books | Fast Company

Tyler Cowen Shares His New Rules For Mindful Foodies

BY Margaret Rhodes | 03-19-2012 | 6:11 PM | MAGAZINE

Go grocery shopping with a top economist.READ MORE›

The Data-Mining's The Thing: Shakespeare Takes Center Stage In The Digital Age

BY Neal Ungerleider | 12-14-2011 | 3:00 PM | TECHNOLOGY

Folger Shakespeare Library director Michael Witmore is using 21st-century tools to analyze the Bard's work. When data-mining techniques borrowed from the sciences and business research were applied to classic Shakespearean plays, surprising discoveries were made.READ MORE›

Scanwiches, A Visual Guide To Creating Masterful Mufalettas And Luscious Lobster Rolls

BY Drew Anthony Smith | 11-08-2011 | 1:44 PM | SCANWICHES

Scanwiches, by Jon Chonko, doesn't quite fit in the regular food-book pantheon--Sandwiched between the covers are ingredient listings, operational instructions, shout-outs, and factoids surrounding the sammie. What is the proper ... READ MORE›

How To Read The Link-Crazy Web Without Going Insane

BY Kevin Purdy | 10-03-2011 | 4:41 PM | WORK/LIFE

Feel like your attention span operates at an inverse rate to your broadband speed? Here's how you can give the good stuff on the web the attention it deserves.READ MORE›

Twitter Debuts Web Analytics, Google's EU Mobile Win, Microsoft Woos Devs For Windows 8, Authors' Guild Blocks Google Book Scans

BY Kit Eaton | 09-13-2011 | 5:54 AM | INNOVATION

This and more important news from your Fast Company editors, with updates all day. READ MORE›

Better World Books Takes A Page From Toms Shoes' "One For One" Playbook

BY Ariel Schwartz | 08-15-2011 | 12:43 PM | ETHONOMICS

The book recycler and reseller has already given away $10 million to help improve literacy. Now it's giving away a book every time you buy one.READ MORE›

Four Strategies To De-Suck Your Commute

BY Kevin Purdy | 07-31-2011 | 10:24 PM | WORK/LIFE

Raise your talking game, attain peace with your fellow man, and get some extra shut-eye--all before you reach the office. These four tips make transit time actually bearable.READ MORE›

"I'm Feeling Lucky": Google Employee No. 59 Tells All

BY David Zax | 07-12-2011 | 2:47 PM | CAREERS

We interview Douglas Edwards, Google's brand manager from 1999 to 2005, about his new book and discuss the challenge of humanizing information technology, Sergey Brin's anatomically correct cow costume, and how Google+ might succeed where orkut, Google's first social network, failed.READ MORE›

Pulp, Non-Fiction: On The British Library's Book-Digitizing Deal With Google

BY Kit Eaton | 06-20-2011 | 7:32 AM | INNOVATION

The British Library is making 250,000 texts available through Google's Books system, which is an admirable way to make historic books useful to the world again. Could this actually help shape the future of publishing?READ MORE›

Wanted: Sci-Fi Classics With Retro 3-D Covers

BY Suzanne LaBarre | 06-16-2011 | 2:38 PM | VINTAGE CLASSICS

Vintage Classics, an imprint of Random House UK, has republished five sci-fi novels in gorgeously kitschy covers full of splashy colors and eye-popping typography and camp illustrations on the order of a tentacle embracing an ... READ MORE›

Another Oliver Twist: British Library Builds 60,000-Book iPad App

BY Neal Ungerleider | 06-15-2011 | 7:43 AM | INNOVATION

An ambitious new project by the British Library will place a huge number of 19th-century books--including original illustrations, page layouts, and design--on Apple's tablet for leisure reading.READ MORE›

Openmargin Lets The World See Your Book-Margin Scribbles

BY David Zax | 05-02-2011 | 10:55 AM | DESIGN

Why keep brilliant commentary on your latest beach read all to yourself, when you can share it with friends, or anyone, for that matter? A public digital forum in every book is the aim of Dutch startup Openmargin.READ MORE›

Furniture Created With Book Nerds In Mind

BY Suzanne LaBarre | 04-11-2011 | 4:38 PM | REMI VAN OERS

If you’re a mega book geek, and you live in an apartment no bigger than an Altoid box, chances are you’ve got books piled up on every last inch of real estate, from the bedside table to the bathroom tile. Hell, maybe you sleep ... READ MORE›

Americans Want to Toss Adorable Gay Penguin Tale on Banned-Book Pyre

BY Morgan Clendaniel | 04-11-2011 | 2:12 PM | ETHONOMICS

Gay penguins and Twilight's vampires are just some of what concerned citizens are trying to remove from America's libraries.READ MORE›

Are Books the New Tablet?

BY David Zax | 03-03-2011 | 12:53 PM | DESIGN

There's a reading technology that's really hot right now. It's called the book.READ MORE›

Coralie Bickford-Smith Shares the Inspiration Behind Her Book Covers

BY Stephanie Schomer | 03-01-2011 | 2:00 PM | WORK/LIFE

The Penguin Books cover designer shares the tools and inspirations behind her stunning designs.READ MORE›

Innovation Nation: Obama's State of the Union Speech and Dambisa Moyo's New Book Call for American Enterprise

BY Jenara Nerenberg | 01-26-2011 | 6:27 AM | ETHONOMICS

"Americans in particular are renowned for bouncing back," says the bestselling author and economist. "... Things are going to get much better."READ MORE›

Book Filled With Data Art Renews Itself With Each New Printing [Video]

BY Suzanne LaBarre | 01-05-2011 | 10:25 AM | WRITTEN IMAGES

One of the silliest things about all the hand-wringing over the death of print is the idea that there's some unbridgeable divide between physical books and digital technology, that the latter exists solely to destroy the former. In ... READ MORE›

Rebecca Solnit's Dark Poem to San Francisco, in Maps [Slideshow]

BY Suzanne LaBarre | 12-20-2010 | 5:55 PM | INNOVATION AGENTS

If guide books ever bothered being honest, they’d look a lot like Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, Rebecca Solnit’s dark, cartographic poem to the Bay Area. The book -- a collection of maps and essays written by both ... READ MORE›

Infographic of the Day: Google Uses 200 Years of Books to Track Our Culture

BY Cliff Kuang | 12-20-2010 | 8:40 AM | SOCIOLOGISTS

Google has released a remarkable toy for history buffs and armchair sociologists: The so-called Google Ngram, which allows you to see how often a given word has been used in books, ever since 1800. The tool can create a ... READ MORE›