A BOUNTY OF BEAUTIFUL CONNECTIONS
This week we explore the beauty of connections. We begin with a new crop of books and films that connect the dots between humans, animals, our planet, and other assorted data points.
1. FORKS: A QUEST FOR CULTURE, CUISINE, AND CONNECTION. THREE YEARS. FIVE CONTINENTS. ONE MOTORCYCLE.
Sometimes, the best way to connect with yourself, is to set out on an adventure to connect with others. Part memoir, part cookbook, part photo album, “Forks: A Quest for Culture, Cuisine, and Connection. Three Years. Five Continents. One Motorcycle,” by Allan Karl, shows you how it can be done.
Finding himself newly divorced and spiritually lost, author Allan Karl did just that. He sold everything he owned, and embarked on a three-year motorcycle journey around the world.
He drove over 62,000 miles, across 35 countries, on 5 continents, and, along the way connected with a range of strangers through storytelling, shared food, and kindness.
Forks brings these connections to life with more than 700 color photographs and a cultural rainbow reflected in 40 signature recipes.
"Even though I set out on his journey alone, I was never alone,” Karl writes. “If I was ever lost, lonely or hungry, I would turn around and always find someone there. Every experience is an opportunity to connect with others."
WorldRider Publishing & Press (2014)
2. INSTANT CONNECTIONS
The best photographers form instant connections with their subjects, that only deepens with every moment they spend together. And the most successful photographers also connect well with their peers and fans.
Photographer and writer Jason Landry explores these connections, reflecting on his own career, as well as gaining insights from others.
The book Instant Connections: Essays and Interviews on Photography
Told with a refreshing authenticity that only someone in the field could provide, Landry’s book will leave you with a better sense of photography as an art and as a business.
Doolittle Press (2013)
3. WILD CONNECTION: WHAT ANIMAL COURTSHIP AND MATING TELL US ABOUT HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
Its easy to forget sometimes that humans are animals. But when we connect with our wild selves, it turns out we can learn a lot about how we connect with each other.
“Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us about Human Relationships
Some connections are astonishingly similar, and some are just plain bizarre.
Did you know chimpanzee often behave like human “cougars?” And what’s different about animals that mate for life? Why do the things that turn us on turn us on? Read on as these and other questions are explored in this fascinating book.
Prometheus Books (2014)
4. THE HUMAN CONNECTION: PHOTOGRAPHS & STORIES FROM BANGLADESH & NEPAL
“The Human Connection: Photographs & Stories from Bangladesh & Nepal
There’s no form of connection quite like the photograph; with one image, we are capable of contemplating people and situations utterly removed from our own circumstances.
Jeremy Fokkens’ new book, The Human Connection, offers vivid portraits of humanity that will resonate long after the book is set down. You will most definitely connect.
Rocky Mountain Books (2014)
5. THE BLUE SWEATER: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD
“The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World
While traveling in through a remote village in Rwanda, Jacqueline Novogratz spotted a sweater she had donated to Goodwill 11 years ago being worn by a native boy. And she began to connect the dots.
“The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World,” explores Novogratz’s revelations and thoughts about how all of humanity is interconnected.
Novogratz left a career in international banking to devote her efforts to leveraging human connections to combat global poverty. She became one of the trailblazers in impact investing, founding the highly regarded Acumen organization.
The Blue Sweater brings our human connections to a higher level of consciousness and gives us new ideas about how we engage with the world.
Brilliance Audio (2013)
6. CONNECTION: HOLLYWOOD STORYTELLING MEETS CRITICAL THINKING
In “Connection: Hollywood Storytelling Meets Critical Thinking
With clear prose and widely-applicable advice, the book achieves in offering readers new and effective methods of engagement. Whether you’re making the next blockbuster or pitching a new business strategy, the ability to connect is imperative - and with the anecdotes and storytelling suggestions featured in this book, you’re that much more likely to succeed.
"We want people to take what we say to heart AND a story does it best, BUT most of us don't know how to turn our thoughts into stories, THEREFORE most of us need to read this book."
— Alan Alda, Actor, Writer
Prairie Starfish Productions (2013)
7. “Kindred Beings: What Seventy-Three Chimpanzees Taught Me About Life, Love, and Connection,” by animal activist Sheri Speede.
Kindred Beings: What Seventy-Three Chimpanzees Taught Me About Life, Love, and Connection
Speede has devoted her life to saving our closest wild relatives. In Cameroon, for example, she enabled law enforcement to fight wildlife trafficking by establishing a forest sanctuary where rescued chimpanzees get care and love.
Harper Collins Publisher (2013)
8. ZOOBIQUITY: THE ASTONISHING CONNECTION BETWEEN HUMAN AND ANIMAL HEALTH
In “Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health,” authors Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers explore surprising similarities across the animal kingdom.
When cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz observed that monkeys experienced the same symptoms of heart failure as her human patients, she began to explore other cross species health similarities.
She found that dinosaurs suffered from brain cancer, koalas can catch chlamydia, reindeer trip out on hallucinogenic mushrooms, stallions self-mutilate, and gorillas experience clinical depression.
These discoveries led Natterson-Horowitz to change the way she practiced medicine.
“The book features countless intriguing anecdotes. . . . After finishing, you’re guaranteed to never look at your dog, cat, or any other animal the same way again.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The authors provide solid evidence that humans are not as far removed from the rest of the natural world as we might have thought. Engaging [and] useful.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The connections we share with the rest of life on our planet are a source of beauty and, in Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers’ luminous new account, the inspiration for an emerging and powerful approach to human health.”
—Neil Shubin, paleontologist and author of Your Inner Fish
Vintage (2013)
9. ART OF THE NATIONAL PARKS: HISTORIC CONNECTIONS, CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETATIONS
“Art of the National Parks: Historic Connections, Contemporary Interpretations", by Susan Hallsten McGarry, Jean Stern, and Terry Lawson Dunn, explores the beautiful iconic landscape images created by nineteenth-century painters and photographers.
Seventy painters and sculptors take on Acadia, Everglades, Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion with a variety of styles, techniques, and philosophies.
With more than 450 artworks, this beautiful, large-format book is an important collection of twenty-first-century American landscape and wildlife art.
Art of the National Parks is available in seven different book jackets depicting the art and beauty from each national park featured in the book. Featured parks include: Acadia, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Zion, Everglades, Yosemite, and Rocky Mountain.
Fresco Books (2013)
10. CONNECTED: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY ABOUT LOVE, DEATH & TECHNOLOGY
“Connected
While the film was originally released in theaters in 2011, it continues to be screened and featured as its relevance grows. Shlain helps us to see how interconnected we really are.
“Connected” was Shlain’s first foray into “Cloud Filmmaking,” stitching together film clips created and supplied by many people from around the globe. She followed with a series of shorts produced through cloud-based collaborative filmmaking, including “A Declaration of Interdependence,” “Engage,” and “Brain Power".
Shlain also is a strong proponent of disconnecting. “Technology Shabbats,” one of a recent series produced for AOL, advocates unplugging for 24 consecutive hours once a week.
“Examining everything from the Big Bang to Twitter… a cinematic clickstream…incredibly engaging!”
—The New York Times
Moxie Institute (2011)
Docurama DVD (2013)
Read more about Beautiful Connections, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact.
Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Connections in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 06.22.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!
PHOTO CREDITS:
- Image: Courtesy of WorldRider Publishing & Press. Forks.
- Image: Courtesy of WorldRider Publishing & Press. Forks.
- Image: Courtesy of Doolittle Press. Instant Connections.
- Image: Courtesy of Prometheus Books. Wild Connection.
- Image: Courtesy of Rocky Mountain Books. The Human Connection.
- Image: Courtesy of Brilliance Audio. The Blue Sweater.
- Image: Courtesy of Prairie Starfish Productions. Connection.
- Image: Courtesy of Harper Collins Publisher. Kindred Beings
- Image: Courtesy of Vintage. Zoobiquity.
- Image: Courtesy of Fresco Fine Art Publications. Art of National Parks: Historic Connections, Contemporary Interpretations.
- Image: Courtesy of the Moxie Institute. Connected.
