A superb pictorial and video meditation on the life of cities.
A great city is a tiny organism writ large, according to Vitale’s debut multimedia e-book.
Vitale is taken with the idea that the form and function of a metropolis look uncannily similar, from a distance, to those of biological entities. He elaborates the analogy in a series of remarkable photos and embedded video sequences that compare aerial and satellite views of cities with studies of microscopic life-forms. The juxtapositions are striking: a Slovakian town sprawling over the landscape is pictorially paired with an amoeba; twisty, suburban cul-de-sacs are set against a cellular endoplasmic reticulum; the flow of street traffic becomes a “corpuscular circulation system” for the automobiles (blood cells) coursing through it; a video montage of satellite pictures shows Las Vegas swelling through the decades like a burgeoning culture in a desert petri dish. The text also insists that the notion of a city as an organism is literal truth rather than metaphor. Humans, Vitale contends, should give up their anthropocentric belief that they are creators of the urban realm. Instead, humans should adopt the objective viewpoint of a “Scientific Observer” looking down from on high, for whom people would appear as just one of many “unremarkable organelle[s]” servicing the urban superorganism. Visually, Vitale’s CD-ROM e-book is a triumph chock-full of stunning images, on scales both intimate and grand: pretty suburban streetscapes; the awesome high-rise fortress of Kowloon, China’s Walled City; and the wispy Norwegian town of Baerum Akershus, “lacy and fragile, cling[ing] to the earth like a delicate slime net.” Raptly evocative prose crackling with ideas makes a stimulating accompaniment to the visual content. Philosophically, his treatise can be a bit muddled and overstated: Readers know for a scientific certainty that cities are intentionally planned and built by humans; cities aren’t autonomous life-forms that have simply “germinated,” as Vitale would have it. Still, his conceit is a fruitful, fascinating one that yields rich insights into the urban ecology.
A superb pictorial and video meditation on the life of cities.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Longtail Distribution Network
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Successfully mixes heavy-handed lessons on consumer awareness with tween-approved toilet jokes and just a smidge of romance.
In this middle-grade fantasy novel, an 11-year-old boy descends into a consumerist hell to save his parents, himself and the world.
On vacation with his museum-obsessed dad and his flea market–crazed mother, all Tito really wants to do is drive straight to Nature World. (He craves nature, but adults are standing in his way; the morals aren’t exactly subtle.) During an unplanned stop by Sanguine Lake, the family finds a slime-filled lake, a ghost town and TitanMart, the retail leviathan that’s pushing an unlikely toy craze: Gourdon, a stumpy, green doll made out of a gourd. Everyone wants one, including Tito’s dad, who vanishes into the creepy, seemingly infinite depths of TitanMart, with Tito’s mom soon to follow. As the adults flit around him like weak-willed patsies, Tito sets off to save them, accompanied by Eugene, a benevolent genie he has conjured out of hotel toiletries, and guided by coded messages from a mysterious redheaded girl. TitanMart has even more levels than Dante’s Inferno—too many, perhaps, making this fast-paced book feel repetitive at times—all of them as baldly allegorical as the Italian original. Aisle one is filled with fat, lazy children being force-fed grease and sugar in front of televisions. Aisle two gleams with the promise of a perfect home—and with menacing cleaning supplies. Hutton gives his tween readers a lot of credit: He knows they’ll see the danger in Preferred Customer Cards even before they turn into snakes and they’ll recognize the common (here, sinister) sales gimmickry that Tito confronts as he moves further into the belly of the retail beast. The complicated plot involves government–corporation collusion, which requires more than your average level of news awareness. The humor, however, aims right for tweens’ sweet spot: goo, poo, vomit, snot, the full panoply of disgusting, embarrassing excretions. Together it makes a smart, fun read.
Successfully mixes heavy-handed lessons on consumer awareness with tween-approved toilet jokes and just a smidge of romance.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-936669-03-5
Page Count: 244
Publisher: blue manatee press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sexy, savvy and utterly satisfying.
The first installment of Brandon’s saga features Phoenix-based ballistics expert Michael Cole in an un-put-down-able thriller noir.
Cole knows Kate Marlowe is trouble. Two thugs have already visited his office and beat him up, warning him to stay away from her or else. But when the divorced legal secretary from Houston shows up shortly thereafter—“Blonde hair and long legs was all he could see. That was enough”—Cole decides to hear what she has to say; he’s almost immediately hooked. He has an obsession with the JFK assassination—his father was in Dealey Plaza back on November 22, 1963, and was allegedly hit with a stray bullet. Cole even wrote a controversial book about the assassination. So when Marlowe tells him that she has the actual rifle that killed the president and she now wants nothing more than to prove there was a grand-scale conspiracy, Cole agrees to help. The weapon is hidden on a remote ranch in southern Arizona; all they have to do is find it. But there are those who will do anything to keep the truth from being revealed—even it if means mass murder. Although the duo’s relentlessly paced quest is daunting, not to mention historically monumental, Brandon adds gritty humor to counterbalance the thematic gravity. A thug, for instance, is described as “an ethnic mix, maybe half-Asian and half-Rottweiler.” Ultimately, this tightly plotted, action-packed thriller will appeal to crime-fiction aficionados, fans of mainstream thrillers and conspiracy theorists in particular. A cast of brilliantly developed characters, intriguing speculation and bombshell plot twists will keep readers turning the pages until the very end of this starkly realistic, desert-hot thrill ride.
Sexy, savvy and utterly satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468145809
Page Count: 208
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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