Outside the Box: Cardboard Design Now reconfigures the conception of a generic industrial material into one of myriad artistic, creative, and practical purposes and potential, revealing just how far it is possible to push the medium by the way of contemporary design.

Like paper, cardboard is often overlooked as a medium with predominantly practical uses. The versatility of the material makes it almost unavoidably ubiquitous, but not necessarily inspiring. At closer viewing, this is changing and progressing to an altered, contemporary attitude to the possibilities of cardboard's uses in contemporary design. From minimalist packaging, children's toys and decoration to furniture and even small and large-scale interior architecture, cardboard is now being embraced by designers around the globe as a medium with huge potential. Examples of these designs with cardboard include; a cardboard wendy-house, designed by Peter Henke at Dutch firm Kidsonroof; pop-out toys and decorations created by A4A; interior design companies who re-articulated card-based storage as elegant, minimal additions to household product design and the internationally renowned, minimalist Japanese retailer Muji which has created products such as cardboard speakers and picture frames.

In addition to its potential as a durable material for construction, there is also the sustainable credentials of the material. Cardboard is positioned at the forefront of the ecologically-minded, whether by utilising reconstituted recycled material or by the use of off cuts and residue in industrial product manufacture and contemporary design. The environmental benefits are an encouraging factor for eco-conscious designers and Outside the Box profiles some of these leading designs.

Drawing on historical and traditional approaches, Outside the Box: Cardboard Design Now charts the medium's evolution through to modern practices, profiling some of today's most inspirational and provocative artists and designers working across the fields of art, design and sculpture. Among the artists featured is Frank Gehry, whose Vitra-produced corrugated cardboard furniture?utilizing both modern and archaic designs?has received much international acclaim. The work of Shigeru Ban is included, whose cardboard disaster relief housing, churches and cardboard schools that deconstruct after use, have seen him exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art New York and cited as a leading auteur in the forward-thinking realm of eco-architecture.

Outside the Box: Cardboard Design Now, is attractively packaged with a cardboard cover and pull out features, showing the reader the possibilities of cardboard design. As a companion to Black Dog Publishing's Paper: Tear, Fold, Rip, Crease, Outside the Box unpacks the creative possibilities of a material wrongly dismissed as staid and uninspiring.

This thorough collection delivers powerful, reality-based self-defense methods from one of the world's best-known weapons experts. Combining the books Knife Fighting, Knife Throwing for Combat; Basic Stick Fighting for Combat; and Knife Self-Defense for Combat in one volume for the first time, this complete edition teaches aspiring martial artists dozens of knife-attack and counterattack techniques, psychological and physical visualization methods of unconventional paramilitary warfare, the use of the stick as a weapon of survival, and more than 30 separate methods for disarming and controlling a knife attacker.

A Glass of Water is a gripping tale of family, loyalty, ambition, and revenge that offers an intimate look into the tragedies unfurling at our country's borders. The first novel from award-winning memoirist, poet, and activist, Jimmy Santiago Baca, it is a passionate and galvanizing addition to Chicano literature.

The promise of a new beginning brings Casimiro and Nopal together when they are young immigrants, having made the nearly deadly journey across the border from Mexico. They settle into a life of long days in the chili fields, and in a few years their happy union yields two sons, Lorenzo and Vito. But when Nopal is brutally murdered, the boys are left to navigate life in this brave but capricious new world without her.

A Glass of Water is a searing, heartfelt tribute to brotherhood, and an arresting portrait of the twisted paths people take to claim their piece of the ever-elusive American dream.