Tony Fadell, the leader of the teams that created the iPod, iPhone, and Nest Learning Thermostat, shares over 30 years of Silicon Valley experience in this unorthodox guide to making things worth making. Build is a mentor in a box, offering personal stories, practical advice, and insights into some of the most impactful products and people of the 20th century.

With quick entries that build on each other, Tony charts his journey from product designer to leader, startup founder, executive, and mentor. He uses captivating examples, such as the process of building the very first iPod and iPhone, to help readers tackle problems they're currently facing, from securing startup funding to managing workplace challenges.

Through his experiences with mentors like Steve Jobs and Bill Campbell, Tony advocates for old-school, unorthodox advice. He emphasizes that while human nature doesn't change, what we create can. His guidance focuses on leading and managing effectively, not reinventing the wheel, to make things worth making.

When confronted with almost any demanding situation, the act of questioning can help guide us to smart decisions. By asking questions, we can analyze, learn, and move forward in the face of uncertainty. But "questionologist" Warren Berger says that the questions must be the right ones; the ones that cut to the heart of complexity or enable us to see an old problem in a fresh way.

In The Book of Beautiful Questions, Berger shares illuminating stories and compelling research on the power of inquiry. Drawn from the insights and expertise of psychologists, innovators, effective leaders, and some of the world's foremost creative thinkers, he presents the essential questions readers need to make the best choices when it truly counts, with a particular focus in four key areas: decision-making, creativity, leadership, and relationships.

The powerful questions in this book can help you:

• Identify opportunities in your career or industry

• Generate fresh ideas in business or in your own creative pursuits

• Check your biases so you can make better judgments and decisions

• Do a better job of communicating and connecting with the people around you

Why is the sky blue? Why is pink for girls and blue for boys? Why do prisoners wear orange? And why can one color have so many opposite meanings? If lobsters are a red emblem of privilege, how is it that a red flag can also be the banner of Communism?

Jude Stewart, a design expert and writer, digs into this rich subject with gusto, telling her favorite stories about color as she discovers what it can really mean. Each chapter is devoted to a color, opening with an infographic map that links such unlikely pairings as fox-hunting and flamingos. From there on in, you're plunged into a kaleidoscopic tour of the universe that encompasses everything from wildflowers to Japanese warriors. The links between them reveal hidden realities that you never would have suspected.

ROY G. BIV is a reference and inspiration for everyone, with sidebars and graphics galore. The aim is simple: to tantalize and inform, and to make you think about color in a completely new way.

We live in an era of unprecedented innovation opportunities. Despite building more products than ever, the majority fail—not due to our inability to realize our visions, but because we squander time, resources, and effort crafting the wrong products. What's necessary is a methodical process to quickly evaluate product concepts and improve our chances of success. This is the core of Running Lean.

In this motivating read, Ash Maurya presents a detailed strategy for reaching 'product/market fit' with your nascent venture, drawing on his extensive experience developing a diverse range of products, from high-tech to no-tech. He incorporates insights and methodologies from several groundbreaking approaches, such as the Lean Startup, Customer Development, and bootstrapping.

Running Lean is the quintessential tool for business managers, CEOs, small business owners, developers, programmers, and anyone aspiring to launch a business project.

You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side.

When Mr. Kleon was asked to address college students in upstate New York, he shaped his speech around the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out. The talk went viral, and its author dug deeper into his own ideas to create Steal Like an Artist, the book. The result is inspiring, hip, original, practical, and entertaining. And filled with new truths about creativity: Nothing is original, so embrace influence, collect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path.

Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring—the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination.

Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets there Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben's story is told in words; Rose's in pictures.

The Secrets of Facilitation delivers a clear vision of facilitation excellence and reveals the specific techniques effective facilitators use to produce consistent, repeatable results with groups. Author Michael Wilkinson has trained thousands of managers, mediators, analysts, and consultants around the world to apply the power of SMART (Structured Meeting And Relating Techniques) facilitation to achieve amazing results with teams and task forces.

He shows how anyone can use these proven group techniques in various professional and personal situations such as conflict resolution, consulting, managing, presenting, teaching, planning, and selling.

The Design of Everyday Things is a must-read for anyone involved in the creation or utilization of objects, from physical items to computer programs and conceptual tools. This book could forever change how you experience and interact with your physical surroundings.

It opens your eyes to the perversity of bad design and the desirability of good design, raising your expectations about how things should be designed. Through entertaining and insightful analysis, cognitive scientist Don Norman emphasizes the importance of excellent design in influencing consumer behavior.

With black and white photographs and illustrations throughout, this book provides simple rules for creating usable designs: make things visible, exploit natural relationships between function and control, and intelligently use constraints.

In 1993, Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture with the acclaimed international hit Understanding Comics, a massive comic book that explored the inner workings of the world's most misunderstood art form. Now, McCloud takes comics to the next level, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are created, read, and perceived today, and how they're poised to conquer the new millennium.

Part One of this fascinating and in-depth book includes:

• The life of comics as an art form and as literature
• The battle for creators' rights
• Reinventing the business of comics
• The volatile and shifting public perceptions of comics
• Sexual and ethnic representation in comics

Then in Part Two, McCloud paints a breathtaking picture of comics' digital revolutions, including:

• The intricacies of digital production
• The exploding world of online delivery
• The ultimate challenges of the infinite digital canvas

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud is an innovative comic book that provides a detailed look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning. It traces the 3,000-year history of storytelling through pictures and discusses the language and images used in the unique medium of comics.

This work is celebrated throughout the cartoon industry and is essential reading for anyone interested in the intricate and fascinating world of comics.

A new selection of post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gough's letters, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh put a human face on one of the most haunting figures in modern Western culture. In this Penguin Classics edition, the letters are selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw, and translated by Arnold Pomerans in Penguin Classics.

Few artists' letters are as self-revelatory as Vincent van Gogh's, and this selection, spanning his artistic career, sheds light on every facet of the life and work of this complex and tortured man. Engaging candidly and movingly with his religious struggles, his ill-fated search for love, his attacks of mental illness and his relation with his brother Theo, the letters contradict the popular myth of van Gogh as an anti-social madman and a martyr to art, showing instead a man of great emotional and spiritual depths. Above all, they stand as an intense personal narrative of artistic development and a unique account of the process of creation.

The letters are linked by explanatory biographical passages, revealing van Gogh's inner journey as well as the outer facts of his life. This edition also includes the drawings that originally illustrated the letters.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) was born in Holland. In 1885 he painted his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, a haunting scene of domestic poverty. A year later he began studying in Paris, where he met Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, who became very important influences on his work. In 1888 he left Paris for the Provencal landscape at Arles, the subject of many of his best works, including Sunflowers.

It all started with a mysterious and seemingly innocent postcard, but from that point nothing was to remain the same in the life of Griffin Moss, a quiet, solitary artist living in London. His logical, methodical world was suddenly turned upside down by a strangely exotic woman living on a tropical island thousands of miles away.

Who is Sabine? How can she "see" what Griffin is painting when they have never met? Is she a long-lost twin? A clairvoyant? Or a malevolent angel? Are we witnessing the flowering of a magical relationship or a descent into madness?

This stunning visual novel unfolds in a series of postcards and letters, all brilliantly illustrated with whimsical designs, bizarre creatures, and darkly imagined landscapes. Inside the book, Griffin and Sabine's letters are to be found nestling in their envelopes, permitting the reader to examine the intimate correspondence of these inexplicably linked strangers.

This truly innovative novel combines a strangely fascinating story with lush artwork in an altogether original format.

How do we see the world around us?

Ways of Seeing is a groundbreaking work by John Berger that challenges the traditional ways of viewing art. First published in 1972, the book is based on the acclaimed BBC television series.

Berger explores the intricate relationship between what we see and what we know. "Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak." This fundamental idea sets the stage for a deeper understanding of visual culture.

The book emphasizes that seeing establishes our place in the world, and while we describe our world with words, they can never replace the visual experience.

Berger's work is celebrated for its ability to demystify the art world and empower readers to engage with images directly. It has been described as an "eye-opener," transforming how audiences perceive paintings and visual media.

Whether you're an art aficionado or a curious observer, Ways of Seeing invites you to see the world with fresh eyes and a liberated perspective.