"The definitive history of The Office. Spills all of the tea on NBC's iconic sitcom." -E! News Join the entire Dunder Mifflin gang on a journey back to Scranton: here's the hilarious and improbable inside story behind the beloved series. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with the cast and creators and illustrated with 100 behind-the-scenes photographs, here, at last, is the untold inside story of The Office, featuring a foreword by Greg Daniels, who adapted the series for the U.S. and was its guiding creative force, and narrated by star Brian Baumgartner (aka "Kevin Malone") and executive producer Ben Silverman.. In Welcome to Dunder Mifflin, the entire Office gang reunite after nearly a decade to share their favorite inside stories, spill untold secrets, and reveal how a little show that barely survived its first season became the most watched series in the universe. This ultimate fan companion pulls back the curtain as never before on all the absurdity, genius, love, passion, and dumb luck that went into creating America's beloved The Office. Featuring the memories of Steve Carell, John Krasinkski, Jenna Fischer, Greg Daniels, Ricky Gervais, Rainn Wilson, Angela Kinsey, Craig Robinson, Brian Baumgartner, Phyllis Smith, Kate Flannery, Ed Helms, Oscar Nunez, Amy Ryan, Ellie Kemper, Creed Bratton, Paul Lieberstein, Ben Silverman, Mike Schur, and many more.

Funny, engaging, and sharply pointed in his appraisal of the sports complex bankrupting our cities, the celebrated author of A People's History of Sports in the United States returns with a hard-hitting indictment of big business and the corrupt practices that are ruining the sports we love. When attending a baseball game becomes a luxury reserved for the wealthy few and cities build multi-million dollar stadiums while letting their bridges crumble, the price of sports in this country demands reassessment. Bad Sports cuts through the hype and bombast to give us a portrait of sports ownership as irresponsible as the financial shenanigans that drove the nation to the edge of economic ruin. From the outrageous use of public funds for stadium construction to the use of these spaces for religious and political platforms, Dave Zirin raises vital questions about misplaced priorities and moral abdications among the politicians we elect and the owners of the teams we root for. Speaking out in clear and passionate terms for the rights of any taxpayer and sports fan, Zirin returns America's favorite pastimes back to where they belong--in the open and for the people.

This book examines the cultural and artistic awakening of New York City through a detailed look at the city's architecture and urbanism during the years '890 - 1925, when the city first acquired a distinct sense of itself as the representative American metropolis, comparable to London and Paris.

Highly esteemed by architects and New York history enthusiasts, 'New York 1930' focuses on the development of many of the landmark structures and the built environment of New York, including the parks, highways, and entertainment districts.

No building was more anticipated than Frank Gehry's stunning new museum in Bilbao, an industrial city in the Basque Country of northern Spain. Philip Johnson, the dean of American architects, declared it "the greatest building of our time," while Sverre Fehn, winner of the 1997 Pritzker Architecture Prize, called the building "fantastic." Gehry's use of nontraditional materials and his sensitivity to the environments of his buildings is legendary; his method of envisioning a building through semiautomatic drawings and handmade models is little known, but provides an immediate entry into his creative process. This book celebrates the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and details its design process, bringing to life one of Gehry's greatest achievements. Coosje van Bruggen, who has collaborated with Gehry on various architectural and art projects, documents the history of the Guggenheim Bilbao from conception through design and construction. With unique access to the architect and his studio, she uncovers scores of fascinating drawings and working photographs, published here for the first time.

""This is the most brilliant epitome of Manhattan ever written." --Mike Davis Every morning, the architect and writer Michael Sorkin walks from his apartment in Greenwich Village to his office in Tribeca. Unlike most commuters, Sorkin isn't in a hurry, and he doesn't try to drown out his surroundings. Instead, he's always paying attention. As he descends the narrow stairs of his town house, Sorkin explains why New York doesn't have the grand stairwells so common in European apartment buildings. Stepping out onto his block, he imagines a better, more efficient, far less dirty way to dispose of garbage. As he crosses Canal Street, he remembers the mad proposals for tunnels, elevated highways, and mega-structures that threatened lower Manhattan and could have destroyed its urban fabric. Fifty years after Jane Jacobs's groundbreaking The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Sorkin's vision of city life is every bit as perceptive and fine-grained as that of Jacobs's classic. With important insights into history, architecture, and public policy, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan is an extraordinary, deeply personal look at a city undergoing--always undergoing--dramatic transformations"--

This book presents the first draft of a report on the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC), an early computer that was designed to facilitate the execution of long computations. Von Neumann provides a detailed analysis of the design and capabilities of the machine, laying the groundwork for the development of modern computers. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"Marking the centennial of the 1916 establishment of a professional program, Pedagogy and Place is the definitive text on the history of the Yale School of Architecture. Robert A.M. Stern, current dean of the school, and Jimmy Stamp examine its growth and change over the years, and they trace the impact of those who taught or studied there, as well as the architecturally significant buildings that housed the program, on the evolution of architecture education at Yale. Owing to the impressive number of notable practitioners who have attended or been affiliated with the school, this book also contributes a history, beyond Yale, of the architecture profession in the twentieth century. Featuring extensive archival research and illuminating firsthand accounts from alumni, faculty, and administrators, this well-rounded and engaging narrative is richly illustrated with historic photos of the school and its studios, images of student work, and important architectural achievements on and off campus."

"Encompassing autobiography, institutional history, and lively, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture surveys the world of architecture from the 1960s to the present and Robert A. M. Stern's critical role in it. The book chronicles Stern's formative years, architectural education, and half-century of architectural practice, touching on all the influences that shaped him. He details his Brooklyn upbringing, family excursions to look at key twentieth-century buildings, and relationships with prominent teachers--Paul Rudolph and the legendary Vincent Scully among them. Stern also recounts the origins of RAMSA and major projects in its history, including the new town of Celebration, Florida, the restoration of Times Square and 42nd Street, 15 Central Park West, Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray Colleges at Yale, and the George W. Bush Presidential Center, as well as references the many clients, fellow architects, and professional partners who have peopled his extraordinary career. By turns thoughtful, critical, and irreverent, this accessible, informative account of a life in architecture is replete with personal insights and humor. Stern's voice comes through clearly in the text--he details his youthful efforts to redraw house plans in real estate ads, his relationship to Philip Johnson, which began at Yale and was sustained through countless lunches at the Four Seasons, his love of Cole Porter and movies from the 1930s and 1940s, his struggle to launch an architecture practice in the 1970s in the midst of a recession, and his complex association with Disney and Michael Eisner. Unsurprisingly, New York City plays a big role in Between Memory and Invention. Stern has a deep commitment to the city and recording its past--he is the lead author of the monumental New York book series, the definitive history of architecture and urbanism from the late nineteenth century to the present--and shaping its future. Though now a global practice, RAMSA residential towers rise throughout Manhattan to enrich the skyline in the tradition of the luxurious apartment buildings of the 1920s and 1930s"--

Often referred to as the city of the future, Los Angeles is known for its sprawl, its constant change, and its special relationship to the film industry. The twelve contributors to Looking for Los Angeles focus on dramatic shifts in the urban landscape, important moments in the city's architectural history, and the role of the image in this mecca of image makers. Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom searches for Los Angeles's center and finds a city that "breaks itself down, builds itself up again, displaces and regroups itself" and where "freedom of movement" is a basic premise of life. Historian Philip Ethington documents the city's changing character in both text and images, urban studies professor Dana Cuff exposes the demise of once-thriving urban neighborhoods to make way for Modernist housing projects, and anthropologist Susan A. Phillips invites us on a personal journey into "the projects" to meet gang members and their families today. Artist Robbert Flick offers a sixteen-page, full-color photo-essay that takes us on a "drive-by" along Alameda Avenue, architectural historian Thomas S. Hines traces Frank Lloyd Wright's influence on the life and career of photographer Edmund Teske, and film historian Robert L. Carringer examines Los Angeles as a setting for Hollywood feature films.

Frank Lloyd Wright called Bruno Zevi ?the most penetrating architectural critic of our time,? and one could ask for no better proof than Zevi?s masterpiece, The Modern Language of Architecture . In it, Zevi sets forth seven principles, or ?antirules,? to codify the new language of architecture created by Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Wright. In place of the classical language of the Beaux Art school, with its focus on abstract principles of order, proportion, and symmetry, he presents an alternative system of communication characterized by a free interpretation of contents and function, an emphasis on difference and dissonance, a dynamic of multidimensional vision, and independent interplay of elements, an organic marriage of engineering and design, a concept of living spaces that are designed for use, and an integration of buildings into their surroundings. Anticipating the innovations of postmodern architecture, Zevi argues forcefully for complexity and against unity, for decomposition dialogue between architecture and historiography, finding elements of the modern language of architecture throughout history, and discussing the process of architectural innovation. Sumptuously illustrated, and written in a clear, accessible manner, The Modern Language of Architecture will long remain one of the classics of architectural criticism and history.

The author analyzes the ongoing debate between exclusivists such as Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey, and Peter Eisenman and inclusivists whom he sees as representatives of the first generation of post-moderist architects in America.

A provocative case for historical ambiguity in architecture by one of the field's leading theorists Conceptions of modernity in architecture are often expressed in the idea of the zeitgeist, or "spirit of the age," an attitude toward architectural form that is embedded in a belief in progressive time. Lateness explores how architecture can work against these linear currents in startling and compelling ways. In this incisive book, internationally renowned architect Peter Eisenman, with Elisa Iturbe, proposes a different perspective on form and time in architecture, one that circumvents the temporal constraints on style that require it to be "of the times"—lateness. He focuses on three twentieth-century architects who exhibited the qualities of lateness in their designs: Adolf Loos, Aldo Rossi, and John Hejduk. Drawing on the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and his study of Beethoven's final works, Eisenman shows how the architecture of these canonical figures was temporally out of sync with conventions and expectations, and how lateness can serve as a form of release from the restraints of the moment. Bringing together architecture, music, and philosophy, and drawing on illuminating examples from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Lateness demonstrates how today's architecture can use the concept of lateness to break free of stylistic limitations, expand architecture's critical capacity, and provide a new mode of analysis.

Architect and social critic Michael Sorkin develops his own vision of the future lower Manhattan through a series of chronologically organized essays illustrated with full-color images of his own plans. Mixing his inimitable brand of social criticism with more personal reflections, Starting From Zero offers a striving challenge to the Ground Zero redevelopment plan recently chosen by New York's establishment insiders.

Trachtenberg's book exmines the urban transformation of Florence in the fourteenth century. Focusing on the creation of the Piazza della Signoria and the Piazza del Duomo, he documents in engaging detail how and why urban planners, in league with the civic government, enlarged these urban spaces. Articulating the design principles that served as the foundation for these urban renewal projects, Trachtenberg's book fundamentally revises our understanding of urban planning in the early modern period, countering the received claim that rational planning begins only in the Renaissance. His book also brings a new depth of understanding to the entire visual culture of Trecento Florence, demonstrating how many of the developments in painting, sculpture and architecture of this period form the basis of the achievements of the Quattrocento, particularly the discovery of perspective. Combining both empirical and post-structuralist methods, Trachtenberg's book is among the first, if not the first, to question critically many of the assumptions that have formed the basis of scholarship of Renaissance art since the sixteenth century.

Since the 1950s American artists have used abstraction to deliberately attempt to confront the memory of the Holocaust or accepted commissions for memorial works. Examines individual paintings, an architectural project, a video installation, a site-specific sculpture, and commissioned works by Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Sol LeWitt, and Ellsworth Kelley (all 1993) in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Concludes that abstract art works can represent the Holocaust in complex ways.

The Rothschild family, famed as financiers, has exerted a huge impact on Western social and political history over nearly two centuries. Less well-known, but also of significance, is their influence on the landscape, for many members of the family have been passionate gardeners. They have created gardens and parklands that have become an important part of the heritage of several countries. and as they are today. Readers visit European gardens frequented by kings and rulers. There is also a glimpse into private gardens today, including Miriam Rothschild's own beautiful conservation garden, home to birds, beasts and butterflies. parklands to formal parterres. At the turn of the century, Alice de Rothschild spent the equivalent of nearly half-a-million pounds annually on her gardens and grounds near Grasse, France. Rothschilds have always enjoyed producing fruit and vegetables. Baron Edmond, for example, used to delight guests at his households in Paris or Boulogne by inviting them to pick fresh fruit straight from dwarf trees brought into the dining room. illustrate the developments in the family's styles and scale of gardening. The author conveys the competitiveness and drive for perfection that has typified the family's behaviour in gardening, as well as in business. This quest has led several Rothschilds to become plant specialists, and botanical gardens worldwide have benefitted from their collections. Like a Dove and The Butterfly Gardener.