Simon May

An exploration of cuteness and its immense hold on us, from emojis and fluffy puppies to its more uncanny, subversive expressions Cuteness has taken the planet by storm. Global sensations Hello Kitty and Pokémon, the works of artists Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons, Heidi the cross-eyed opossum and E.T.—all reflect its gathering power. But what does “cute” mean, as a sensibility and style? Why is it so pervasive? Is it all infantile fluff, or is there something more uncanny and even menacing going on—in a lighthearted way? In The Power of Cute, Simon May provides nuanced and surprising answers. We usually see the cute as merely diminutive, harmless, and helpless. May challenges this prevailing perspective, investigating everything from Mickey Mouse to Kim Jong-il to argue that cuteness is not restricted to such sweet qualities but also beguiles us by transforming or distorting them into something of playfully indeterminate power, gender, age, morality, and even species. May grapples with cuteness’s dark and unpindownable side—unnerving, artful, knowing, apprehensive—elements that have fascinated since ancient times through mythical figures, especially hybrids like the hermaphrodite and the sphinx. He argues that cuteness is an addictive antidote to today’s pressured expectations of knowing our purpose, being in charge, and appearing predictable, transparent, and sincere. Instead, it frivolously expresses the uncertainty that these norms deny: the ineliminable uncertainty of who we are; of how much we can control and know; of who, in our relations with others, really has power; indeed, of the very value and purpose of power. The Power of Cute delves into a phenomenon that speaks with strange force to our age.

The Power of Cute

Traces the history of love and how it developed from its Hebraic and Greek origins to an ideal that obsesses the modern Western world, and highlights philosophers that have challenged conventional thoughts on love and happiness.

A History

Love

Carino! Il potere inquietante delle cose adorabili

The most familiar fate of Jews living in Hitler's Germany is either emigration or deportation to concentration camps. But there was another, much rarer, side to Jewish life at that time: denial of your origin to the point where you manage to erase almost all consciousness of it. You refuse to believe that you are Jewish. How to Be a Refugee is Simon May's gripping account of how three sisters - his mother and his two aunts - grappled with what they felt to be a lethal heritage. Their very different trajectories included conversion to Catholicism, marriage into the German aristocracy, securing 'Aryan' status with high-ranking help from inside Hitler's regime, and engagement to a card-carrying Nazi. Even after his mother fled to London from Nazi Germany and Hitler had been defeated, her instinct for self-concealment didn't abate. Following the early death of his father, also a German Jewish refugee, May was raised a Catholic and forbidden to identify as Jewish or German or British. In the face of these banned inheritances, May embarks on a quest to uncover the lives of the three sisters as well as the secrets of a grandfather he never knew. His haunting story forcefully illuminates questions of belonging and home - questions that continue to press in on us today.

One Family's Story of Exile and Belonging

How to Be a Refugee

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Atomic Sushi

Alan Watkins

Businesses spend billions on innovation with very little to show for their investment or effort. This book challenges some of the ‘ingrained truths’ of innovation and suggests a different approach. Innovation is not the creation of a novel idea. It is the successful commercialisation of that novel idea. Rather than starting with a costly, time-consuming problem assessment that seeks to push potential solutions through an innovation funnel, an ‘impeller approach’ starts with possible solutions and gets the market to pull the best ones forward so they can fail fast or flourish fast. This approach is made possible by the addition of a ‘bee’ – a new type of integrative thinker who can harvest the existing knowledge from the ‘meadow of experts’. Completely reversing the innovation process means organisations are much better placed to win in the market rather than focusing on finding theoretical solutions or clearing innovation stage gates. In addition, this approach also recognises that the people who shepherd the solution through the ideation and testing stage are not the same people who must then take that solution to market for successful commercialisation. Given the current innovation failure rate, coupled with the fact that society is beset with multiple wicked problems, it’s time to think differently and innovate innovation itself. This book is essential reading for Heads of Innovation and Commercialisation, Directors of Marketing, Heads of New Product Development and New Service Development, Strategy Directors, Chief Technology Officers, Government advisers and policy makers.

Time to Think Differently

Innovation Sucks!

Each chapter of this title focuses on some everyday human matter, such as love, death, bureaucracy, hygiene, food, toilets, commuting, education, marriage and memory. Japanese attitudes to such issues are explored through a mixture of light-hearted anecdote and trenchant analysis.

Notes from the Heart of Japan

As the first British professor of philosophy since 1882 to be invited to teach at the prestigious and enigmatic University of Tokyo, Simon May enjoyed a degree of access denied to other commentators. Each chapter of the book focuses on some everyday human matter, such as love, death, bureaucracy, hygiene, food, commuting, education, marriage, and memory. Japanese attitudes to such issues are explored through a mixture of light-hearted anecdote and trenchant analysis, and through his vivid accounts of flying goldfish, gangsters at funerals, businessmen paying good money to be whipped, doctors faking death certificates, and cover-ups at all levels of society, Simon May provides a unique first-hand account of immersion into a fascinating culture.

Ken Gemes

The principal aim of this volume is to elucidate what freedom, sovereignty, and autonomy mean for Nietzsche and what philosophical resources he gives us to re-think these crucial concepts. A related aim is to examine how Nietzsche connects these concepts to his thoughts about life-affirmation, self-love, promise-making, agency, the 'will to nothingness', and the 'eternal recurrence', as well as to his search for a 'genealogical' understanding of morality. These twelve essays by leading Nietzsche scholars ask such key questions as: Can we reconcile his rejection of free will with his positive invocations of the notion of free will? How does Nietzsche's celebration of freedom and free spirits sit with his claim that we all have an unchangeable fate? What is the relation between his concepts of freedom and self-overcoming? The depth in which these and related issues are explored gives this volume its value, not only to those interested in Nietzsche, but to all who are concerned with the free will debate, ethics, theory of action, and the history of philosophy.

Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy

'I have always loved the lines from Rudyard Kipling: If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same... Career-wise, I guess I've experienced a 50/50 mix of the two, and I have always tried to turn a "No" into a "Yes"!' Simon May is one of the most successful and celebrated composers for television the UK has ever produced. Best known for writing the 'EastEnders' theme - whose evocative drum beat gives this book its title - Simon's long and impressive list of TV themes includes the 1980s smash-hit drama series 'Howards' Way', as well as such perennial favourites as 'Holiday' and 'Animal Park'. In Doof Doof: My Life in Music, Simon describes the creation of these works, his lifelong vocation as a teacher and even his short-lived pop career, with self-deprecating humour and the sharp eye of the true professional. With a wealth of music and TV anecdotes from Simon's more than 40 years in the business, Doof Doof is a vivid and engaging self-portrait of a successful composer, entrepreneurial businessman, earnest educator and committed family man.

My Life in Music

Doof Doof

On the Genealogy of Morality is Nietzsche's most influential, provocative, and challenging work of ethics. In this volume of newly commissioned essays, fourteen leading philosophers offer fresh insights into many of the work's central questions: How did our dominant values originate and what functions do they really serve? What future does the concept of 'evil' have - and can it be revalued? What sorts of virtues and ideals does Nietzsche advocate, and are they necessarily incompatible with aspirations to democracy and a free society? What are the nature, role, and scope of genealogy in his critique of morality - and why doesn't his own evaluative standard receive a genealogical critique? Taken together, this superb collection illuminates what a post-Christian and indeed post-moral life might look like, and asks to what extent Nietzsche's Genealogy manages to move beyond morality.

Simon May

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