Books published by Terra Nova Press

An in-depth look at Jaanika Peerna's iconic work, through essays, images of works and performances, and the artist's own words.Much of Jaanika Peerna’s recent work is a lament to glaciers and natural ice. Her ongoing project Glacier Elegy forms the central core of this publication. The book presents an in-depth look at this iconic work, through essays, images of works and performances, and the artist’s own words. In doing so, it shows how a contemporary artist in her prime addresses the climate emergency.  The book touches on ecological grief and looks at how Peerna and other key contemporary artists have used the subject of ice to highlight the global climate emergency. It includes essays by Robert MacFarlane, Janet Passehl, Celina Jeffery, and an interview by Joana P. R. Neves, situating Peerna's work and envisioning how creative acts imagine ecological relations in the face of rapidly changing climates and environments, giving voice to the difficult emotions of fear, trauma, grief, and mourning. Peerna's work offers us a way through. "Whether in her large-scale gesture drawings on Mylar that become expansive installations, her smaller sculptural pieces that become receptacles for delicate inscriptions of light, or her videos and performances, at the core of Peerna’s work is a concern for the embodied, sensorially engaged subject in dynamic relation to the spatial and material world."—Taney Roniger

Secrets of master guitarists, revealed in conversation.Guitar Talk is a collection of interviews with twenty-three of the most creative guitarists of our time. The book celebrates the enormous range of approaches and sounds that exist in the modern guitar. The instrument can howl, scrape, scratch, scream, sing, pluck, and soothe. What stands out in this book is not so much the instrument itself, rather the wonderful and idiosyncratic personalities of these bold souls, their sometimes wild, often zigzagging, and ultimately profound journeys toward beauty, meaning, and excellence in their work.We find out that jazz icon Bill Frisell won a high school band contest playing R&B tunes, beating out future members of Earth Wind and Fire. We learn which of Nels Cline's compositions he wishes to have played at his funeral. Michael Gregory Jackson recounts painful episodes of racism as he stretched between the chasm of avant jazz, rock, and R&B in the 1980s. Many more revelations, amusements, and philosophies abound from maestros like Pat Metheny, Fred Frith, Ralph Towner, Bill Frisell, Mary Halvorson, Henry Kaiser, Ava Mendoza, and many more of the most interesting guitarists working today.

A day in the inner and outer lives of a college professor, blogger, divorced father, thinker, and yearner. What would it feel like to wake up inside the head of someone who writes about science for a living? John Horgan, acclaimed author of the bestseller The End of Science, answers that question in his genre-bending new book Pay Attention, a stream-of-consciousness account of a day in the life of his alter ego, Eamon Toole-a blogger, college professor, and divorced father.This work of fact-based fiction, or "faction," follows Toole as he wakes up in his rented apartment in upstate New York, meditates with the mantra "Duh," commutes via train and subway to an engineering school in New Jersey, teaches a William James essay on consciousness to freshmen, squabbles about Thomas Kuhn with colleagues over lunch, takes a ferry to Manhattan and spends the evening with his bossy, Tarot-reading girlfriend, Emily, on whom he plans to spring a big question. Throughout the day, Toole struggles to be rational while buffeted by fears and yearnings. Thoughts of sex and death keep intruding on his ruminations over quantum spookiness, the neural code, the Singularity and free will. Pay Attention is a profane, profound meditation on the entanglements of our inner and outer worlds and the elusiveness of truth.

A heady cocktail of sex and trauma, refracted through the lens of ten of Alfred Hitchcock's iconic movies.

Grab a warm blanket. This book puts you right into the action of the life-and-death decisions made by early Antarctic explorers. It is filled with unforgettable stories about the challenges and decisions they faced on the ice.While we might not be pulling sledges across Antarctica in the early 1900s, this book also reveals valuable lessons in leadership, team work, and sheer grit and determination that can help all of us make better decisions in our lives today.In When Your Life Depends on It, you’ll discover:11 of the greatest survival stories in the history of explorationHow to make decisions fast without feelings of doubt or guiltHow to improve your team and leadership skills, which are valuable in any profession.When it is right to take a big risk.How to succeed against all oddsCo-written by a decision scientist and an Antarctic historian, When Your Life Depends on It is filled with tales of resilience that resonate with people who love travel and adventure as well as those seeking insights into human behavior. It reveals the mind-set of the brave men who risked, and in some cases gave their lives, for science, discovery and exploration.Buy When Your Life Depends on It today to learn about one of the most remarkable periods of history and in the process learn new strategies to improve your own personal and business decision making. “A remarkable book”Sir Ranulph Fiennes -- the greatest Polar explorer in our lifetime“The Polar book of the year”Jonathan Shackleton -- descendant of Ernest Shackleton

A satire for our demented times, following the arc of Donald Trump's career as it bends toward injustice, hits it, and then sinks still lower.Few politicians in history have deserved lampooning as richly as Donald Trump. And few have gotten their just deserts served up as deliciously as they are in The Trumpiad, a work perceptively characterized by Stuart Klawans as "a true epic about a mock President.” In their caustic, uproarious Trumpiad, poet Evan Eisenberg and artist Steve Brodner present a satire in verse for our demented times. Inspired by Swift, Byron, and Ogden Nash as much as by John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, Eisenberg sets the stage ("Muse, you're fired”) and then traces our hero from the murk of his ancestry in the form of his grandfather Friedrich (an enterprising immigrant who ran a bordello) to the latest presidential high crimes and misadventures.Using a rakish, endlessly flexible five-line stanza he calls the Emilick—the love child of Emily Dickinson and Edward Lear— Eisenberg follows the arc of Trump's career as it bends toward injustice, hits it, and then sinks still lower. Brodner matches the poet punch for punch, in the spirit of such great satiric artists as Hogarth, Goya, and Daumier.About the illustrator:A regular contributor to the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Harper's, Esquire, Playboy, Mother Jones, the Nation, and the Los Angeles Times, Steve Brodner has been hailed by Lewis Lapham as "a born arsonist” and by Edward Sorel as "incomparable...the best caricaturist around.” Widely credited with spearheading the revival of drawn satire over the past four decades, Brodner is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hamilton King Award and the Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.This is the ballad of Donald Trump, A tale of greed and gall;A tragedy birthed before our eyes—A man, his money, his mouth, his rise And if there's a God, his fall.—The Trumpiad

A chronicle of re-remembering: an artist reflects on art, technology, consumption, near-death experiences, encounters with the wild, psychedelics, time travel, failure and courage.

Dialogues between student and master about music, learning, teaching, the healing power of art, and the art of life itself.Knut Hamre has devoted his life to playing the Hardanger fiddle—a unique folk violin with resonating strings beneath, like a sitar's—and to teaching new generations the secrets of this ancient music, rooted in a stark and beautiful land. Benedicte Maurseth is one of his most accomplished students, an internationally known artist who has recorded for the ECM label. In a book that brings to mind such classics as Zen and the Art of Archery and Wabi Sabi, the student and her master together explore the quest for excellence and originality in the heart of a living tradition. At once mystical and practical, To Be Nothing is a series of dialogues about music, learning, teaching, the healing power of art, and the art of life itself. With photographs evoking the rugged landscapes and people from which this music springs and the exquisite beauty of the fiddles themselves, this is a work as serene as a fjord, and as deep.