Book Picks

1. Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him: Humberto Fontova

• By the end of the preface, he’s pinned 14,000 executions on Guevera and credited positive portrayals to the public relations work of Castro and the laziness of biographers.
• Presenting a failed physician, an inept guerrilla and a hapless sycophant, Fontova adds insult to injury by claiming Che was “deathly afraid to drive a motorcycle.”
• He was a violent Communist who thought nothing of firing a gun into the stomach of a woman six months pregnant whose only crime was that her family opposed him.
• And he was a hypocrite who lusted after material luxuries while cultivating his image as a man of the people.

• Revolutionary or Murderer? – AOL Video
• Revver » Humberto Fontova Lecture On Che Gueverra
• Exposing the Real Che Guevara 200358-1 : C-SPAN Video Library

2. Young Stalin: Simon Sebag Montefiore

A mastermind of bank robbery, protection rackets, arson, piracy and murder, he was equal parts terrorist, intellectual and brigand.

• Extract, sources and notes for Young Stalin

• The Fourth Greatest :: The Court of the Red Tsar – New York Times

• Siren songs | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

3. The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life): Rich Gold, John Maeda

Gold, a scientist, inventor and artist who worked at times for the toy company Mattel and the legendary Xerox PARC research labs

• Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

• Discoveries – Los Angeles Times: “‘The Plenitude,’ designer-artist-inventor Rich Gold’s meditation on the culture of stuff.”

4. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With: Sherry Turkle

• These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.
• the simplest of objects–an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer–are shown to bring philosophy down to earth.
• The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable.
• the role of objects in design and play, discipline and desire, history and exchange, mourning and memory, transition and passage, meditation and new vision.
• Turkle pairs each autobiographical essay with a text from philosophy, history, literature, or theory, creating juxtapositions at once playful and profound.

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

5. Still Life With Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy: Mark Doty (The Austin Chronicle: Books: Review)

6. Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance: Joshua Glenn, Carol Hayes

• Princeton Architectural Press

• Brainiac – The Boston Globe: 75 contributors and their objects