Books in the The MIT Press series

An examination of a 1970s Conceptual art project—advertisements for fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery—that hoodwinked the New York art world.From the summer of 1970 to March 1971, advertisements appeared in four leading art magazines—Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, and ARTnews—for a group show and six solo exhibitions at the Jean Freeman Gallery at 26 West Fifty-Seventh Street, in the heart of Manhattan's gallery district. As gallery goers soon discovered, this address did not exist—the street numbers went from 16 to 20 to 24 to 28—and neither did the art supposedly exhibited there. The ads were promoting fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery. The scheme, eventually exposed by a New York Times reporter, was concocted by the artist Terry Fugate-Wilcox as both work of art and critique of the art world. In this book, Christopher Howard brings this forgotten Conceptual art project back into view. Howard demonstrates that Fugate-Wilcox's project was an exceptionally clever embodiment of many important aspects of Conceptualism, incisively synthesizing the major aesthetic issues of its time—documentation and dematerialization, serialism and process, text and image, publishing and publicity. He puts the Jean Freeman Gallery in the context of other magazine-based work by Mel Bochner, Judy Chicago, Yoko Ono, and Ed Ruscha, and compares the fictional artists' projects with actual Earthworks by Walter De Maria, Peter Hutchinson, Dennis Oppenheim, and more. Despite the deadpan perfection of the Jean Freeman Gallery project, the art establishment marginalized its creator, and the project itself was virtually erased from art history. Howard corrects these omissions, drawing on deep archival research, personal interviews, and investigation of fine-printed clues to shed new light on a New York art world mystery.

New essays on the philosophy of Ned Block, with substantive and wide-ranging responses by Block.

Identifying a new approach to disaster response: spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions to alleviate suffering.In Spontaneous Venturing, Dean Shepherd and Trenton Williams identify and describe a new approach for responding to disaster and suffering: the local organizing of spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions—the rapid emergence of a compassionate venture. This approach, termed by the authors "spontaneous venturing,” can be more effective than the traditional "command-and-control” methods of large disaster relief organizations. It can customize and target resources and deliver them quickly, helping victims almost immediately. For example, during the catastrophic 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Australia—the focal disaster for the book—residents organized an impromptu relief center that collected and distributed urgently needed goods without red tape. Special bonds and friendships formed among the volunteers and victims; some were both volunteer and victim. Many victims were able to mobilize resources despite considerable personal losses.Shepherd and Williams describe the lasting impact of disaster and tell the stories of Victoria residents who organized in the aftermath of the bushfires. They consider the limitations of traditional disaster relief efforts and explain that when victims take action to help others, they develop behavioral, emotional, and assumptive resilience; venturing leads to social interaction, community connections, and other positive outcomes. Finally, they explore spontaneous venturing in a less-developed country, investigating the activities of Haitians after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The lesson for communities hit by disaster: find opportunities for compassionate action.

A proposal to reframe the Anthropocene as an age of actual and emerging coexistence with earth system variability, encompassing both human dignity and environmental sustainability.

An updated edition of a guide to the basic science of climate change, and a call to action.The vast majority of scientists agree that human activity has significantly increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—most dramatically since the 1970s. Yet global warming skeptics and ill-informed elected officials continue to dismiss this broad scientific consensus. In this updated edition of his authoritative book, MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel outlines the basic science of global warming and how the current consensus has emerged. Although it is impossible to predict exactly when the most dramatic effects of global warming will be felt, he argues, we can be confident that we face real dangers. Emanuel warns that global warming will contribute to an increase in the intensity and power of hurricanes and flooding and more rapidly advancing deserts. But just as our actions have created the looming crisis, so too might they avert it. Emanuel calls for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gases and criticizes the media for downplaying the dangers of global warming (and, in search of "balance,” quoting extremists who deny its existence). This edition has been updated to include the latest climate data, a discussion of the earth's carbon cycle, the warming hiatus of the first decade of this century, the 2017 hurricanes, advanced energy options, the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, and more. It offers a new foreword by former U.S. Representative Bob Inglis (R-SC), who now works on climate action through his organization RepublicEN.

How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today.Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters—in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls” and "typewriter boys.” Still later was the "Double Pigeon” typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of "predictive text.”Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history” but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened.A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian InstituteColumbia University

The cultural contradictions of early video games: a medium for family fun (but mainly for middle-class boys), an improvement over pinball and television (but possibly harmful)

A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel-driven civilization.