To the Best of Our Knowledge

It’s Art & Craft week at TTBOOK, but we’re not gluing macaroni to cardboard.  From the halls of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, to MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms... what we make shapes our future. What Are You Making?; Craft, Reconsidered - Glenn Adamson; Inside Out Art; Crafting Technology; Making Punk - Richard Hell.

Hear that?  It's the soothing sound of silence.  We'll have much more, including "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking"; one man's quest for absolute silence; and John Cage's 4'33."              Susan Cain on "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking"; George Michelsen Foy on "Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence"; Kyle Gann on "No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage's 4'33"; Garret Keizer on "The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise".

The debate about how to fix America’s schools rages on, while millions of parents simply opt out of the system.  We’re re-thinking education, from college programs for the incarcerated to a call for the end of standardized tests. Alfie Kohn on Progressive Education; Astra Taylor and Dana Goldstein on the Schooling Debate; Jody Lewen on the Prison University Project; Sean Pica on Earning His Degree in Prison.

we explore how the Internet is changing our lives. Jaron Lanier on "Who Owns the Future?"; Douglas Rushkoff on "Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now"; Gabriella Coleman on "Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking"; James Lasdun on "Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked".

Why is Henry David Thoreau still an American icon 150 years after he died?  Yes, he was a brilliant writer, but above all, he asked us to "front only the essential facts of life." Tom Fate on "Cabin Fever"; "Walden" Reading; Jeffrey Cramer on Historical Thoreau; Davyd Betchkal on Denali soundscapes; Terry Tempest Williams on Thoreau; Terry Tempest Williams on "When Women Were Birds".