Edited by Jeffrey K. Zeig

From Amazon: "This book is a direct transcript of a week long hypnosis/ psychotherapy seminar performed by Milton H. Erickson at the end of his life, and at the height of his expertise. It reads with the hypnotic fluidity of a good novel while teaching a tremendous amount – about many things. Erickson weaves his way through various teaching tales while interacting with people in the seminar."
If you are interested in unconscious learning this book is a must read.

Thanks to Tristan Thönnissen!

by Ray Carney

From Wikipedia: "Cassavetes is the subject of several books about the actor/filmmakers life. Cassavetes on Cassavetes is a collection of interviews collected or conducted by Boston University film scholar Ray Carney, in which the late filmmaker recalls his experiences, influences and outlook in the film industry. In the Oscar 2005 edition of Vanity Fair magazine, one article features a tribute to Cassavetes by three members of his stock company: Gena Rowlands, and actors Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk."
From Faber and Faber: "Professor Ray Carney, a friend and admirer of Cassavetes, presents a book that offers us Cassavetes in his own words - frank, uncompromising, humane, and passionate about both life and art."

Visualising Information in Graphic Design

From Gestalten: "The application of diagrams extends beyond its classical field of use today. Data Flow charts this development, introduces the expansive scope of innovatively designed diagrams and presents an abundant range of possibilities in visualising data and information. These range from chart-like diagrams such as bar, plot, line diagrams and spider charts, graph-based diagrams including line, matrix, process flow, and molecular diagrams to extremely complex three-dimensional diagrams. Data Flow is an up-to-date survey providing cutting-edge aesthetics and inspirational solutions for designers, and at the same time unlocks a new field of visual codes..."

by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou

Am currently enjoying the wonderful Logicomix book and totally recommend it.
From the Logicomix website: "Covering a span of sixty years, the graphic novel Logicomix was inspired by the epic story of the quest for the Foundations of Mathematics.
This was a heroic intellectual adventure most of whose protagonists paid the price of knowledge with extreme personal suffering and even insanity. The book tells its tale in an engaging way, at the same time complex and accessible. It grounds the philosophical struggles on the undercurrent of personal emotional turmoil, as well as the momentous historical events and ideological battles which gave rise to them.
The role of narrator is given to the most eloquent and spirited of the story's protagonists, the great logician, philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell. It is through his eyes that the plights of such great thinkers as Frege, Hilbert, Poincaré, Wittgenstein and Gödel come to life, and through his own passionate involvement in the quest that the various narrative strands come together."

by Clarissa Pinkola Estés (*1945)

Women Who Run With the Wolves is a book that was scarcely reviewed after publication but has become a best-seller. I read it despite its self-help book cover and weird sounding abstracts. Just because a male (!) friend recommended it strongly. It is absolutely not what you would expect reading the descriptions on the back of the book. Instead it is hortatory, ecstatic, and, ultimately, irritating.
From New York Times: "In the book, Dr. Estes has interpreted old tales in ways that merge Carlos Castaneda with Bruno Bettelheim, from Bluebeard to the Little Match Girl, that reveal an archetypal wild woman whose qualities she says have today been dangerously tamed by a society that preaches the virtue of being nice."

»If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith… there is yet time.«

by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"One lives no longer in the fetters of love and hatred, without yes, without no, near or far as one wishes, preferably slipping away, evading, fluttering off, gone again, again flying aloft; one is spoiled, as everyone is who has at some time seen a tremendous number of things beneath him - and one becomes the opposite of those who concern themselves with things which have nothing to do with them. Indeed, the free spirit henceforth has to do only with things - and how many things! - with which he is no longer concerned..." Read the book here: The Nietzsche Channel.
(Thanks to Lukasz Wrobel!)

by Jacques Rancière (*1940)

From goodreads: "In his book The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Jacques Ranciere reads the work of a 19th century French teacher, Jacotot. Jacotot ended up having Flemish students with whom he could not adequately communicate, as they did not speak French and he did not speak Flemish. In order to instruct them in French, he had them each get a copy of Telemachus in Flemish and in French. He had them read the book in their own language until it was very familiar. Then he had them read the book in French and compare the two, slowly, painstakingly. Over time, the students learned French. Reflecting on this, Jacotot decided that while the students had learned, it was not clear if or how he had taught them. His own knowledge of French had not been transmitted to the students, or even been relevant to the students' learning. If the students had learned without Jacotot's knowledge entering into play, then didn't this mean that one did not have to know to teach? As an experiment, he undertook to teach painting and piano, which he did not know. And his students learned painting and piano. 
Jacotot called this method universal teaching. From this experience, he derived a proposition by turns startling and simple: intelligence does not admit of differences of quantity. Everyone is as intelligent as everyone else. Application or access to intelligence is a matter of will. Learning then is an act of will, and the training and strengthening of will. In other words, learning is emancipation, at least when it occurs via universal teaching."
(Thanks to Julian Rohrhuber!)

by Josef Müller-Brockmann (1914-1996)

All about the underlying craftsmanship in graphic design. Grid systems are totally underestimated. A wonderful book and a classic. 
From Amazon: "The development of organisational systems in visual communication was the service and the accomplishment of the representatives of simple and functional typography and graphic design. In the 1920s in Europe, works already arose in the areas of typography, graphic design and photography with objectified conception and rigid composition. In 1961 a brief presentation of the grid with text and illustrations appeared for the first time in an earlier book by the author."

by Slavoj Žižek (*1949)

From Amazon: "The title is just the first of many startling asides, observations and insights that fill this guide to Hollywood on the Lacanian psychoanalyst's couch - a thrilling guide to cinema and psychoanalysis from the last giant of cultural theory in the twenty-first century."
Also highly recommended: THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA.

by Milton H. Erickson (1901-1980) and Sidney Rosen

From Wikipedia: Milton H. Erickson "developed an extensive use of therapeutic metaphor and story as well as hypnosis and coined the term Brief Therapy for his approach of addressing therapeutic changes in relatively few sessions. (...) Through conceptualizing the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind, with its own awareness, interests, responses, and learnings, he taught that the unconscious mind was creative, solution-generating, and often positive."

by John Gray (*1948)

From Wikipedia: "Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement, and has written several influential books on political theory, including Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2003), an attack on humanism, a worldview which he sees as originating in religious ideologies. Gray sees volition, and hence morality, as an illusion, and portrays humanity as a ravenous species engaged in wiping out other forms of life."

by Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

From Wikipedia: "Campbell explores the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth. (...) While Campbell offers a discussion of the hero's journey by using the Freudian concepts popular in the 1940s and 1950s, the monomythic structure is not tied to these concepts. Similarly, Campbell uses a mixture of Jungian archetypes, unconscious forces, and Arnold van Gennep's structuring of rites of passage rituals to provide some illumination.[3] However, this pattern of the hero's journey influences artists and intellectuals worldwide, suggesting a basic usefulness for Campbell's insights not tied to academic categories and mid-20th century forms of analysis." 
If you can get a hold of Joseph Campbell's lecture series Transformation of myth through time is also a life changing experience.

by David Ogilvy (1911-1999)

From Wikipedia: "Ogilvy's advertising mantra followed these four basic principles.
> Research: Coming, as he did, from a background in research, he never underestimated its importance in advertising. In fact, in 1952, when he opened his own agency, he billed himself as Research Director.
> Professional discipline: "I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the chaos of ignorance." He codified knowledge into slide and film presentations he called Magic Lanterns. He also instituted several training programs for young advertising professionals.
> Creative brilliance: A strong emphasis on the "BIG IDEA."
> Results for clients: "In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create."

by Fritz Perls (1893-1970)

From Amazon: "Compiled and edited from transcriptions of three workshop/demonstrations that took place at the Esalen Institute in 1968, the first section of this book includes four lectures wherein Perls presents a clear explanation in simple terms of the basic ideas he believed underlie the philosophy and methodology of Gestalt therapy. The lectures are followed by verbatim transcripts of work Perls did with workshop participants."

by Timothy Leary (1920-1996)

Leary's death was videotaped for posterity at his request, capturing his final words. During his final moments, he said, "Why not?" to his son Zachary. He uttered the phrase repeatedly, in different intonations, and died soon after. His last word, according to Zachary Leary, was "beautiful". - At the end of this year it only seems appropriate to remember Timothy Leary (1920-1996), writer, psychologist, futurist, and advocate of psychedelic drug research and use: The wonderful archive.org's new Timothy Leary video archive has currently over 80 videos. Have a look and get lost. 

A play by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

From Wikipedia: "The play starts out seeming to be a light satire of the traditional British drawing room comedy. As it progresses, however, the work becomes a darker philosophical treatment of human relations. As in many of Eliot's works, the play uses absurdist elements to expose the isolation of the human condition."

by Robert Cialdini (*1945)

Was in Basel for a five-days-workshop with a dozen of highly motivated students at FHNW's Hyperwerk. As always in the context of design the question of motivation and manipulation came up. Which reminded me of two things: The book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini (Thank you, William!) and the fast-paced TED talk "Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better" by Tony Robbins. 

by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, Robert B. Cialdini

From Amazon: "Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini meld social psychology, pop culture and field research to demonstrate how the subtle addition, subtraction or substitution of a word, phrase, symbol or gesture can significantly influence consumer behavior. Interspersing references to Britney Spears, the Smurfs and Sex and the City with more academic concepts such as loss aversion and the scarcity principle, the authors illustrate the simple and surprising approaches that can hone a company's marketing strategies."

by Michael Bierut (*1957)

Got this wonderful book as a present and wanted to send one of the essays ("My Phone Call to Arnold Newman") to my students. That is how I learned about Michael Bierut's excellent blog Design Observer. Go check it out and also see him in the enjoyable documentary Helvetica about THE most common typeface of our times.

by Jeffrey Gray (1934-2004)

My friend Constantin Rothkopf recommended this book on what is commonly known as the Hard Problem of consciousness. I spent two weeks looking at beautiful Bellagio and the ever-changing light on Lago di Como, reading this accessible and compelling analysis of how conscious experience relates to brain and behaviour. Totally recommended.

by Jon Krasner

This book covers all basic principles in motion graphics. And its structure proofed to be extremely useful in class. A must have if one is interested in this field.

by Keith Johnstone (*1933)

One of those very few books that can change how you work in fundamental ways... Brilliantly funny, thoughtful and perceptive. Highly practical in its sections on mask, narratives, spontaneity, and improvisation; subversive and constructive at the same time. Thanks for this recommendation, William!