Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help - Hardcover

Palmer, Amanda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1455581089 ISBN 13: 9781455581085

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company, 2014

Synopsis

'When we really see each other, we want to help each other.' - Amanda Palmer

Imagine standing on a box in the middle of a busy city, dressed as a white-faced bride and silently using your eyes to ask people for money. Or touring Europe in a punk cabaret band and finding a place to sleep each night by reaching out to strangers on Twitter. For Amanda Palmer, actions like these have gone beyond satisfying her basic needs for food and shelter - they've taught her how to turn strangers into friends, build communities, and discover her own giving impulses. And because she had learned how to ask for the money to make a new album to tour with it, and raise over a million in a month.

In THE ART OF ASKING, Palmer expands upon her popular TED talk to reveal how ordinary people, those of us without thousands of Twitter followers and adoring fans, can use these same principles in our own lives.

About this title

Review:

"A book unlike any other I've ever read. . . a book I'd have no problem recommending to everyone I know. My mother, my best friend, my work friends, my Facebook friends, my LinkedIn contacts, even the people I meet on the street or see on the subway when I commute to and from work. It's that important and that groundbreaking. This book is not just someone's brave and personal journey from childhood to her life as an artist, but it also addresses why and how it's so hard to look into someone else's eyes and be real, and ask for help when we need it. . . . Palmer has, not to put too fine a point on it, ripped open her chest and exposed her heart for all to see. She's written her truth - and it's at once brutal and gloriously, importantly beautiful."--The Huffington Post

"'The Art of Asking' is a compelling read, easily the most universal work she has ever done."--The Boston Globe

"Much as Anne Lamott offered 'instructions on writing and life' in Bird by Bird, Amanda Palmer will be instructive to anyone who struggles with fear of the 'no.'"--Shelf Awareness

"This is the kind of book that makes you want to call the author up at midnight to whisper, 'My God. I thought I was the only one.'"--Jenny Lawson, the Bloggess and author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened

"To read Amanda Palmer's remarkable memoir about asking and giving is to tumble headlong into her world. At first, you find yourself thinking, 'Goodness, what a crazy world that Amanda Palmer inhabits! How does she possibly endure it?' Then, gradually, as you read along, a doorway opens up in your heart, and you realize, 'I want to live in a world exactly like hers.' God willing, this book will show us all how to do it."--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things

"Amanda has a direct line with her audience-a lifeline for them and for her, the codependency all truly great performers surrender to . . . She's capable of anything, incapable of telling anything but the truth."
--Bono

"A story about a life in one dollar bills, from statue to icon, where media doesn't matter, crowds do. Mandatory reading in the digital age, for aspiring artists and their doubtful parents."
--Nicholas Negroponte, founder, MIT Media Lab

"Amanda Palmer joyfully shows a generation how to change their lives."--Caitlin Moran, author of How to Be a Woman and How to Build a Girl

"Amanda Palmer's generous work of genius will change the way you think about connection, love, and grace."
--Seth Godin, author of Tribes

"From this beautiful, heart-wrenching story of art comes an incredible account of the nature and future of commerce."
--Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture

Book Description:

Musician, blogger and iconoclast Amanda Palmer shows you how to ask you what you need in art, business and life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1455581089
• ISBN 13: 9781455581085
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352