Dan Gunn

Jennifer Down

Dennis Paphitis

From the revered Australian skincare company Aesop, a debut volume presenting its rigorous passion for creating superlative products and their considered approach to design. Since the founding of Aesop in 1987, its stores, products, and culture have been the expression of a complex, holistic set of carefully considered codes and principles. For the very first time within a book, the enigmatic brand documents the singular vision from which it was borne and the company customs that have allowed it to flourish. The volume includes recollections of the early formative days of Dennis Paphitis's hair salon and the first Melbourne store, tracing how and when Aesop's distinct approach to retail hospitality and its meticulous formulations were conceived. It ranges from the cohesion of the brand through to early packaging, iconography, and campaigns, without neglecting the more imperceptible codes that serve to unite all its stores and entice customers into them in over twenty regions around the world. What emerges is how Aesop's identity is a compound of its history and its singularity. The book also evokes the company's many inspirations: its fascination with the written word, the architects who have added their singular perspectives, and the partners and collaborators who have helped make Aesop so much more than simply a skincare company. Composed with photographs by the celebrated Japanese photographer Yutaka Yamamoto, this luxurious volume--an aesthetic handbook of sorts--argues the wisdom and intelligence of doing things well, doing them differently, and doing them for the long term.

Aesop

Bernard Turle

In recent years theories about translation have proliferated. Yet surprisingly little has been written about what it actually feels like to be a translator: to spend one's days devoted to the words of another. Bernard Turle's Diplomat, Actor, Translator, Spy seeks to address certain prevailing translation theories, but above all to give a sense of the true task of the translator -- a daily grind that is anything but abstract. Through twenty-six alphabetically organized recollections, anecdotes, fantasies, and dreams, he vividly conveys what it is that drew him to becoming a translator, evoking the delights as well as the frustrations of his chosen profession. The original French text is included in an insert.

Diplomat, Actor, Translator, Spy

Wool-Gathering or How I Ended Analysis is a personal and humorous account of the last month of personal psychoanalysis, principally Lacanian in orientation, taking place in a frenetic and strikebound Paris. A diary account, interspersed with a commentary on the analysis, Wool-Gathering is not only a highly entertaining memoir, but also a more academic account of a process, opening up a world normally kept private in a new and engaging way.

Dan Gunn

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