Believe it or not, it's been over twenty years since the publication of Understanding Comics, which established the breakthrough realization that the most effective way to truly explain how comics work is in comics form.    Now, at last, we have the next iteration of this understanding:  that the most effective way to explain how comics -- presented here as consciously thinking and writing - and, of course, reading - in a free flowing combination of images and text -- are changing the way we represent our world and understand ourselves is also in comics form.  Unflattening, just published by Harvard University Press, is the book form of Sousanis's Columbia University dissertation, "Unflattening: A Visual-Verbal Inquiry into Learning in Many Dimensions" --  the first ever presented at the university entirely in a comics form.  This work challenges the primacy of words over images in Western culture and asks readers to view them as equal partners.  A book for our times, indeed.  Here is a thoughtful reaction to the original dissertation by Sydni Dunn at Chronicle Vitea.  Learn more about Unflattening, and catch up with Mr. Sousanis at his website, Spin, Weave & Cut.  

The French have come to save us from our own animal spirits (and the "invisible hand" that guides them), under the ægis of Harvard University Press and via the translations of Arthur Goldhammer (what a great name for a translator of economic texts!).  Ignore at your own – and our entire society's – peril...

The French have come to save us from our own animal spirits (and the "invisible hand" that guides them), under the ægis of Harvard University Press and via the translations of Arthur Goldhammer (what a great name for a translator of economic texts!).  Ignore at your own – and our entire society's – peril...  You can actually start right in reading this on GoogleBooks.

The Socratic dialogue is back! (sort of). Maajid Nawaz and Sam Harris go back and forth over 128 pages in this slim volume that carries an intellectual heft that belies its petite size.

Anyone curious can check out this lengthy video of the pair engaged in exactly this topic during a talk on this book, HERE.

And here's an article taking the two to task in a BIG way, by Anwar Omeish, for anyone who wants to hear a voice of opposition.  Hosted, appropriately enough, by the Harvard Political Review.