William Myers

An unprecedented look at the design archives of the iconic sportswear brand. In Autumn 2024 the Vitra Design Museum will present the first ever museum exhibition about Nike, the world’s most revered sport brand. The exhibition and this accompanying catalogue mark the milestones in Nike’s six decade history and explores its ascent into a global brand that holds a central role in popular culture. The focus of the exhibition is on Nike’s design practice – from the company’s beginnings in the 1960s and the design of its famous “swoosh” logo to iconic products such as Air Max Air Jordan and Vapor Fly, and current research devoted to future materials and sustainability. The main source for the exhibition is the Department of Nike Archives, which contains a unique collection of drawings, prototypes and other documentation. The exhibition marks the most comprehensive access ever given to this archive. Among the objects on show are rarities and one-offs from the company’s early days in the 1960s, original design drawings and prototypes of iconic sneaker models, historical documents and films, as well as the results of collaborations with creative figures such as Virgil Abloh and Marc Newson. Nike: Form Follows Motion traces Nike’s design process, which begins with the scientific analysis of the human body in motion and material research and culminates in the finished product and its branding. Along with Nike designers like Bill Bowerman, Diane Katz, Tinker Hatfield and Eric Avar, athletes – from the world’s greatest to the everyday – have played an important role in this design process.

Originally published in 1991, this elegantly written book offers new readers a useful approach to the work of Evelyn Waugh and will persuade those familiar with it to look at it afresh. This introduction to Waugh’s novels places them high in the catalogue of great fiction. It claims for them an intellectual coherence, subtlety and seriousness which Waugh’s disconcerting comic gifts and extravagant public and writing persona have tended to put in the shade. In addressing the nature of Waugh’s comic writing William Myers has borrowed George Bataille’s concept of Evil as a convenient way of dealing with the most troubling and exciting aspects of Waugh’s work: its sadism, its childish irresponsibility, its fascination with lunacy and death.

George Eliot thought of herself as a teacher, as did her contemporaries. Their view that her writing was not simply influenced in a relatively haphazard way by her philosophical and scientific reading but was a deliberate and consistent attempt to synthesize in fiction an elaborate and coherent theoretical analysis of the human situation is studied in this book, originally published in 1984. Eliot’s Associationist philosophy, her Feuerbachian readings of religion, her ethic of Submission and her sense that Positivism can be transcended in art and vision are here subjected to a thorough Marxist, Nietzschean and psycho-analytical critique.

Originally published in 1973, this is foremost a study of Dryden as a writer, but, the author maintains, his ideas cannot be separated from his art. Dryden’s concern with familiar 17th Century problems – the inadequacy of royalist theory in the face of power politics, the rise of philosophical materialism, make him almost as important to the historian as to the student of English Literature. William Myers’ overall picture of Dryden’s works ranges chronologically from the Restoration to the Glorious Revolution. Each play or poem is judged in its own right and as part of a strikingly honest literary life. Particular emphasis is given to the writings following The Hind and the Panther. Then at last Dryden was able to unite his total mastery of prose and verse both with a fully developed sense of what had happened to English society and with his own unyielding commitment to a traditional political philosophy and a traditional theology.

The year 1688 is a turning point in English culture, and one from which can be dated numerous distinctively ‘modern’ notions of truth, property and political order. The texts assembled in this collection, originally published in 1986, focus on this intellectual adjustment from five related perspectives: from the traditions of social thought, philosophical thought, Anglicanism and royalism, latitudinarianism and the whig tradition, and the dissenting/radical/quietist milieu. The texts highlight not only the views that prevailed (Halifax and Locke), but those that failed (Dryden and Temple) and those that were reduced to marginality (Baxter). The substantial introduction by the editor brings out key themes such as the shifting notion of property and the related themes of inheritance, education and marriage, as well as the uneasy intellectual alliances of the period.

The first book to address the thrilling new developments in the field of biological design, now fully revised and expanded.

In our age of fast-paced biotechnological progress and humans' increasing impact on the environment the autonomy of 'nature' has come into question. We can now engineer living things, blur the biological distinctions between humans and animals, and influence parts of our world that we cannot see - such as DNA and genes. These discoveries and far-reaching developments have created fertile ground for artistic expression. This book reveals the ways in which the work of bio artists offers new meanings for our lives in the wake of scientific discovery, as well as new frameworks for describing them. Four thematic chapters cover the key areas in which biotechnology has had an impact on today's world, including ecology, biomedicine, designer genomes and evolutionary theory, profiling the work of 60 artists, collectives and organizations from countries including France, Germany, the US, the Netherlands, Mexico and Japan. Interviews with eight bio artists and technologists, including Arne Hendriks, Mark Dion, Boo Chapple, Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Raphael Kim, provide a deeper insight into the ideas and methods of this new breed of creative practitioner.

Fighter pilot cousins Jason and Peter, meet as enemies in the skies over Europe. Their friend David - an Ojibwa tail gunner - is shot down over Germany, and is relentlessly pursued by Roland, a committed Nazi. He is also sought by Peter, whose parents have recently been killed in an allied air raid. Jason's younger brother Jack commands a Sherman tank of the 8th New Brunswick Hussars on the Western Front, bedding women and eventually becoming witness to horrific atrocity. Previously, during a canoe trip on Lake Superior (Gitchigumi) in 1938, Peter and his cousins were taken by David to visit the ancient mystical pictographs at Agawa Bay. The four boys go through a life-threatening experience, which may later influence their actions when a confluence of harrowing events brings them all together again, to clash on a battlefield in Holland.The book is accurate in its historical chronology, locations, and technical details. The story contains both real characters portrayed with historical accuracy, and interesting main characters created by the author, who drive the narrative at an ever increasing pace toward its exciting conclusion. Readers of historical fiction who enjoy the technical accuracy of writers like Len Deighton or Patrick O'Brian will enjoy this book.

The Old Roman Catholic Church is rich in history and maintains a traditional faith with pastoral understanding. This book is an introduction to the faith as well as the people who helped to shape it throughout history.

Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work, authored by an interdisciplinary team of experts, incorporates recent theoretical advances and experiences to explore the place of labor in children's lives and development.This groundbreaking book considers international policies governing children's work and the complexity of assessing the various effects of their work. The authors question current child labor policies and interventions, which, even though pursued with the best intentions, too often fail to protect children against harm or promote their access to education and other opportunities for decent futures. They argue for the need to re-think the assumptions that underlie current policies on the basis of empirical evidence, and they recommend new approaches to advance working children's well-being and guarantee their human rights.Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work condemns the exploitation and abuse of child workers and supports the right of all children to the best quality, free education that society can afford. At the same time, the authors recognize the value, and sometimes the necessity, of work in growing up, and the reality that a "workless" childhood, without responsibilities, is not good preparation for adult life in any environment.

Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work, authored by an interdisciplinary team of experts, incorporates recent theoretical advances and experiences to explore the place of labor in children's lives and development.This groundbreaking book considers international policies governing children's work and the complexity of assessing the various effects of their work. The authors question current child labor policies and interventions, which, even though pursued with the best intentions, too often fail to protect children against harm or promote their access to education and other opportunities for decent futures. They argue for the need to re-think the assumptions that underlie current policies on the basis of empirical evidence, and they recommend new approaches to advance working children's well-being and guarantee their human rights.Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work condemns the exploitation and abuse of child workers and supports the right of all children to the best quality, free education that society can afford. At the same time, the authors recognize the value, and sometimes the necessity, of work in growing up, and the reality that a "workless" childhood, without responsibilities, is not good preparation for adult life in any environment.

The year 1688 is a turning point in English culture, and one from which can be dated numerous distinctively ‘modern’ notions of truth, property and political order. The texts assembled in this collection, originally published in 1986, focus on this intellectual adjustment from five related perspectives: from the traditions of social thought, philosophical thought, Anglicanism and royalism, latitudinarianism and the whig tradition, and the dissenting/radical/quietist milieu. The texts highlight not only the views that prevailed (Halifax and Locke), but those that failed (Dryden and Temple) and those that were reduced to marginality (Baxter). The substantial introduction by the editor brings out key themes such as the shifting notion of property and the related themes of inheritance, education and marriage, as well as the uneasy intellectual alliances of the period.

Originally published in 1973, this is foremost a study of Dryden as a writer, but, the author maintains, his ideas cannot be separated from his art. Dryden’s concern with familiar 17th Century problems – the inadequacy of royalist theory in the face of power politics, the rise of philosophical materialism, make him almost as important to the historian as to the student of English Literature. William Myers’ overall picture of Dryden’s works ranges chronologically from the Restoration to the Glorious Revolution. Each play or poem is judged in its own right and as part of a strikingly honest literary life. Particular emphasis is given to the writings following The Hind and the Panther. Then at last Dryden was able to unite his total mastery of prose and verse both with a fully developed sense of what had happened to English society and with his own unyielding commitment to a traditional political philosophy and a traditional theology.