Coutellerie

A few months ago my friend Nabeel Qureshi asked me for a reading list. It turned into a bit of an adventure. Should I just list my "favorite" books? Or the ones that influenced me personally the most? Or the ones I deem most "important" in some broader sense? I deliberated uselessly for months. The result is a fun little project I call "Coutellerie."

Michel Foucault once wrote that "knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting." Very few ideas animate my work and thinking more than this one.

Coutellerie is a French word that describes the manufacturing, trade, and appreciation of knives. The list of books and essays I ultimately created for Nabeel, and now share with you, is not necessarily a list of my favorites, or the ones I deem most influential. Instead it is a collection of the sharpest blades I have found after 20 years of searching. It is the knowledge in these books that I have found most amenable to the hard work of cutting. I hope they are useful to you too.