Oxford University Presents the 550-Year-Old Gutenberg Bible in Spectacular, High-Res Detail

in History, Religion | December 12th, 2013

The great British empiri­cist Fran­cis Bacon once remarked that Johannes Gutenberg’s print­ing press “changed the whole face and state of the world.” Although Guten­berg did not inde­pen­dent­ly devise the press, he invent­ed a mass-pro­duc­tion process of move­able type and con­coct­ed an oil-based ink which, when com­bined with the wood­en press, rev­o­lu­tion­ized the flow of infor­ma­tion. Books could now be pub­lished in vast quan­ti­ties, at only a frac­tion of the time required pre­vi­ous­ly.

For his first sem­i­nal print­ing, Guten­berg picked the Bible — an obvi­ous choice for a Chris­t­ian, and in ret­ro­spect, per­haps the only book whose his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance rivals that of Gutenberg’s inven­tion. Pro­duced in 1454 or 1455, the few sur­viv­ing copies of Gutenberg’s Bible remain exem­plars of the printer’s fore­thought and crafts­man­ship;  the page dimen­sions, it is believed, were  devised by Guten­berg to echo the gold­en ratio of Greek aes­thet­ics. The first page appears above.

This Tues­day, The Polon­sy Foun­da­tion Dig­i­ti­za­tion Project, which aims to dig­i­tize the col­lec­tions of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and the Vatican’s Bib­liote­ca Apos­toli­ca, made a vir­tu­al ver­sion of the Guten­berg Bible avail­able online. Read­ers flu­ent in vul­gate can now put down their dog-eared bibles and enter the infor­ma­tion age with this fright­en­ing­ly high-res­o­lu­tion cov­er-to-cov­er scan of Gutenberg’s orig­i­nal print­ing. In addi­tion to exam­in­ing its fine­ly drawn ini­tials and curlicues, you can also browse oth­er ear­ly bibles, includ­ing a beau­ti­ful­ly col­ored 13^th cen­tu­ry Hebrew tome, and the del­i­cate illus­tra­tions with­in a 10^th cen­tu­ry Greek vol­ume. We’ve includ­ed two images below:

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See How The Guten­berg Press Worked: Demon­stra­tion Shows the Old­est Func­tion­ing Guten­berg Press in Action

Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Res­o­lu­tion)

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

How the King James Bible For­ev­er Changed Eng­lish: 400th Anniver­sary Cel­e­brat­ed with Fun Videos

Alice Munro Talks About the Writing Life in Her Nobel Prize Interview

in Literature, Writing | December 12th, 2013

On Octo­ber 10th, Cana­di­an writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. And if you’re not famil­iar with her work, we sug­gest that you spend time read­ing the 18 Free Short Sto­ries we gath­ered in our cel­e­bra­to­ry post.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, recip­i­ents of the Nobel Prize trav­el to Swe­den to accept the award in mid Decem­ber. But the 82-year-old writer, cit­ing poor health, decid­ed to stay home and forego mak­ing the cus­tom­ary accep­tance speech in Stock­holm. (See past speech­es by Hem­ing­way, Faulkn­er, Stein­beck, V.S. Naipaul and oth­ers here.) Fans of Munro weren’t left emp­ty-hand­ed, how­ev­er. From the com­fort of her daughter’s home in Vic­to­ria, British Colum­bia, Munro sat down for an infor­mal, 30-minute inter­view and talked about many things: how she first began writ­ing and telling sto­ries; how she gained (and lost) con­fi­dence as a writer; how she men­tal­ly maps out her sto­ries; how she has become a dif­fer­ent writer with age; how the writ­ing life for women has changed over the years; and much more. You can watch the com­plete Nobel inter­view above.

via Page-Turn­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On His 100th Birth­day, Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

7 Nobel Speech­es by 7 Great Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Faulkn­er, and More

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ultimate Cult Flick,” or Both?

in Film, Sci Fi | December 11th, 2013

I had an ado­les­cent fas­ci­na­tion with Ed Wood. I mean that lit­er­al­ly: I spent a siz­able chunk of my ado­les­cence watch­ing the films of, read­ing about, and even read­ing the books by writer-direc­tor (and occa­sion­al cross-dress­er) Edward D. Wood Jr. What, I asked, could have dri­ven the man to make, and keep on mak­ing, the films that would ulti­mate­ly define the cat­e­go­ry, quite pop­u­lar dur­ing my teen years, of “so bad it’s good” cin­e­ma? None of his numer­ous, all unabashed­ly low-bud­get pic­tures have done more for that form than 1959’s Plan 9 from Out­er Space, a breath­less, near­ly bud­get­less tale in which Wood throws togeth­er aliens, zom­bies, loom­ing nuclear anni­hi­la­tion, and Bela Lugosi. Well, he almost throws in Bela Lugosi: as depict­ed in Tim Bur­ton’s 1994 biopic Ed Wood, he char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly spliced in exist­ing footage of the by-then deceased icon of hor­ror film, cast his wife’s chi­ro­prac­tor (instruct­ed to hold a cape over his face) as a dou­ble, billed Lugosi as the star, and hoped for the best.

You can watch the fruit of that and oth­er high­ly unortho­dox film­mak­ing efforts on the part of Wood and his faith­ful bunch of long-suf­fer­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors at the top of the post. Just below, we have a clip from Ed Wood, which in large part deals with how its inde­fati­ga­ble pro­tag­o­nist, played by a whole­some­ly gung-ho John­ny Depp, came to make Plan 9 in the first place. This mon­tage recre­ates the shoot­ing of sequences Wood’s fans will have long since burned into their visu­al mem­o­ry: George “The Ani­mal” Steele as Swedish ex-wrestler Tor John­son ris­ing inept­ly from the grave, Bill Mur­ray as would-be trans­sex­u­al Bun­ny Breck­en­ridge affect­less­ly giv­ing his hench­man orders to exe­cute the title plan, a trio of toy fly­ing saucers low­ered on fish­ing wire into a mod­el Hol­ly­wood. In 1980, Michael and Har­ry Medved dubbed Plan 9 “worst movie ever made,” ini­ti­at­ing its ascent from decades of obscu­ri­ty to the sta­tus of, as John Wirt puts it, “the ulti­mate cult flick.” Crit­ics tend to regard Ed Wood as a “good” movie, and Wood’s projects, espe­cial­ly Plan 9, as “bad” movies, yet both enter­tain at very high lev­els indeed, mak­ing us ask an impor­tant ques­tion, anoth­er one I asked myself in the thick of my Wood peri­od: what makes a movie “good” or “bad,” any­way?

Plan 9 from Out­er Space can always be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the Mak­er of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Tim Bur­ton Shoots Two Music Videos for The Killers

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Great New Archive Lets You Hear the Sounds of New York City During the Roaring 20s

in Archives, History, Life | December 11th, 2013

The French refer to the decade between 1920 and 1929 as les Années folles, “the crazy years,” which is apt when you con­sid­er how the French mid­dle and upper class­es gen­er­al­ly loos­ened their brassieres and defined mod­ern bohemia, à la Coco Chanel.

But the Amer­i­can moniker — the Roar­ing 20s — fits too. Near­ly every­thing about that decade roared: cars, jazz, man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­struc­tion.

Din, in fact, came to define the age, par­tic­u­lar­ly in big cities and espe­cial­ly in New York. An unnamed Japan­ese vis­i­tor was quot­ed upon his vis­it to that city in 1920: “My first impres­sion of New York was its noise. When I know what they mean, I will under­stand civ­i­liza­tion.”

A Prince­ton his­to­ry pro­fes­sor took that chal­lenge at face val­ue, while cap­tur­ing a broad­er indus­tri­al era. The Roar­ing Twen­ties is an audio (and to some extent video) archive of what New York City sound­ed like from 1900 to 1933. Pro­fes­sor Emi­ly Thomp­son and design­er Scott Mahoy have cre­at­ed a love­ly site that’s fun to explore. The archive includes a beau­ti­ful 1933 map of New York City loaded with links to noise com­plaints (screen­shot at top), com­plete with doc­u­men­ta­tion. New York had long been a place where peo­ple from all over the world lived on top of one anoth­er, but noise lev­els were shifting—getting loud­er and more var­ied, that is—and the city was inun­dat­ed with com­plaints about fer­ry whis­tles, radio shops, street traf­fic, the clat­ter of restau­rant dish­wash­ing, and all man­ner of con­struc­tion.

Sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the city’s vol­ume was high. The city’s Noise Abate­ment Com­mis­sion mea­sured the “deaf­en­ing effect” of sound in Times Square. The women’s cafe­te­ria in the New York Life Insur­ance build­ing was designed with state-of-the-art acoustics to keep the noise of the city out and the sound of office work­ers in.

Cort­landt Street in low­er Man­hat­tan was lined with radio shops, each broad­cast­ing dif­fer­ent music. Don’t miss that video, which you’ll find by scan­ning the Space tab map.

You can also move through time on the site, lis­ten­ing to the city’s cacoph­o­ny from the ear­ly 1900s up to the 1930s, or browse a menu of noise sources from home sounds to the noise of the har­bors and rivers. Again, you can vis­it the The Roar­ing Twen­ties site here.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Lomax’s Music Archive Hous­es Over 17,400 Folk Record­ings From 1946 to the 1990s

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

The Chal­lenge of Archiv­ing Sound + Vision in the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

The (Beautiful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Coffee

in Food & Drink | December 10th, 2013

Here’s a quick sce­nario for you. You’ve poured your­self a fresh cup of black cof­fee, and you want to keep it hot until you’re ready to drink it. Are you mak­ing a mis­take by adding cream to that cof­fee? Does cof­fee with cream cool faster than black cof­fee left alone? Intu­ition says yes. The laws of physics lead to a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion.

Last year, the web site Mod­ernist Cui­sine gave three rea­sons why “cof­fee with cream cools about 20% slow­er than black cof­fee” alone. To sum­ma­rize:

1) Black cof­fee is dark­er, and dark col­ors emit heat faster than light col­ors. As such, “by light­en­ing the col­or of your cof­fee, you slow the rate at which it cools,” if only slight­ly.

2) The Ste­fan-Boltz­mann Law (appar­ent­ly) says that hot­ter sur­faces radi­ate heat faster— than cool­er ones. So if you add cream to a cup of black cof­fee, it might low­er the tem­per­a­ture of that cup of cof­fee. How­ev­er that cup could still cool at a slow­er rate than a cup of hot black cof­fee.

3) Final­ly, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, “adding cream thick­ens the cof­fee (adds vis­cos­i­ty), so it evap­o­rates slow­er.” And, in turn, less heat gets car­ried away by the evap­o­ra­tion.

To top things off, Mod­ernist Cui­sine also pro­duced a video show­ing cream being poured into cof­fee in super slow motion. Even if you don’t care to con­sid­er the physics of cof­fee & cream, it’s pret­ty cool to watch an aver­age cup of joe get­ting turned into a roil­ing sea.

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Gustave Doré’s Exquisite Engravings of Cervantes’ Don Quixote

in Art, Books, Literature | December 10th, 2013

In a now defunct list­ing from Bau­man Rare Books for an 1868 edi­tion of Miguel de Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote with illus­tra­tions by Gus­tave Doré, we find the fol­low­ing unat­trib­uted quo­ta­tion: “in every Eng­lish-speak­ing home where they can spell the word ‘art,’ you will find Doré edi­tions.” It’s odd that the homes should be “Eng­lish-speak­ing” when Doré’s illus­tra­tions were orig­i­nal­ly an 1860 French com­mis­sion, but the quote at least demon­strates the enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty of Doré’s Quixote. His ren­der­ings were so influ­en­tial they deter­mined the look of Quixote and San­cho Pan­za in many sub­se­quent illus­trat­ed ver­sions, stage and film pro­duc­tions, and read­ers’ imag­i­na­tions.

Per­haps the most suc­cess­ful illus­tra­tor of the 19^th cen­tu­ry, the dap­per Doré was also at work on a momen­tous commission—this time from an Eng­lish publisher—to illus­trate the Bible. He went on to edi­tions of Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Par­adise Lost, The Divine Com­e­dy, Poe’s The Raven, and many oth­er famous works of lit­er­a­ture. But his Don Quixote may be the lit­er­ary com­mis­sion for which he’s best remem­bered.

Doré appar­ent­ly entered a crowd­ed field when he took on Cer­vantes’ foun­da­tion­al text. For a lit­tle con­text, Bau­man Rare Books also quotes a cer­tain schol­ar sur­named “Ray,” who offers this pré­cis of the edition’s cre­ation:

Don Quixote was a text cal­cu­lat­ed to test even Doré. He was match­ing him­self against Coypel and Tony Johan­not, not to men­tion the Span­ish illus­tra­tors of the great Ibar­ra edi­tion pub­lished in Madrid in 1780. He met the chal­lenge superbly… At first he intend­ed only 40 designs, but Cer­vantes’ book cap­tured his imag­i­na­tion, and he arranged for a major work… Don Quixote and San­cho Pan­za reached their defin­i­tive ren­der­ing in Doré’s designs.

Doré end­ed up com­plet­ing over 200 illus­tra­tions for his edi­tion. You can see a cou­ple of those “defin­i­tive,” and exquis­ite, engrav­ings above and below. The edi­tors of Bib­liokept main­tain a sep­a­rate site post­ing all of the Doré Quixote illus­tra­tions. Project Guten­berg has an Eng­lish full text Quixote with the illus­tra­tions scanned in, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buf­fa­lo has an exten­sive search­able dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of Doré illus­tra­tions. And if you just have to con­form to the tastes of “every Eng­lish-speak­ing home where they can spell the word ‘art’ ” and own a Doré Quixote of your own, you can pur­chase a re-cre­ation of an 1870 edi­tion for only three month­ly install­ments of $125. It’s a “pub­lish­ing trea­sure.” Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty has more infor­ma­tion on the engrav­ings.

via Bib­liokept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

See Pablo Picasso’s Spare, Ten­der Illus­tra­tions For a Lim­it­ed Edi­tion of Aristo­phanes’ Lysis­tra­ta (1934)

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

Google’s Moving Ad About 1947 Partition of India & Pakistan Tops 10 Million Views

in Google, History, Television | December 9th, 2013

Recent­ly, Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man (aka @stevesil­ber­man) shot us a note on Twit­ter, say­ing, “@openculture, do not miss this bril­liant ad. Most touch­ing movie (in 3 mins!) I’ve seen in years.” Released on Novem­ber 13th, the video has already clocked over 10 mil­lion views. But chances are you haven’t seen it. And that’s because it’s tar­get­ed to the web-enabled mid­dle class of India and Pak­istan. As The Dawn, Pak­istan’s old­est Eng­lish news­pa­per, describes it, the Google-cre­at­ed ad enti­tled “Reunion” “por­trays two child­hood friends, now elder­ly men, who haven’t seen each oth­er since they were sep­a­rat­ed by the 1947 par­ti­tion that cre­at­ed India and Pak­istan from the old British empire in South Asia. Par­ti­tion sparked a mass exo­dus as mil­lions of Mus­lims and Hin­dus fled across the new bor­ders amid reli­gious vio­lence.” Now Google search prod­ucts are help­ing to bring old friends and neigh­bors back togeth­er.

Cyn­ics may be quick to judge this a sac­cha­rine, manip­u­la­tive ad. But oth­ers are see­ing in it some­thing else — a sign that “per­son­al con­nec­tions between Indi­ans and Pak­ista­nis run deep.” Even if their gov­ern­ments gain some­thing from keep­ing the con­flict alive, every­day peo­ple in India and Pak­istan are increas­ing­ly ready to put his­to­ry aside.

Note: If you click CC at the bot­tom of the video, you can use cap­tions to trans­late the film into nine lan­guages, includ­ing French, Malay­alam and Urdu. It is pre­set to Eng­lish.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

The Clash Mauls a Teddy Bear and Plays Two Songs on The Tom Snyder Show (1981)

in Music, Television | December 9th, 2013

The Clash’s San­din­ista!, their fourth and penul­ti­mate stu­dio album (let’s not talk about Cut the Crap) inspired crit­i­cal rhap­sodies and rose to the top of lists every­where in 1981. When I encoun­tered it almost ten years lat­er as a young fan, I didn’t give it much of a chance, except for a song with the same name as my belea­guered hometown’s NBA team. In hind­sight, it was my loss, but it’s also true that near­ly every gen­er­a­tion of Clash fans, includ­ing the very first, has put their fin­ger on the band’s moment of either “sell­ing out” or sharply declin­ing. Maybe for me it was what a Rolling Stone review called San­din­ista!’s “main­stream moves” and “stu­dio sophis­ti­ca­tion.” Maybe it was the “whiff of grandeur” of the triple album. I think it also had to do with what Tom Sny­der, in his 1981 inter­view with the band above, says of them in his intro­duc­tion: they pre­ferred to be iden­ti­fied “not so much as a Rock and Roll group but as a ‘News-giv­ing group.’”

It was hard­ly news when I heard it, and I didn’t much care for top­i­cal songs any­way. But I’ve always admired Joe Strummer’s sin­cer­i­ty and sense of polit­i­cal urgency. I don’t know how seri­ous­ly Strum­mer takes Snyder’s “News-giv­ing” open, but he rolls with it, and the band turns on the charm offen­sive, alter­nate­ly cud­dling and abus­ing a ted­dy bear (against Snyder’s protes­ta­tions), pro­fess­ing their sin­cere loy­al­ty to their fans, and cov­er­ing the host with mer­chan­dise. It’s a fun eight and half min­utes. Then they do two songs, “The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en” (above), from San­din­ista!, and “This is Radio Clash” (below), which doesn’t appear on any of their stu­dio albums. Behind Mick Jones’ wall of amps, pio­neer­ing graf­fi­ti artist Futu­ra 2000 spray-paints some uniden­ti­fi­able words, and beneath the whole affair is what Dan­ger­ous Minds calls “an under­cur­rent of con­trolled may­hem.” This kind of TV just doesn’t hap­pen any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Audio Ammu­ni­tion: Google’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series on The Clash and Their Five Clas­sic Albums

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

Mick Jones Plays Three Clas­sics by The Clash at the Pub­lic Library

The Clash: West­way to the World (The 2002 Gram­my Win­ning Film)

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

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

View Bill Gates’ Mobile Library: The Books & Courses That Help Him Change The World

in Books, Education | December 9th, 2013

Step­ping down as Microsoft’s chief exec­u­tive offi­cer in 2000 had giv­en Bill Gates some extra time, which the auto­di­dact imme­di­ate­ly expend­ed by attempt­ing to learn… well, every­thing. Per­haps Gates threw him­self at learn­ing to make up for aban­don­ing col­lege for greater pursuits—he attend­ed Har­vard but left after two years’ study to pur­sue his pas­sion for com­put­ers. What­ev­er his rea­sons, Gates has begun to assid­u­ous­ly learn all he can about the world, and is record­ing his edu­ca­tion process for pos­ter­i­ty on his web­site, The Gates Notes. As the video above explains, Microsoft’s founder has lis­tened to hun­dreds of hours of uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures from The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny; he got hooked after lis­ten­ing to Robert Whap­les’ Mod­ern Eco­nom­ic Issues and breez­ing through Tim­o­thy Tay­lor’s Amer­i­ca and the New Glob­al Econ­o­my. His num­ber one pick? Big His­to­ry which is taught by David Chris­t­ian and, Gates says, “is still my favorite course of all. The course is so broad that it syn­the­sizes the his­to­ry of every­thing includ­ing the sci­ences into one frame­work.”

Wher­ev­er Gates trav­els, he is also eter­nal­ly accom­pa­nied by his read­ing bag. Sur­prised that the her­ald of the dig­i­tal age is pack­ing paper­backs? Don’t be. “I’m still pret­ty much an old-school print guy,” Gates writes, “because I like to jot notes in the mar­gins, but I assume I’ll move over to ebooks when anno­ta­tion fea­tures get bet­ter.”

Last week, Gates showed WIRED the con­tents of his decid­ed­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry mobile library. The books, which Gates replen­ish­es at an impres­sive rate, encom­pass an admirable breadth of top­ics. As befit­ting the over­seer of the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the major­i­ty of Gates’ read­ing con­sists of non-fic­tion (only Gary Shteyn­gart’s recent nov­el made the fic­tion cut this round). His­to­ry, psy­chol­o­gy, sci­ence, sound busi­ness coun­sel, soci­ol­o­gy, eco­nom­ics, and his­to­ry all make up the dizzy­ing array of Gates’ every­day read­ing. Here is a selec­tion from WIRED’s par­tial list, includ­ing Gates’ own com­ments on the impor­tance of each choice:

-Feynman’s Tips on Physics by Richard Feyn­man– A short com­pan­ion book to Richard Feynman’s clas­sic Lec­tures on Physics. Always worth­while to return to the feet of the mas­ter.

-Super Sad True Love Sto­ry: A Nov­el by Gary Shteyn­gart– I don’t read a lot of fic­tion, but I thought this was an inter­est­ing study of the moral impli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy. Will tech­nol­o­gy con­tribute to everyone’s well-being or just make peo­ple more nar­cis­sis­tic?

-The Car­toon Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics by Grady Klein– Bought this to use with one of my kids. Help­ful in explain­ing a com­pli­cat­ed sub­ject to a teenag­er.

-The Path Between the Seas: The Cre­ation of the Pana­ma Canal by David McCul­lough – I read this to pre­pare for a fam­i­ly vaca­tion to Pana­ma. It’s pure McCul­lough: epic dra­ma, polit­i­cal intrigue, heart­break­ing defeats, and even­tu­al tri­umph.

-The Bet­ter Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio­lence Has Declined by Steven Pinker– One of the most impor­tant books I’ve read. Steven Pinker demon­strates how the world evolved to be far less vio­lent. Coun­ter­in­tu­itive, if you watch the news, but true.

We’ve also used the trusty Con­trol + Scroll func­tion to zoom in and name a few addi­tion­al titles:

An Uncer­tain Glo­ry: India and its Con­tra­dic­tions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen

Engi­neers of Vic­to­ry: The Prob­lem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in The Sec­ond World War by Paul Kennedy

The Price of Inequal­i­ty: How Today’s Divid­ed Soci­ety Endan­gers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz

Why Does Col­lege Cost So Much? By Robert Archibald and David Feld­man

Mon­do Agnel­li: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Pow­er of a Dynasty by Jen­nifer Clark

How Chil­dren Suc­ceed: Grit, Curios­i­ty, and the Hid­den Pow­er of Char­ac­ter by Paul Tough

The One World School­house: Edu­ca­tion Reimag­ined by Salman Khan

Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon

For the orig­i­nal list, head over to WIRED. For more of Gates’ com­men­tary, check out his site, The Gates Notes, here. You can also con­tin­ue your self-edu­ca­tion by vis­it­ing our lists of Free Online Cours­es, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Lan­guage Lessons, Free Text­books, and Free MOOCs.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

The Pulp Fiction Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Stories That Entertained a Generation of Readers (1896–1946)

in Archives, Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons, History | December 8th, 2013

For the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, pulp mag­a­zines were a quin­tes­sen­tial form of Amer­i­can enter­tain­ment. Print­ed on cheap, wood pulp paper, the “pulps” (as opposed to the “glossies” or “slicks,” such as The New York­er) had names like The Black Mask and Amaz­ing Sto­ries, and promised read­ers sup­pos­ed­ly true accounts of adven­ture, exploita­tion, hero­ism, and inge­nu­ity. Such out­lets offered a steady stream of work for sta­bles of fic­tion writ­ers, with con­tent rang­ing from short sto­ries about intre­pid explor­ers sav­ing damsels from Nazis/Communists (depend­ing on the pre­cise time of pub­li­ca­tion) to nov­el-length man vs. beast accounts of courage and cun­ning. This, inci­den­tal­ly, gave birth to the term “pulp fic­tion,” pop­u­lar­ized in the 1990s by Quentin Tarantino’s epony­mous film.

In the 1950s, the pulps went into a steep decline. In addi­tion to tele­vi­sion, paper­back nov­els, and com­ic books, the pulps were over­tak­en by the more explic­it, and even low­er brow men’s adven­ture mag­a­zines (read­ers of Tru­man Capote’s In Cold Blood may remem­ber Per­ry Smith, the socio­path­ic mis­fit who mur­dered the Clut­ter fam­i­ly, being an enthu­si­as­tic read­er of these ear­ly lads’ mags). Thanks to The Pulp Mag­a­zines Project, how­ev­er, many of the most famous pub­li­ca­tions remain acces­si­ble today through a well-designed online inter­face. Hun­dreds of issues have been archived in the data­base that spans from 1896 through to 1946. It includes large mag­a­zines, such as The Argosy and Adven­ture, and small­er, more spe­cial­ized fare, such as Air Won­der Sto­ries and Bas­ket­ball Sto­ries. Although good writ­ing occa­sion­al­ly made its way into the pulps, don’t expect these mag­a­zines to mir­ror the lit­er­ary depth of seri­al­ized pub­li­ca­tions of the 19th cen­tu­ry; rather, the archive pro­vides a ter­rif­i­cal­ly enter­tain­ing look at the pop­u­lar read­ing of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

To browse the com­plete data­base, head over to The Pulp Mag­a­zines Project.

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:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art (1994)

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

Did Shake­speare Write Pulp Fic­tion? (No, But If He Did, It’d Sound Like This)

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks