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johnCarmody.com

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Custom WordPress Dev + Web Design + Interactive Data Design + Teaching

I do it all. If you can describe it, I can build it and teach it: custom WordPress and database-driven new media solutions for organizations which need something more than something off the shelf.

  • Clients

    Museums & galleries; foundations; law firms; journalists; restaurants; thoroughbred stables; energy companies; pro rock bands, & many others.

  • Teaching

    Interactive web design; book design; data visualization; art history; animation; post-production, much more. Now a Lecturer in Fine Arts at George Washington University.

  • Skills

    WordPress dev; interactive web design; new media storytelling with data-driven maps, charts, galleries & timelines; audio & video editing; much more.

  • Biography

    Upon being expelled senior year I became a high school drop-out; before that, aptitude tests reported I was best suited to be a farmer.

  • Reading

    I threw out my television more than 25 years ago, which leaves me plenty of time for reading.

  • Studio

    My work studio is a co-mingling of the obsolete and the cutting edge, a regular Collyer Mansion for the modern man.

  • Photography

    It took me awhile to go digital – a penultimate apostasy in my book. Want to see what I can do with a crummy camera?

  • Music

    I cannot read or write a note of music — I taught myself by ear to play different instruments & write songs in sundry styles & genres.

  • Video

    These are mostly time-lapse experiments – I shot the imagery and composed and performed the soundtracks.

  • Projects

    Highlights of lectures, client and faculty work, proofs of concept in JavaScript, graphic design, live data sets, animation, information design and more.

  • News

    Recent additions to this site: web projects, design projects, photo galleries, original music & video — you name it.

  • Resources

    An archive of articles which tie into the web projects I build, the university courses I teach and the lecture audiences I address.

“The Great Wall of Music” INTERACTIVE

John Carmody: A section of my studio was featured in the Washington Post Magazine's “Second Glance”

Take the test - a section of my studio was featured in the Washington Post Magazine's “Second Glance” section.

I work inside a growing piece of art. A simultaneous overlay of a gallery, a performance space, a design office and a recording studio, this installation evokes the better elements of a New York loft, a Berlin nightclub, a London used book & record store and an LA pawn shop. All in a Washington cellar.

 INTERACTIVE: This photograph of a cross-section of my studio was featured in the Washington Post Magazine’s “Second Glance” section.

Client, Faculty & Personal Work

Custom front-end & back-end design & programming.

Working with clients of all sizes, I am highly skilled at creating custom database-driven interactive solutions using WordPress, PHP, mySQL, jQuery, AJAX & Bootstrap. Database management is a specialty.

Most people in my field do web development *or* web design – I do both: back- and front-end. I am well-versed in creating innovative WordPress themes serving up API-driven rich content from Scribd, Flickr, SoundCloud, YouTube, Twitter, Google Custom Search, Disqus, Wufoo and others.

And I’m an adjunct professor at George Washington University, teaching interactive digital communication design courses.


more resources >>

The George Washington University

  • Graphic Design: Layout and Design of the Book
  • Digital Media Design: Frame-By-Frame Animation
  • Digital Media Design: Interactive Web Design I

The Corcoran College of Art + Design

  • Art History: Digital Media Culture
  • Graphic Design: Junior Studio Core, Graphic Design III
  • New Media Photojournalism: Graduate Program, Audio Production: Speed of Sound
  • New Media Photojournalism: Graduate Thesis, Directed Study
  • New Media Photojournalism: Senior Thesis, Directed Study
  • Digital Media Design: Senior Thesis, Digital Media Design IV
  • Digital Media Design: Junior Studio Core, Digital Media Design III
  • Digital Media Design: Interactive Web Design II
  • Digital Media Design: Interactive Web Design I
  • Digital Media Design: Sound Design
  • Digital Media Design: Flash Animation

The Catholic University of America

  • Interactive Media Design: Audio Production & Design
  • Interactive Media Design: Video Art w/Final Cut Pro
  • Interactive Media Design: Intro to Dreamweaver
  • Interactive Media Design: Intro to Flash

Seminar Presentation – the National Press Foundation

  • Information Design: A Foundation in Web Publishing Tools

Seminar Presentations – US General Accounting Office

  • Graphic Design: Web Design For Print Professionals
  • Information Design: Transitioning from Print to Web Publishing

Genuine Original Compositions

I cannot read or write a note of music, I am self-taught on numerous instruments by ear.

This is a small sampling of original songs, audio collages, time-lapse videos and photography I’ve composed, recorded, shot and otherwise created over the years. 

This includes musical work I composed for instruments I cannot play (violin, cello, piano, baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone, others.)

I played in a lot of bands, made recordings, saw some parts of the USA that whet my appetite for travel seen through the windows of a band van. 

Give it a listen – consume this content – you won’t find anything like it elsewhere.

(all words | music | arrangements | videos | photography  copyright John Carmody, Washington DC ©)

All You Need To Know About John Carmody

I pulled the plug more than 25 years ago.

Since 1992 I have been studying American heritage while living a pop culture hermitage.

That means: no TV, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no texting, no celebrities, no sports, no video games, no crummy music, no credit cards, no debt, no logos, no smart phone, no trends…

You get the idea.

Books Read, 2019: 19

  • The Essential Groucho

    Writings By, For, and About Groucho Marx

    ed., Stefan Kanfer

    2000 -

  • Rabbit, Run

    John Updike

    1960 -

  • Our Gang

    Philip Roth

    1971 -

  • O Albany!

    William Kennedy

    1983 -

  • Of Mice And Men

    John Steinbeck

    1937 -

  • The 42nd Parallel

    John Dos Passos

    1930 -

  • Sex, Time and Power

    How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution

    Leonard Shlain

    2003 -

  • Billy Bathgate

    E. L. Doctorow

    1989 -

  • In Review

    Pictures I've Kept

    Dwight D. Eisenhower

    1969 -

  • The Red Badge of Courage

    And Other Stories

    Stephen Crane

    1895 -

  • Deliverance

    James Dickey

    1970 -

  • Main Street

    Sinclair Lewis

    1920 -

  • Thirteen Days

    A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

    Robert F. Kennedy

    1967 -

  • To Chain The Dog Of War

    The War Power of Congress in History and Law

    Francis D. Wormuth & Edwin B. Firmage

    1986 -

  • The Killer Angels

    Michael Shaara

    1974 -

  • Haircut & Other Stories

    Ring Lardner

    1922 -

  • Babe: The Life of Oliver Hardy

    John McCabe

    1989 -

  • The Lay of the Land

    Richard Ford

    2006 -

  • The Journals of Lewis & Clark

    ed. Bernard DeVoto

    1807 -

Books Read, 2018: 41

  • Narcissus and Goldmund

    Hermann Hesse

    1930 -

  • The Gospel In Brief

    Leo Tolstoy

    1893 -

  • A Journal of the Plague Year

    Daniel Defoe

    1722 -

  • The Enemy Had It Too

    A Play In Three Acts

    Upton Sinclair

    1950 -

  • Fahrenheit 451

    Ray Bradbury

    1953 -

  • Amerika

    Franz Kafka

    1927 -

  • On The Road

    Jack Kerouac

    1957 -

  • The Gangs of New York

    An Informal History of the Underworld

    Herbert Asbury

    1928 -

  • Once There Was A War

    Dispatches from Europe & Africa, 1943

    John Steinbeck

    1958 -

  • Lie Down In Darkness

    William Styron

    1951 -

  • Dean Acheson

    The Cold War Years, 1953-1971

    Douglas Brinkley

    1992 -

  • The Ginger Man

    J. P. Donleavy

    1955 -

  • The Great Gatsby

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    1925 -

  • The Man With The Golden Arm

    Nelson Algren

    1949 -

  • Looking Forward

    Franklin D. Roosevelt

    1933 -

  • The Proud Highway

    Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955-1967

    Hunter S. Thompson

    1997 -

  • The Naked City

    Malvin Wald & Albert Maltz

    1948 -

  • Mad As Hell

    The Making of "Network" and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies

    Dave Itzkoff

    2014 -

  • In Cold Blood

    A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences

    Truman Capote

    1965 -

  • The Information

    Martin Amis

    1995 -

  • A History of Knowledge

    The Pivotal Events, People and Achievements of World History

    Charles Van Doren

    1991 -

  • The Autobiography of Charles Darwin

    Charles Darwin

    1887 -

  • Beyond Category

    The Life & Genius of Duke Ellington

    John Edward Hasse

    1993 -

  • Walden

    Or, Life in the Woods

    Henry David Thoreau

    1854 -

  • Touching and Imagining – An Introduction to Tactile Art

    Poems & Essays, 1973-1984

    Jan Švankmajer

    2014 -

  • Washington Goes To War

    David Brinkley

    1988 -

  • Legs

    William Kennedy

    1975 -

  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    Mark Twain

    1884 -

  • President Nixon

    Alone In The White House

    Richard Reeves

    2001 -

  • The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit

    Sloane Wilson

    1955 -

  • Remembering Laughter

    Wallace Stegner

    1937 -

  • Hammer of the Gods

    The Led Zeppelin Saga

    Stephen Davis

    1985 -

  • In Retrospect

    The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

    Robert S. McNamara

    1995 -

  • Catch-22

    Joseph Heller

    1961 -

  • The Ugly American

    William J. Lederer & Eugene Burdick

    1958 -

  • What Makes Sammy Run?

    Budd Schulberg

    1941 -

  • The Letters of the Rožmberk Sisters, 1449-1482

    Noblewomen in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia

    Ed., John M. Klassen

    2001 -

  • Young Lonigan

    James T. Farrell

    1932 -

  • Red Rat Race

    Morris A. Bealle

    1953 -

  • Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew

    The World's Most-Recorded Musician

    Hal Blaine

    1990 -

  • A Swell-Looking Girl

    Stories, 1929-1931

    Erskine Caldwell

    1959 -

Books Read, 2017: 39

  • Man of the People

    A Life of Harry S. Truman

    Alonzo L. Hamby

    1995 -

  • The Commanders

    Bob Woodward

    1991 -

  • Three Films

    Battleship Potempkin | October | Alexander Nevsky

    Sergei Eisenstein

    1974 -

  • Band Of Angels

    Robert Penn Warren

    1955 -

  • Gilliamesque

    A Pre-Posthumous Memoir

    Terry Gilliam

    2015 -

  • Neutrino Hunters

    The Chase to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

    Ray Jayawardhana

    2013 -

  • The Tumult and the Shouting

    My Life In Sport

    Grantland Rice

    1954 -

  • What Hath God Wrought

    The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848

    Daniel Walker Howe

    2007 -

  • The Bad Seed

    William March

    1954 -

  • The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

    Carson McCullers

    1940 -

  • Short Cuts

    Robert Altman & Frank Barhydt

    1993 -

  • A Tour On The Prairies

    An Account of Thirty Days in Deep Indian Country

    Washington Irving

    1833 -

  • Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

    Neil deGrasse Tyson

    2017 -

  • The Public Arts

    Gilbert Seldes

    1956 -

  • The Jack Benny Show

    The Life & Times of America's Best-Loved Entertainer

    Milt Josefsberg

    1977 -

  • The Fables of Ivan Krylov

    1769-1844

    Translated by Stephen Pimenoff

    2017 -

  • The Scarlet Letter

    Nathaniel Hawthorne

    1850 -

  • Ragged Dick

    Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks

    Horatio Alger, Jr.

    1868 -

  • Hard Times

    An Oral History of the Great Depression

    Studs Terkel

    1970 -

  • The Day of the Locust

    Nathanael West

    1939 -

  • Life on the Mississippi

    Mark Twain

    1883 -

  • I Married A Communist

    Or, The Woman On Pier 13

    Robert Stevenson

    1949 -

  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

    A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

    Hunter S. Thompson

    1971 -

  • In Confidence

    Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962-1986)

    Anatoly Dobrynin

    1995 -

  • Being There

    Jerzy Kosinski

    1970 -

  • Lincoln’s Constitution

    Daniel Farber

    2003 -

  • Manhattan Transfer

    John Dos Passos

    1925 -

  • The Prince

    Niccolò Machiavelli

    1513 -

  • Leonardo’s Brain

    Understanding Da Vinci's Creative Genius

    Leonard Schlain

    2015 -

  • No More Vietnams

    Richard Nixon

    1985 -

  • 1066

    The Year of the Conquest

    David Howarth

    1977 -

  • Ragtime

    E. L. Doctorow

    1974 -

  • Herblock: A Cartoonist’s Life

    Self-portrait and Views of Washington from Roosevelt to Clinton

    Herbert Block

    1993 -

  • Tobacco Road

    Erskine Caldwell

    1932 -

  • How The Other Half Lives

    Studies Among The Tenements Of New York

    Jacob A. Riis

    1890 -

  • All The Pretty Horses

    Cormac McCarthy

    1992 -

  • Darkness At Noon

    Arthur Koestler

    1941 -

  • Keith Moon

    The Life & Death of a Rock Legend

    Tony Fletcher

    1998 -

  • Animal Farm

    George Orwell

    1945 -

Books Read, 2016: 37

  • The Gutenberg Galaxy

    The Making of Typographic Man

    Marshall McLuhan

    1962 -

  • Longitude

    Dava Sobel

    1995 -

  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

    Philip K. Dick

    1968 -

  • Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

    Capt. Ted W. Lawson

    1943 -

  • On The Beach

    Neville Shute

    1957 -

  • Thinking With Type

    A Critical Guide

    Ellen Lupton

    2004 -

  • The Wayward Bus

    John Steinbeck

    1947 -

  • Crossing To Safety

    Wallace Stegner

    1987 -

  • Off The Record With FDR

    The War Years 1942-1945

    William D. Hassett

    1958 -

  • Specifications Grading

    Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students & Saving Faculty Time

    Linda B. Nilson

    2015 -

  • Finale

    The Reagan Years

    Thomas Mallon

    2015 -

  • The Bell Jar

    Sylvia Plath

    1963 -

  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

    Benjamin Franklin

    1793 -

  • The Big Picture

    On the Origins of Life, Meaning & the Universe Itself

    Sean Carroll

    2016 -

  • Six Amendments

    How and Why We Should Change the Constitution

    John Paul Stevens, US Supreme Court Justice (ret.)

    2014 -

  • Death of a Salesman

    Arthur Miller

    1949 -

  • Notes From A Dead House

    Fyodor Dostoevsky

    1862 -

  • Real Peace

    Richard Nixon

    1984 -

  • Stars In Their Courses

    The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863

    Shelby Foote

    1963 -

  • Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

    Hunter S. Thompson

    1973 -

  • Zero K

    Don DeLillo

    2016 -

  • The Johnstown Flood

    The Story Behind The 1889 Disaster

    David McCullough

    1968 -

  • A Walk on the Wild Side

    Nelson Algren

    1956 -

  • The Jungle

    Upton Sinclair

    1906 -

  • Working

    People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

    Studs Terkel

    1974 -

  • Hells Angels

    The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

    Hunter S. Thompson

    1966 -

  • Babbit

    Sinclair Lewis

    1922 -

  • Don’t Wait for the Next War

    A Strategy for American Growth and Global Leadership

    General (ret.) Wesley K. Clark

    2014 -

  • Here, There and Everywhere

    My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles

    Geoff Emerick

    2006 -

  • Sound Man

    A Life Recording Hits with The Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin

    Glynn Johns

    2014 -

  • Waiting For Lefty

    And Other Plays

    Clifford Odets

    1937 -

  • The Big Rock Candy Mountain

    Wallace Stegner

    1943 -

  • Voices From Chernobyl

    The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

    Svetlana Alexievich

    1997 -

  • The Executioner’s Song

    Norman Mailer

    1979 -

  • Claudius The God

    And His Wife Messalina

    Robert Graves

    1935 -

  • The Imperial Presidency

    Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

    1973 -

  • Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey

    1840-1870

    Lillian Schlissel

    1992 -

Books Read, 2015: 34

  • Harpo Speaks…About New York

    Adolph Marx

    1961 -

  • Not Too Old To Cut The Mustard

    Jumping Bill Carlisle & Friends Talk About His Life & the Country Music Business

    Anita Capps

    2000 -

  • The Prank

    The Best of Young Chekhov (1880-1882)

    Anton Chekhov

    2015 -

  • Polk

    The Man who Transformed the Presidency and America

    Walter K. Borneman

    2008 -

  • A Study In Scarlet

    Arthur Conan Doyle

    1878 -

  • The Bridge of San Luis Rey

    Thornton Wilder

    1928 -

  • In The Wake of the Plague

    The Black Death & the World it Made

    Norman Cantor

    2001 -

  • All Quiet on the Western Front

    Erich Maria Remarque

    1928 -

  • Libra

    Don DeLillo

    1988 -

  • Requiem For A Dream

    Hubert Selby, Jr.

    1978 -

  • Notes on the Death of Culture

    Essays on Spectacle and Society

    Mario Vargas Llosa

    2012 -

  • A Detailed Analysis of the Constitution

    Edward F. Cooke

    1958 -

  • Paterson

    Volumes I - V

    William Carlos Williams

    1946 -

  • Art & Physics

    Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light

    Leonard Schlain

    1991 -

  • The Story of a Bad Boy

    Thomas Bailey Aldrich

    1870 -

  • Independence Day

    Richard Ford

    1995 -

  • The Spectator Bird

    Wallace Stegner

    1976 -

  • O Pioneers!

    Willa Cather

    1913 -

  • Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

    Harriet Jacobs

    1861 -

  • White Mule

    William Carlos Williams

    1937 -

  • The Time Machine

    H.G. Wells

    1895 -

  • The Haldeman Diaries

    Inside The Nixon White House

    H.R. Haldeman

    1993 -

  • Travels With Charley

    John Steinbeck

    1962 -

  • John Barleycorn

    Or, Alcoholic Memoirs

    Jack London

    1913 -

  • Law and the Nation

    1865 - 1912

    Jonathan Lurie

    1983 -

  • Days of Wine and Roses

    David Westheimer

    1962 -

  • One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

    Alexander Solzhenitsyn

    1963 -

  • That Man

    An Insider's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt

    Robert H. Jackson

    1954 -

  • Harlot’s Ghost

    Norman Mailer

    1991 -

  • Looking Backward

    Edward Bellamy

    1888 -

  • Equus

    Peter Shaffer

    1973 -

  • Seven Plays

    Sam Shephard

    1981 -

  • A People’s History of the United States

    Howard Zinn

    1992 -

  • The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin

    Richard Lourie

    1999 -

Books Read, 2014: 34

  • The Unvanquished

    William Faulkner

    1938 -

  • Blockade Diary

    Under Siege In Leningrad, 1941-1942

    Elena Kochina

    1990 -

  • The Luck of Roaring Camp

    And Other Stories

    Bret Harte

    1869 -

  • Groucho And Me

    The Autobiography

    Julius H. Marx

    1959 -

  • The Glass Cage

    Automation and Us

    Nicholas Carr

    2014 -

  • From Here To Eternity

    James Jones

    1951 -

  • The Zone of Interest

    Martin Amis

    2014 -

  • The Autobiography of Mark Twain

    1877-1910

    ed., Charles Neider

    1959 -

  • The Communist Manifesto

    Karl Marx + Frederick Engels

    1848 -

  • The Iron Heel

    Jack London

    1908 -

  • Slaughterhouse-Five

    Or, The Children's Crusade

    Kurt Vonnegut

    1966 -

  • It Can’t Happen Here

    Sinclair Lewis

    1935 -

  • Homer & Langley

    E. L. Doctorow

    2009 -

  • Plain Speaking

    An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman

    Merle Miller

    1974 -

  • From Eternity to Here

    The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time

    Sean Carroll

    2010 -

  • The Plot Against America

    Philip Roth

    2004 -

  • Hitchcock and Bradbury Fistfight in Heaven

    ed., McSweeney's 45

    2013 -

  • Good Hunting

    An American Spymaster's Story

    Jack Devine

    2014 -

  • Bad Monkey

    Carl Hiaasen

    2013 -

  • All The King’s Men

    Robert Penn Warren

    1946 -

  • Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940

    How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression

    David E. Kyvig

    2002 -

  • Morning And Noon

    A Memoir

    Dean Acheson

    1965 -

  • Killer Of Crying Deer

    William Orem

    2010 -

  • Barabbas

    Par Lagerkvist

    1950 -

  • The 480

    Eugene Burdick

    1964 -

  • Big Bets & Black Swans

    Policy Recommendations for President Obama in 2014

    ed., Brookings Institution

    2014 -

  • Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

    Philip K. Dick

    1974 -

  • The Friends of Eddie Coyle

    George V. Higgins

    1970 -

  • Nixonland

    The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

    Rick Perlstein

    2008 -

  • The Human Comedy

    William Saroyan

    1943 -

  • The Sportswriter

    Richard Ford

    1986 -

  • My Silent War

    The Autobiography of a Spy

    Kim Philby

    1968 -

  • Winesburg, Ohio

    A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life

    Sherwood Anderson

    1919 -

  • Frankenstein

    Or, The Modern Prometheus

    Mary Shelley

    1831 -

Books Read, 2013: 36

  • The Crucible

    Arthur Miller

    1952 -

  • Last Exit To Brooklyn

    Hubert Selby, Jr.

    1957 -

  • Six Months In 1945

    FDR, Stalin, Churchill & Truman - from World War to Cold War

    Michael Dobbs

    2012 -

  • The Circle

    Dave Eggers

    2013 -

  • The Millennium

    A Comedy of the Year 2000

    Upton Sinclair

    1907 -

  • God’s Little Acre

    Erskine Caldwell

    1933 -

  • Return of the Thin Man

    Dashiell Hammett

    1935 -

  • NW

    Zadie Smith

    2012 -

  • Confederates in the Attic

    Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

    Tony Horwitz

    1998 -

  • I, Claudius

    From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius

    Robert Graves

    1934 -

  • Go East Young Man

    Short Stories on Class in America 1917-1931

    Sinclair Lewis

    2005 -

  • Dewey Defeats Truman

    Thomas Mallon

    1997 -

  • The Art of Intelligence

    Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service

    Henry A. Crumpton

    2012 -

  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin

    Or, Life Among The Lowly

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    1852 -

  • Visual Explanations

    Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

    Edward R. Tufte

    1997 -

  • A Democrat Looks At His Party

    Dean Acheson

    1955 -

  • The Wanting Seed

    Anthony Burgess

    1962 -

  • Flatland

    Edwin A. Abbott

    1884 -

  • Cosmopolis

    Don DeLillo

    2003 -

  • Sabbath’s Theater

    Philip Roth

    1995 -

  • London Fields

    Martin Amis

    1989 -

  • The Hunt For KSM

    Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind

    Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer

    2012 -

  • The Luck of Barry Lyndon

    William Makepeace Thackeray

    1844 -

  • Amity & Sorrow

    Peggy Riley

    2013 -

  • Affection and Trust

    Personal Correspondence, 1953-1971

    Harry S Truman and Dean Acheson

    2010 -

  • Fellow Travelers

    Thomas Mallon

    2006 -

  • Pakistan On The Brink

    The Future of America, Pakistan & Afghanistan

    Ahmed Rashid

    2012 -

  • The Good House

    Ann Leary

    2013 -

  • Freedom

    Jonathan Franzen

    2010 -

  • The Thin Red Line

    James Jones

    1962 -

  • Give Me Everything You Have

    On Being Stalked

    James Lasdun

    2013 -

  • Marjorie Morningstar

    Herman Wouk

    1955 -

  • Time’s Arrow

    Martin Amis

    1991 -

  • Junky

    William S. Burroughs

    1953 -

  • Hedy’s Folly

    The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr

    Richard Rhodes

    2011 -

  • Sunday Nights at Seven

    The Jack Benny Story

    Jack Benny

    1990 -

Books Read, 2012: 38

  • American Nations

    A History of the 11 Rival Regional Cultures of North America

    Colin Woodard

    2011 -

  • Narcopolis

    Jeet Thayil

    2012 -

  • Escape From Camp 14

    One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

    Blaine Harden

    2012 -

  • Citizen Soldier

    A LIfe of Harry S Truman

    Aida D. Donald

    2012 -

  • Visual Strategies

    For Scientists & Engineers

    Felice C. Frankel & Angela H. DePace

    2012 -

  • A Farewell To Arms

    Ernest Hemingway

    1929 -

  • Cities of the Plain

    Cormac McCarthy

    1998 -

  • Swamplandia

    Karen Russell

    2011 -

  • Midnight Rising

    John Brown & the Raid that Sparked the Civil War

    Tony Horwitz

    2011 -

  • Envisioning Information

    Edward R. Tufte

    1990 -

  • Washington, D.C.

    A Novel

    Gore Vidal

    1967 -

  • Lionel Asbo

    State of England

    Martin Amis

    2012 -

  • Where’d You Go, Bernadette

    Maria Semple

    2012 -

  • The Counterlife

    Philip Roth

    1986 -

  • Complete Stories

    1943 - 1982

    Truman Capote

    2004 -

  • American Diplomacy

    George F. Kennan

    1952 -

  • Logavina Street

    Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood

    Barbara Demick

    1996 -

  • The Dictator’s Learning Curve

    Inside the Global Battle for Democracy

    William J. Dobson

    2012 -

  • Canada

    Richard Ford

    2012 -

  • The Education of a Typographer

    ed. Steven Heller

    2004 -

  • The Corrections

    Jonathan Franzen

    2001 -

  • Page One

    Inside the New York Times & the Future of Journalism

    ed. David Folkenflik

    2011 -

  • Mao II

    Don DeLillo

    1991 -

  • A Visit from the Goon Squad

    Jennifer Egan

    2010 -

  • The Years of Lyndon Johnson

    The Passage of Power

    Robert A. Caro

    2012 -

  • Grouped

    How Groups of Friends Influence the Social Web

    Paul Adams

    2012 -

  • The Angel Esmeralda

    Nine Stories

    Don DeLillo

    2011 -

  • One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

    Ken Kesey

    1962 -

  • The Best American Science Writing

    ed. Jesse Cohen

    2010 -

  • Watergate

    A Novel

    Thomas Mallon

    2011 -

  • The Design of Everyday Things

    Donald A. Norman

    1988 -

  • Satan Is Real

    The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers

    Charlie Louvin

    2011 -

  • The Cleanest Race

    How North Koreans See Themselves

    B.R. Myers

    2011 -

  • The Long Goodbye

    Raymond Chandler

    1953 -

  • The Orphan Master’s Son

    A Novel

    Adam Johnson

    2012 -

  • Sound Reporting

    The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production

    Jonathan Kern

    2008 -

  • The Hidden Reality

    Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

    Brian Greene

    2011 -

  • Reclaiming Fair Use

    How To Put Balance Back In Copyright

    Patricia Aufderheide & Peter Jaszi

    2011 -

Books Read, 2011: 38

  • Night of Camp David

    Fletcher Knebel

    1966 -

  • Collected Works, The Screenplays Vol 2

    1971-1978

    Paddy Chayefsky

    1995 -

  • The Visual Miscellaneum

    David McCandless

    2009 -

  • Eisenhower

    The White House Years

    Jim Newton

    2011 -

  • I Married A Communist

    Philip Roth

    1998 -

  • Stasiland

    Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

    Anna Funder

    2002 -

  • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

    Edward R. Tufte

    1981 -

  • The Art Of Creative Advertising

    Michael Antebi

    1968 -

  • Life In Year One

    What The World Was Like In First-Century Palestine

    Scott Korb

    2010 -

  • The Great American Novel

    Philip Roth

    1973 -

  • The Song of the Lark

    Willa Cather

    1915 -

  • You Are Not A Gadget

    A Manifesto

    Jaron Lanier

    2010 -

  • The Stranger

    Albert Camus

    1946 -

  • Famine Ship Diary

    The Journey of an Irish Coffin Ship

    Robert Whyte

    1847 -

  • White Noise

    Don Delillo

    1985 -

  • Nothing To Envy

    Ordinary Lives In North Korea

    Barbara Demick

    2010 -

  • Mr. Citizen

    Harry S Truman

    1960 -

  • The American Civil War

    A Military History

    John Keegan

    2009 -

  • The Boys of Summer

    Growing Up Within Shouting Distance of Ebbets Field

    Roger Kahn

    1971 -

  • The Big Sleep

    Raymond Chandler

    1939 -

  • Augustus

    A Novel

    John Williams

    1972 -

  • Making Movies

    Sidney Lumet

    1995 -

  • The PEN/O Henry Prize Stories: 2011

    The Best Stories of the Year

    ed. Laura Furman

    2011 -

  • Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure

    Matthew Algeo

    2009 -

  • My Antonia

    Willa Cather

    1918 -

  • Bomb Power

    The Modern Presidency and the National Security State

    Garry Wills

    2010 -

  • Underworld

    Don Delillo

    1997 -

  • The Moviegoer

    Walker Percy

    1960 -

  • Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back

    Robert Penn Warren

    1980 -

  • The Next Decade

    Where We've Been..and Where We're Going

    George Friedman

    2011 -

  • Cognitive Surplus

    Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

    Clay Shirky

    2010 -

  • Change By Design

    How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations & Inspires Innovation

    Tim Brown

    2009 -

  • The Humbling

    Philip Roth

    2010 -

  • The Art of Immersion

    How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories.

    Frank Rose

    2011 -

  • Chuck Amuck

    The Autobiography of Chuck Jones

    Chuck Jones

    1992 -

  • The Lost Peace

    Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945-1953

    Robert Dallek

    2010 -

  • Cyber War

    The Next Threat to National Security

    Richard A. Clarke

    2010 -

  • Marshall McLuhan:

    You Know Nothing of My Work

    Douglas Coupland

    2010 -

Books Read, 2010: 36

  • The Big Idea

    George Lois

    2008 -

  • The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

    Reif Larsen

    2009 -

  • How To Read Literature

    Thomas C. Foster

    2007 -

  • Indignation

    Philip Roth

    2008 -

  • American Pastoral

    Philip Roth

    1997 -

  • Lolita

    Vladimir Nabokov

    1957 -

  • Rock Springs

    Richard Ford

    1987 -

  • Lord of the Flies

    William Golding

    1954 -

  • A Confederacy of Dunces

    John Kennedy Toole

    1980 -

  • The Satanic Verses

    Salman Rusdie

    1988 -

  • The Plague

    Albert Camus

    1948 -

  • The Next 100 Years

    A Forecast for the 21st Century

    George Friedman

    2009 -

  • The Big Switch

    Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

    Nicholas Carr

    2008 -

  • How Wars End

    A History of American Intervention

    Gideon Rose

    2010 -

  • The Real War

    Richard Nixon

    1980 -

  • Presidential Command

    Presidential Leadership and the Making of Foreign Policy

    Peter W. Rodman

    2009 -

  • The Great Gamble

    The Soviet War in Afghanistan

    Gregory Feifer

    2009 -

  • Kissinger 1973

    The Crucial Year

    Alistair Horne

    2009 -

  • Goodbye Columbus

    Philip Roth

    1959 -

  • The Trial

    Franz Kafka

    1925 -

  • Portnoy’s Complaint

    Philip Roth

    1967 -

  • Methland

    The Death & Life of an American Small Town

    Nick Reding

    2009 -

  • The Great Depression

    A Diary

    Benjamin Roth

    2009 -

  • Stop Stealing Sheep

    And Find Out How Type Works

    Erik Spiekermann

    2003 -

  • Thinking With Type

    A Critical Guide

    Ellen Lupton

    2004 -

  • Truth In Comedy

    The Manual of Improvisation

    Charna Helpern et al

    1984 -

  • Hail, Hail, Euphoria

    The Marx Brothers in Duck Soup

    Roy Blount, Jr.

    2010 -

  • Zero History

    William Gibson

    2010 -

  • Inbound Marketing

    The New Rules of Social Media

    Brian Halligan

    2010 -

  • The Grand Design

    Steven Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow

    2010 -

  • A Brief History of Time

    Steven Hawking

    1988 -

  • The Little Book of String Theory

    Steven S. Gubsner

    2010 -

  • Physics of the Impossible

    A Scientific Exploration

    Michio Kaku

    2008 -

  • Number

    The Language of Science

    Tobias Dantzig

    1930 -

  • The Shallows

    What the Internet is Doing to our Brains

    Nicholas Carr

    2010 -

  • Understanding Media

    The Extensions of Man

    Marshall McLuhan

    1964 -

Books Read, Best of: 30

  • The Journals of Lewis & Clark

    ed. Bernard DeVoto

    1807 -

  • Frankenstein

    Or, The Modern Prometheus

    Mary Shelley

    1831 -

  • The Luck of Barry Lyndon

    William Makepeace Thackeray

    1844 -

  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin

    Or, Life Among The Lowly

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    1852 -

  • How The Other Half Lives

    Studies Among The Tenements Of New York

    Jacob A. Riis

    1890 -

  • The Jungle

    Upton Sinclair

    1906 -

  • O Pioneers!

    Willa Cather

    1913 -

  • The Bridge of San Luis Rey

    Thornton Wilder

    1928 -

  • I, Claudius

    From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius

    Robert Graves

    1934 -

  • The Big Rock Candy Mountain

    Wallace Stegner

    1943 -

  • All The King’s Men

    Robert Penn Warren

    1946 -

  • Paterson

    Volumes I - V

    William Carlos Williams

    1946 -

  • The Ginger Man

    J. P. Donleavy

    1955 -

  • A Walk on the Wild Side

    Nelson Algren

    1956 -

  • The Autobiography of Mark Twain

    1877-1910

    ed., Charles Neider

    1959 -

  • Catch-22

    Joseph Heller

    1961 -

  • The Gutenberg Galaxy

    The Making of Typographic Man

    Marshall McLuhan

    1962 -

  • Understanding Media

    The Extensions of Man

    Marshall McLuhan

    1964 -

  • The Imperial Presidency

    Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

    1973 -

  • Plain Speaking

    An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman

    Merle Miller

    1974 -

  • Requiem For A Dream

    Hubert Selby, Jr.

    1978 -

  • The Real War

    Richard Nixon

    1980 -

  • A Brief History of Time

    Steven Hawking

    1988 -

  • Art & Physics

    Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light

    Leonard Schlain

    1991 -

  • Time’s Arrow

    Martin Amis

    1991 -

  • Independence Day

    Richard Ford

    1995 -

  • In Confidence

    Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962-1986)

    Anatoly Dobrynin

    1995 -

  • American Pastoral

    Philip Roth

    1997 -

  • Visual Explanations

    Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

    Edward R. Tufte

    1997 -

  • Lincoln’s Constitution

    Daniel Farber

    2003 -

352 Books Read between
January 2010 & June 2019.

That's 1 book every 9.85 days
or 3.09 books a month
for 9.5 years.

Each title on this list is a 100% real book, of course: not one was consumed on a device.

Average year of publication? 1961.

What Do I Read?

Click here for the big list of books.

Me?

Aptitude tests in high school reported I was best suited to be a farmer.

Expelled my senior year from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., I was a high school drop-out for awhile until I was accepted by the Catholic University of America without a high school diploma, GED or SAT scores.

Would you like to know more?

Unplugged Since 1992

For over 25 years now, I have been studying American heritage while living a pop culture hermitage:

  • no TV
  • no celebrities
  • no radio
  • no sports
  • no crummy music
  • no car
  • no logos
  • no credit cards
  • no debt
  • no cell
  • no smart phone
  • no eBooks
  • no texting
  • no blogging
  • no twitter
  • no blackberry
  • no facebook
  • no video games
  • no consumerist wastage
  • no trends

This is a Creative Environment.

Photos from My Studio

john-carmody-design-studio

Click here to see more photos from the Washington Post Magazine shoot, as well as other photos taken over the last 18 years as this space has evolved.

Would you like to know more?