mak­ing it a film in which Dalí’s images take on move­ment and Disney’s fig­ures become ‘Dalinised.’ ”

And yet, while both Dalí and Dis­ney worked excit­ed­ly on the project, it was ulti­mate­ly not to be, at least until almost six­ty years lat­er. Des­ti­no would have been part of a “pack­age film,” like Fan­ta­sia, a com­pi­la­tion of short vignettes. John Hench, a Dis­ney artist who worked on the project with Dalí, spec­u­lat­ed that the com­pa­ny “fore­saw the end” of such fea­tures. Pal­lant, how­ev­er, goes fur­ther in spec­u­lat­ing the film “would have resem­bled a poten­tial box-office bomb” for Dis­ney, who remarked lat­er that is was “no fault of Dalí’s that the project… was not completed—it was sim­ply a case of pol­i­cy changes in our dis­tri­b­u­tion plans.”

This cryp­tic remark, writes Pal­lant, alludes to Disney’s plans to focus his cre­ative ener­gy on “safe” fea­ture-length projects “to strength­en the company’s posi­tion with­in the film indus­try.” While such a deci­sion might have made good busi­ness sense, it prob­a­bly doomed many more Des­ti­no-like ideas that might have made the Walt Dis­ney com­pa­ny a very dif­fer­ent enti­ty indeed. One can only imag­ine what the stu­dio might have become had Dis­ney opt­ed to pur­sue exper­i­ments like this instead of tak­ing the more prof­itable route. Of course, giv­en the mar­ket pres­sures on the movie indus­try, it’s also pos­si­ble the stu­dio might not have sur­vived at all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Impres­sions of Upper Mon­go­lia : Sal­vador Dalí’s Last Film About a Search for a Giant Hal­lu­cino­genic Mush­room

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

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

1756 TED Talks Listed in a Neat Spreadsheet

in TED Talks | June 11th, 2014

A quick update for TED heads. In ear­ly 2011 we men­tioned that some­one put togeth­er a handy online spread­sheet that lists 875 TED Talks, with handy links to each video. It’s worth men­tion­ing the spread­sheet again because this evolv­ing Google doc now lists 1756 talks. That works out to more than 440 hours of “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple.” Because the page gets updat­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, you’ll want to book­mark it and keep tabs on the new addi­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Rare Video: Fidel Castro Plays Baseball (1959)

in History, Sports | June 11th, 2014

Base­ball has the great capac­i­ty to tran­scend pol­i­tics. Peo­ple on the right love it. (Think George Will, the colum­nist who finds him­self at the cen­ter of a hot con­tro­ver­sy this week). The same holds true for folks on the left. One left­ist with a deep and abid­ing love for base­ball is Fidel Cas­tro. Before he seized pow­er in 1959, Cas­tro spent some time on the dia­mond. Baseball-Reference.com tells us that Fidel like­ly “pitched in intra­mur­al com­pe­ti­tion in col­lege for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Havana law school.” But “he was not good enough to pitch on the col­lege’s var­si­ty team.” Nor is the long-stand­ing myth true that “Cas­tro tried out for either the New York Yan­kees or Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors and failed to impress enough to sign a con­tract.” He was nev­er going to have a big league career. That’s for sure. But once Cas­tro actu­al­ly rose to pow­er, no one was going to stop him from hit­ting or pitch­ing in a 1959 char­i­ty game. (Watch above.) As they say, some­times “it’s good to be the king.” Just ask Vladimir Putin, who recent­ly scored 6 goals, and made 5 assists, in a hock­ey game. 

The 1959 clip above comes from British Pathé, which made an archive of 85,000 his­tor­i­cal films avail­able on YouTube in April. Don’t miss it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Murray’s Base­ball Hall of Fame Speech (and Hideous Sports Coat)

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

Free: Watch Jack­ie Robin­son Star in The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry (1950)

Lou Gehrig, Yan­kee Leg­end, Stars in 1938 West­ern Rawhide

The Hobbit: The First Animation & Film Adaptation of Tolkien’s Classic (1966)

in Animation, Literature | June 10th, 2014

If you come to the first film pro­duc­tion of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 nov­el The Hob­bit expect­ing any­thing like a rev­er­ent ren­di­tion of the sto­ry, pre­pare your­self for dis­ap­point­ment. Pro­duced in 1966, the 12-minute ani­mat­ed short takes ele­ments of the clas­sic work of fan­ta­sy and adapts—or corrupts—them to fit a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, one with a drag­on, a hob­bit, a wiz­ard, and an Arken­stone, to be sure, but with a great many odd lib­er­ties tak­en with Tolkien’s world. Instead of the great Smaug, we have a drag­on named “Slag.” Instead of pil­lag­ing The Lone­ly Moun­tain, he steals the trea­sure of the vil­lage of Dale. Instead of a troupe of dwarves, we have one Gen­er­al Oak­en­shield, a princess named “Mika,” and an unnamed watch­man. Trolls and gob­lins become “Groans” and “Grablins,” and Gol­lum appears as “Goloom.”

Is this some off-brand knock-off, you may ask? Not exact­ly. Pro­duc­er William Sny­der became the first per­son to acquire rights to Tolkien’s book, and he orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed a fea­ture length film. The project failed, but when the novel’s pop­u­lar­i­ty soared, Sny­der con­tract­ed Prague-based com­ic illus­tra­tor and ani­ma­tor Gene Deitch to cre­ate the short film you see above. Snyder’s motives, it seems, were mer­ce­nary: he want­ed to extend his license, which he then sold back to Tolkien’s pub­lish­ers for $100,000. But the film itself has a cer­tain charm, despite the nar­ra­tive butch­ery. Deitch hired Czech illus­tra­tor Adolf Born for the project, and he ren­ders the sto­ry in the col­or­ful, folk-art style of East­ern Europe (some of the draw­ings remind me of the lurid car­i­ca­tures of Ger­man artist George Grosz, some of Rocky and Bull­win­kle).

If Deitch’s Hob­bit short fails to move you, con­sid­er it at least a minor entry in the career of a fas­ci­nat­ing char­ac­ter in the world of comics, ani­ma­tion, and folk music. Deitch pro­duced car­toons for Colum­bia, 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox, MGM, and Para­mount (includ­ing some Tom and Jer­ry and Pop­eye shorts) and made record­ings of John Lee Hook­er and Pete Seeger, as well as the recent­ly re-dis­cov­ered won­der Con­nie Con­verse. He also wrote the pop­u­lar guide How to Suc­ceed in Ani­ma­tion and fathered three car­toon­ist sons, the most well-known of whom, Kim Deitch, holds a spe­cial place in the his­to­ry of under­ground comics. But I offer none of this infor­ma­tion to excuse the flaws of Deitch and Snyder’s Hob­bit short. Fans of com­ic art may love it, Tolkien purists not at all. Deitch tells the full sto­ry of the “Hol­ly­wood­ized” short film’s slap­dash mak­ing on his blog, and it is well worth a read. The film itself can be found in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

For anoth­er, much more faithful—albeit wordless—illustrated take, see Anna Repp’s End­less Book Project (screen shot above). A Metafil­ter user describes it as “one con­tin­u­ous scroll, with new art­work added almost every week.” Each pan­el has a unique look—some in the intri­cate style of Ger­man Renais­sance engrav­ing, some resem­bling wood­cuts, some inkwash draw­ings. And of course, you can­not go wrong with Tolkien’s own orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions for The Hob­bit, some pub­lished in the first edi­tion, and many more late­ly dis­cov­ered among the author’s papers. See Tolkien’s draw­ing of The Lone­ly Moun­tain at night below, and vis­it Brain­pick­ings for more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Presents Three Free Cours­es on The Lord of the Rings

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

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

David Brooks’ List of “Really Good Books”

in Books | June 9th, 2014

In the pages of The New York Times, David Brooks reeled off a list of Real­ly Good Books. He pref­aces the list with this: “Peo­ple are always ask­ing me what my favorite books are. I’ve held off list­ing them because it seems self-indul­gent. But, with sum­mer almost here, I thought I might spend a cou­ple columns rec­om­mend­ing eight books that have been piv­otal in my life.” [He actu­al­ly rec­om­mends more than 8 in the end.] Some of the books will help you think about liv­ing a life of “civ­i­lized ambi­tion.” Oth­ers will nur­ture your inner spir­it. And still oth­ers will help you think more intel­li­gent­ly about writ­ing and pol­i­tics. Along the way, he adds a quick caveat about what these books “can’t do.” “They can’t carve your con­vic­tions about the world. Only life can do that — only rela­tion­ships, strug­gle, love, play and work. Books can give you vocab­u­lar­ies and frame­works to help you under­stand and decide, but life pro­vides exact­ly the edu­ca­tion you need.”

The list was pub­lished in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2. In each install­ment, Brooks explains why he select­ed each work. Where pos­si­ble, we have pro­vid­ed links to texts avail­able online. You can also find them list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1. A Col­lec­tion of Essays by George Orwell

2. Anna Karen­i­na by Leo Tol­stoy

3. “Ratio­nal­ism in Pol­i­tics” by Michael Oakeshott

4. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn War­ren

5. The Pelo­pon­nesian War by Thucy­dides

6. The Con­fes­sions by St. Augus­tine

7. The Lone­ly Man of Faith by Joseph Soloveitchik

8. Man’s Search for Mean­ing by Vik­tor Fran­kl (see Fran­kl talk about that great search here.)

9. Mid­dle­march by George Eliot

10. End­less Love by Scott Spencer

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Free Physics Textbooks

in | June 8th, 2014

• Age of Ein­stein, by Frank W. K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Cal­cu­lus-Based Physics by Jef­frey W. Schnick, Saint Anselm Col­lege
• Clas­si­cal Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics by Bo Thidé, Upp­sala School of Engi­neer­ing
• Col­lege Physics (intro­duc­to­ry, alge­bra-based, two-semes­ter col­lege physics book) by Open­Stax
• Con­cep­tu­al Physics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Con­ser­va­tion Laws by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Essen­tial Physics 1, Frank W.K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty
• Fields by War­ren Siegel, SUNY
• Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Intro­duc­tion to Groups, Invari­ants & Par­ti­cles, by Frank W. K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to String Field The­o­ry by War­ren Siegel, SUNY
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­t­ics and Dynam­ics by Andy Ruina and Rudra Prat­ap, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty
• Moun­tain Motion by Dr. Christoph Schiller PhD, trained at Uni­ver­sité Libre de Brux­elles
• Optics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Prin­ci­ples of Mod­ern Physics — Robert B. Leighton, Cal­tech
• Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages: Appli­ca­tion and Inter­pre­ta­tion by Dr. Shri­ram Krish­na­murthi, Brown Uni­ver­si­ty
• Sim­ple Nature: An Intro­duc­tion to Physics for Engi­neer­ing and Phys­i­cal Sci­ence Stu­dents by Ben Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Super­space: One Thou­sand and One Lessons in Super­sym­me­try by War­ren Siegel. Jim Gates, Marc Gris­aru, and Mar­tin Rocek, SUNY, McGill, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land
• The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics by Richard Feyn­man, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands
  • Vol­ume 1: Read Online Now
  • Vol­ume 2: Read Online Now
  • Vol­ume 3: Read Online Now
• The Light and Mat­ter Series (Six texts) by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Vibra­tions and Waves by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• The Mod­ern Rev­o­lu­tion in Physics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• The Peo­ple’s Physics Book by James H. Dann, UC San­ta Cruz
• 21st Cen­tu­ry Physics Flex­book: A Com­pi­la­tion of Con­tem­po­rary and Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies, by the Sec­re­taries of Edu­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy and the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion in the state of Vir­ginia

Free Math Textbooks

in | June 8th, 2014

• Abstract Alge­bra: The Basic Grad­u­ate Year by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Abstract Alge­bra: The­o­ry and Appli­ca­tions by Thomas W. Jud­son, Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­si­ty
• Advanced Alge­bra II by Ken­ny Felder,  Raleigh Char­ter High School
• Advanced Cal­cu­lus by Stern­berg Shlo­mo and Lynn Loomis, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Alge­bra 1 (Grades 9 & 10) by Andrew and Anne Gloag, High Tech High in San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia
• Alge­bra and Analy­sis for Com­put­er Sci­ence by Jean Gal­li­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia.
• Applied Prob­a­bil­i­ty by Paul Pfeif­fer, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Basic Analy­sis by Jiří Lebl, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign
• Basic Con­cepts of Math­e­mat­ics by Elias Zakon, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wind­sor
• Basic Prob­a­bil­i­ty The­o­ry by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Basic Prob­a­bil­i­ty and Sta­tis­tics by Bren­da Meery, high school math­e­mat­ics teacher in Glace Bay, Nova Sco­tia
• Book of Proof by Dr. Richard Ham­mack, Vir­ginia Com­mon­wealth Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus for Begin­ners and Artists by MIT
• Cal­cu­lus Online Text­book, by Gilbert Strang, MIT
• Cal­cu­lus (PDF) by David Guichard, Whit­man Col­lege.
• Cal­cu­lus (PDF) by Gilbert Strang, MIT
• Cal­cu­lus 1 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus 2 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus 3 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus with Appli­ca­tions, by Daniel Kleit­man, MIT
• CK-12 Geom­e­try (Grades 10–12) by mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• CK-12 Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus (Grades 11–12) by Mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• CK-12 Trigonom­e­try — Sec­ond Edi­tion (Grades 10–12) by mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• Col­lab­o­ra­tive Sta­tis­tics by Bar­bara Illowsky, Ph.D and Susan Dean, De Anza Col­lege
• Col­lege Alge­bra by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Com­plex Analy­sis by George Cain, Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy
• Com­plex Vari­ables by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Com­pu­ta­tion­al Geom­e­try by Nicholas M. Patrikalakis, Takashi Maekawa, MIT
• A Com­pu­ta­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Num­ber The­o­ry and Alge­bra by Vic­tor Shoup, NYU
• A Course In Alge­bra­ic Num­ber The­o­ry by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• A Course In Com­mu­ta­tive Alge­bra by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Design of Com­par­a­tive Exper­i­ments by R. A. Bai­ley, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don
• Dif­fer­ence Equa­tions to Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions: An Intro­duc­tion to Cal­cu­lus by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty
• Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Dis­crete Math­e­mat­ics: An Open Intro­duc­tion by Oscar Levin, Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Col­orado
• Dynam­i­cal Sys­tems by S. Stern­berg, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Elec­tron­ic Sta­tis­tics Text­book by T. Hill & P. Lewic­ki.
• Ele­men­tary Abstract Alge­bra by W. Edwin Clark, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Flori­da
• Ele­men­tary Cal­cu­lus: An Infin­i­tes­i­mal Approach by H. Jerome Keisler, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son
• Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions with Bound­ary Val­ue Prob­lems (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Stu­dent Solu­tions Man­u­al for Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions and Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions with Bound­ary Val­ue Prob­lems (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Ele­men­tary Lin­ear Alge­bra by Kei­th Matthews, Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land
• Ele­men­tary Num­ber The­o­ry by W. Edwin Clark, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Flori­da
• Ele­ments of Abstract and Lin­ear Alge­bra by Edwin H. Con­nell, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi
• First Course in Com­plex Analy­sis by Matthias Beck, Ger­ald March­esi, and Den­nis Pix­ton, SUNY — Bing­ham­ton
• First Course in Lin­ear Alge­bra by Dr. Robert Beez­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Puget Sound
• Func­tions Defined by Improp­er Inte­grals (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Gen­er­at­ing­Func­tionol­o­gy by Her­bert Wilf, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
• Intro­duc­tion to Matrix Alge­bra by Autar K Kaw, Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da
• Intro­duc­tion to Prob­a­bil­i­ty, Sta­tis­tics, and Ran­dom Process­es by Hos­sein Pishro-Nik, UMass Amherst
• Intro­duc­tion to Prob­a­bil­i­ty (PDF) by Charles Grin­stead & J. Lau­rie Snell, Swarth­more & Dart­mouth Col­leges
• Intro­duc­tion to Real Analy­sis (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• An Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing (PDF) by Gareth James, Daniela Wit­ten, Trevor Hastie and Robert Tib­shi­rani
• Intro­duc­tion to Social Net­work Meth­ods by Robert A. Han­ne­man and Mark Rid­dle, UC River­side
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­ti­cal Thought by Michael Lavine, UMASS
• Intro­duc­tion to the The­o­ry of Num­bers by Leo Moser, McGill
• Intro­duc­to­ry Sta­tis­tics: Con­cepts, Mod­els, and Appli­ca­tions by David W. Stock­burg­er, Mis­souri State
• Lec­tures on Prob­a­bil­i­ty, Sta­tis­tics and Econo­met­rics by Mar­co Tabo­ga, Econ­o­mist, Bank of Italy
• Lec­tures on Sta­tis­tics by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Lin­ear Alge­bra (PDF) by Jim Hef­fer­on, Saint Michael’s Col­lege
• Lin­ear Alge­bra by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Math Alive by Ingrid Daubechies, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
• Math in Soci­ety by David Lip­mann, Pierce Col­lege
• Math, Numer­ics, and Pro­gram­ming (for Mechan­i­cal Engi­neers) by Masayu­ki Yano, MIT
• Math­e­mat­i­cal Meth­ods of Engi­neer­ing Analy­sis (PDF) by Erhan Çin­lar and Robert J. Van­der­bei, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
• Mul­ti­vari­able Cal­cu­lus by George Cain & James Herod, Geor­gia Tech
• Proofs and Con­cepts: The Fun­da­men­tals of Abstract Math­e­mat­ics by Dave Witte Mor­ris and Joy Mor­ris, Uni­ver­si­ty of Leth­bridge
• Real Vari­ables with Basic Met­ric Space Topol­o­gy by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Sta­tis­tics by Philip B. Stark, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia — UC Berke­ley
• A Sum­ma­ry of Cal­cu­lus by Karl Heinz Dover­mann, Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii
• The Book “A=B” by Marko Petkovsek, Her­bert Wilf and Doron Zeil­berg­er, Univ. of Penn­syl­va­nia and Rut­gers
• The Ele­ments of Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing by  Trevor Hastie, Robert Tib­shi­rani and Jerome Fried­man
• The Method of Lagrange Mul­ti­pli­ers (PDF) by William Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• The Cal­cu­lus of Func­tions of Sev­er­al Vari­ables by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty
• Yet Anoth­er Cal­cu­lus Text by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty