isolarri books take their name from the extinct genre of Venetian Renaissance “island books.”
“Month to month, they map the extremes of human knowledge and creative endeavor, assembling the perennial legends and emerging icons—scientists and novelists, philosophers and activists, architects and technologists, from the counterculture to the avant-garde—pioneering new ways of understanding ourselves and the Earth.”
As the publisher details, “The humanism of the past 500 years is dead. Believing man was exceptional, it opened the abyss of extinction. A new approach requires the effort of all those who tear down convention in order to preserve what is meaningful—not just environments, but irrationality, autonomy and joy.”
In short, isolarri has pioneered an inexpensive, efficient and whimsical way to produce printed books with minimal material waste. The books are literal and literally pocket-sized volumes—the size of a pack of cigarettes (but healthier) of lost and forgotten treasures that will fit in the palm of your hand and come with removable jackets. In fact, the recent offering is AH!MERICA, adapted from lectures by Allen Ginsberg on and around William Blake at the Naropa Institute, with illustrations of different cover images by Blake.
Instead of whipping out my smartphone on the subway to pass idle time looking at Reels and Stories, I choose instead this delightful book, and am aware that fellow riders are jealously looking over my shoulder to see whether or not I’ve got an advanced version of a 20G device (thinking, perhaps, that the multiple pages are a new manner of screen).
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