Three decades ago, two men in their fifties began flattening circles into the fields of Hampshire and Wiltshire. Little did they know that their Friday night antics would seed an international phenomenon that continues to change people's lives to this day.Now, in the first book of its kind -- part history and part how-to guide -- the secrets of the crop circle world are revealed, by the people behind the modern era's most astounding art practice.Whether you think crop circles represent a genuine mystery, a new kind of art, or an elaborate practical joke, The Field Guide is sure to leave a lasting impression. Join us in the fields for a unique exploration of this very English artform.

The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making (Strange Attractor Press)

Irving, Rob

Lundberg, John

Reference

Strange Attractor Press

An iconoclastic, penetrating and darkly humorous history of America from 1947-1959, the decade in which the nation defined its image and created the blueprint for the world we live in today. Welcome to Mars is an iconoclastic, penetrating and darkly humorous history of America from 1947-1959, the decade in which the nation defined its image and created the blueprint for the world we live in today. Welcome To Mars draws upon newspaper accounts, advertising campaigns, declassified government archives, old movies and newsreels from this unique period when the future first took on a tangible presence. Ken Hollings depicts an unsettled time in which the layout of Suburbia reflected atomic bombing strategies, bankers and movie stars experimented with hallucinogens, brainwashing was just another form of interior decoration and strange lights in the sky were taken very seriously indeed.Seamlessly interweaving developments in technology, popular culture, politics, changes in home life, the development of the self, collective fantasy and overwhelming paranoia, Hollings has produced an alarming and often hysterically funny vision of the past that would ultimately govern all of our futures.

Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947–1959 (Strange Attractor Press)

Hollings, Ken

Literature & Fiction

Illustrated throughout with many rare photographs from the Hofmann archives, this book offers a rare glimpse inside a visionary mind of Dr Albert Hofmann―the man who discovered LSD.
'Any scientist who is no mystic is no scientist.'―Albert Hofmann
Still lecturing until his death at 102, Dr Albert Hofmann would have been a remarkable man even if he hadn't discovered the chemical compound that changed the course of the 20th century – LSD. Voted the greatest living genius in a 2007 poll, the self-described 'little Swiss chemist' is as much loved and respected for his personal nobility and modesty as he is for his chemical creations, which besides LSD, include chemicals used every day in maternity and geriatric wards the world over.
This unique book collects, for the first time, a number of his more recent essays and lectures. Between them they present a comprehensive overview of Hofmann's relationship to his controversial creation, and reveal his profound mystical outlook, informed both by his own LSD experiences, and by a life lived through one of the most turbulent centuries in human history.
The second section of the book contains essays and memoirs from some of the leading psychedelic thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Huston Smith, Myron Stolaroff, Ralph Metzner, Jonathan Ott, Stanislav Grof and Amanda Feilding.

Hofmann's Elixir: LSD and the the New Eleusis

Biographies & Memoirs

Albert Hofmann

Professionals & Academics

A stunningly-presented guide to London's past that charts the many roles that diseases, treatments and cures have played in the city's sprawling story―and how London, in turn, has shaped the professions and practices of modern medicine.
A unique, stunningly-presented guide to London's past and a treasure trove of information for historians, residents, medical professionals and tourists, Medical London charts the many roles that diseases, treatments and cures have played in the city's sprawling story. It also reveals how London, in turn, has shaped the professions and practices of modern medicine.
Medical London comprises three parts:
A volume of essays exploring some of the threads that medicine has woven through London life, from its earliest beginnings to the multicultural metropolis of today: its roles in contagion and sanitation, in wealth and its consumption, in empire and immigration, in pleasure and in madness.
A definitive guide to London's medical landscape: its museums and hospitals, its grand monuments and secret corners, and the characters and events that lie behind them.
Six elegantly designed maps for self-guided walks, from Daniel Defoe's Plague Year wanderings to the druggists of Soho's night haunts, the homeopaths of bohemian Chelsea to the naval surgeons of maritime Greenwich.
Published in collaboration with Wellcome Collection.

Medical London

History

Jay, Mike

Barnett, Richard

Europe

Park Stories

Barker, Nicola

A bold anthology of writing from acclaimed film magazine Electric Sheep.Acclaimed film magazine Electric Sheep presents a bold anthology of new and exclusive writing from cinema's sharpest edge.From the gutter to the avant garde, The End brings together a mind-bendingly eclectic programme of films, authors, artists and directors to create a unique new vision of cinema past, present and future.Follow us into the darkness and you'll find Bill Morrision's chemical ghosts, the Bad Girls of '50s exploitation films, apocalyptic Nigerian evangelists, shuffling zombies, the human centipede, Kôji Wakamatsu's Japanese nihilists, David Lynch's sonic cinema, Clouzot's lost Inferno, the Brothers Quay, Vincenzo Natali, Ingmar Bergman's final thoughts and more.ContributorsJim Harper, Greg Klymkiw, Frances Morgan, James Rose, Jack Sargeant, and more.

The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology (Strange Attractor Press)

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

A series of walks along the routes of eight lost rivers in London, with richly detailed anecdotes outlining the history of each river's route, origins and decline.
When we think of London's river, the vast thoroughfare of the Thames immediately springs to mind. But this ancient city was built around other rivers too – and traces of these still remain, for those who know where to look.
London's Lost Rivers takes the reader on a series of walks along the routes of eight lost rivers, combining directions for walkers with richly detailed anecdotes outlining the history of each river's route, origins and decline.
Tom Bolton reveals a secret network that spreads across the city, from picturesque Hampstead in the North to the hidden suburbs of South London, and runs beneath some of London's most iconic and historic sites.
These London pasts are brought to vivid life, populated by characters both famous and infamous, including politicians, forgers, actors, architects, athletes, monarchs and murderers.
Evocative, witty and engaging, London's Lost Rivers invites both visitors to the city and lifelong Londoners to explore another side of London and its rich history, whether on foot or in the imagination.

London's Lost Rivers: A Walker's Guide

Tom Bolton

A book of new mixed-media work by Cathy Ward and Eric Wright.With their honoring of folkloric aesthetic vocabularies, their non-oppositional encompassing of complex, verbally-based literary and philosophical realms and love of shiny things, their history of collaborative social experiment and advocacy for the viability of small-scale group politics (both in their own work and within their communities), and their productive model of sensory-grounded human intellect that recognizes its continuity with the rest of nature, Catharyne Ward and Eric Wright have, in Tender Vessels offered a walk-through manifesto for the future of art, and the components for a makeshift coffin-raft to carry us to the next shore. ―From the accompanying essay by Doug Harvey

Tender Vessels

Wright,Eric

Ward, Cathy

History & Criticism

On Warhammer 40,000, Britain's most excessive sci-fi franchise, and its vision of a hellish postindustrial future. 
In the grim darkness of the British imagination, there is only Warhammer 40,000…. Featuring demons, chain swords, and supermen in power armor, Warhammer 40,000 is Britain's most excessive sci-fi franchise. For thirty years this cult war game and its tie-in media have enticed thousands of fans to build, paint, and play with armies of toy soldiers taken from the battlefields of the worst possible future. Why has this fantasy proven so irresistible? Part collection of essays, part ravings of a cult prophet, Grimdark examines Warhammer 40,000's place and impact in pop culture, and how this unique vision of a hellish future arose from the subconscious of postindustrial Britain.

Grimdark: A Very British Hell

Linward, Tim

Humor & Entertainment

An elegant and comprehensive biography of the controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, Austin Osman Spare.
London has harboured many curious characters, but few more curious than the artist and visionary Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956).
A controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, the young Spare was hailed as a genius and a new Aubrey Beardsley, while George Bernard Shaw reportedly said “Spare's medicine is too strong for the average man.”
But Spare was never made for worldly success and he went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity south of the river. Absorbed in occultism and sorcery, voyaging into inner dimensions and surrounding himself with cats and familiar spirits, he continued to produce extraordinary art while developing a magical philosophy of pleasure, obsession, and the subjective nature of reality.
Today Spare is both forgotten and famous, a cult figure whose modest life has been much mythologised since his death. This groundbreaking biographical study offers wide-ranging insights into Spare's art, mind and world, reconnecting him with the art history that ignored him and exploring his parallel London; a bygone place of pub pianists, wealthy alchemists and monstrous owls.
This richly readable and illuminating biography takes us deep into the strange inner world that this most enigmatic of artists inhabited, shedding new light while allowing just a few shadowy corners to flourish unspoiled.

Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London's Lost Artist (Strange Attractor Press)

BAKER, PHIL

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