Curated Letter N°25
July & August 2023 Edition
CURATED NOT ONLY FOR SOCIAL FLUENCY
BUT FOR ADDED CONFIDENCE!
My Dear Friends,
I hope this finds you well—and super curious.
The Curated Letters are a handpicked edit of culture, stories, trailblazers, style, trends, books, and the occasional buzz. Being well-informed isn’t just about social fluency—it’s personal power and confidence. A monthly dose of global insight to help make you the most interesting woman in the room.
Curious minds make confident investors. Meet you next month for more insights!
– Yours Harper –
Bookology
Books worth reading, and effortlessly weaving into a conversation over dinner. No overthinking, just well-placed insight and a spine you’ll crack.
Ratan Tata
Author: Dr Thomas Mathews
Published: Harper Collins; November 2022
Ratan Tata’s story is about a man who overcame extraordinary obstacles and whose compassion took priority over business profit objectives, uniquely achieving both goals. As the head of India’s oldest and largest business house, his story also encapsulates India’s growing ambitions on the world stage and rising clout in the last few decades. This is the only comprehensive, definitive and authorized account of Mr Tata’s life and times, his struggles and his important contributions to contemporary India. It is the story of a private individual, a great industrialist, and a remarkable leader who steadfastly believes in his inherited values and spent his life serving his fellow humans and a fledgling nation.
The Story of Art Without Men
Author: Katy Hessel
Published: W.W. Norton & Company; May 2023
How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway? Discover the glittering paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century United States and the artist who really invented the “readymade.” Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of postwar artists in Latin America, and the women-defining art in the 2020s. Have your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many art forms often ignored or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the history of art as it’s never been told before.
Machiavelli for Women
Author: Stacey Vanek Smith
Published: Gallery Books; 2021
Using Machiavelli‘s “The Prince” as a guide and with charm and wit, Smith applies Renaissance politics to the 21st century and demonstrates how women can take and maintain power in careers where they have long been cast as second-best. “Machiavelli For Women is the ultimate battle guide for our times. Brimming with hard-boiled strategies, laced with wit, it’s a must-read for every woman ready to wield power unapologetically.”
Podtails
Selected for substance, tone, and the ability to make even your errands feel like an informed decision
Dear Joan & Jericha
Fun, Relaxation
There are a whole bunch of life advice podcasts out there; most of them offer advice that’s quite nationality specific. But people from all countries should be able to laugh at the merciless parody ‘Dear Joan & Jericha’ by British comics Julia Davis and Vikki Pepperdine. They pose as the eponymous dysfunctional agony aunts, and their useless, often actively malign life advice is an absolute hoot.
Subscribe where ever you get Your podcasts
Start with This
Creativity
Start With This is a podcast gone creativity playground designed to put your ideas in motion, from the co-creator of Welcome to Night Vale, Jeffrey Cranor. Each episode centres around a topic from world-building to opening lines and even failure. Then they give listeners two short assignments: something to consume and something to create. Jeffrey wants you to start creating one assignment at a time because the best way to start writing is to start writing. Not sure where to begin? Start With This.
Subscribe where ever you get Your podcasts
Visible Woman
Informative
Caroline Criado Perez spent years investigating the gender data gap and how women are simply forgotten in a world designed for men. In this new 12-part podcast series from Tortoise, she hunts for missing data, gets into fights with manufacturing companies and, with the help of expert guests, tries to figure out how to solve such a giant problem.
Subscribe where ever you get Your podcasts
Hardcore History
Educational
For 15 years, journalist Dan Carlin has taken a revisionist approach to some of history’s biggest events, weaving a dense but approachable tapestry about world-changing events, historical villains and more, with ample pop-culture references to keep things fresh. Episodes range from a 15-minute talk comparing Alexander the Great and Hitler to a six-hour discourse on the Celtic Holocaust, culminating in a whopping six-part look at the Asia-Pacific war that spans nearly 20 hours. sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean diam dolor, accumsan sed rutrum vel, dapibus et leo.
Net-Worthy
Not quite news, not quite gossip—just clever conversation starters dressed in a better font.
A Language for Women Only
Four hundred years ago, women in China’s Hunan province had their feet bound and were confined to their rooms. To find a way to cope, they invented Nushu, a secret language men could not understand.
Is AI the New Ozempic
AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data, including an individual’s health history, dietary preferences, and goals. This allows for customized diet plans tailored to each person’s needs. By considering factors such as allergies, food intolerances, and nutritional requirements, AI-powered diet planning can provide personalized recommendations that are difficult to achieve through traditional methods.
Tourist Limited
The Amalfi Coast is beautiful – but tourists and residents spend hours in agonising traffic jams. So some new rules will apply to the famous 35-kilometre stretch between Vietri sul Mare and Positano. During peak hours in the peak season, we have to obey a new alternate number plate system. The Amalfi coast is the latest in a long line of tourism hotspots imposing restrictions on visitors.
Hermes Buying Guide
Embarking upon the search for an Hermès bag can be daunting – and it’s not something that should be rushed. Rachel Koffsky, auctioneer and international head of handbags at Christie’s: “Make sure you have done your homework. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Ultimate Capsule Wardrobe
If you are wondering how to create a capsule wardrobe that lasts, this article will help. Some may worry that a capsule wardrobe is more disposable, or because you are wearing the same over and over again, they may wear out faster, or boredom will set in after twelve years of having my own capsule wardrobe that has not been my experience. There have been many more upsides than downsides to dressing with less.
Hiding in Plain Sight
For almost 160 years, a Cézanne painting had a secret hiding in plain sight. Cincinnati Art Museum’s chief conservator Serena Urry was routinely inspecting the institution’s prized Paul Cézanne painting ‘Still Life with Bread and Eggs’ when she noticed something ‘odd.’ X-rays of Paul Cézanne’s ‘Still Life with Bread and Eggs,’ acquired by the Cincinnati Art Museum almost 70 years ago, have revealed a mysterious portrait hidden beneath its surface
Upcycling Skyscrapers
World’s first ‘upcycled’ skyscraper saves Australian tower from demolition.
Once Sydney’s tallest building, the AMP Centre was showing its age. The outdated 1970s structure had come to the end of its lifespan, and the tower’s owners wanted to replace it with something bigger, better and more energy-efficient. But demolishing high-rises comes with significant environmental costs, from construction waste to the CO2 emitted by heavy machinery. So in 2014, Australian investment firm AMP Capital launched an architectural competition with an unprecedented brief: To build a new skyscraper without demolishing the old one.
Net Presence
Until recently, some of the most important evidence of one of Africa’s most vibrant medieval cities was absent from the web. Located in the West African nation of Mali, the name Timbuktu has come to embody the idea of a distant place, but this city was once famed as a centre of learning, religion and trade. Today it’s still known for its imposing earthen mosques and the hundreds of thousands of scholarly manuscripts held in public and private. Now, thanks to local residents and global academics, over 40,000 pages spanning the 11th to the 20th Century have been preserved for good in Google Arts and Culture’s “Mali Magic” portal – a compendium of digitized artefacts, many of which have never been publicly available before.
Inside Wealth
While there is a higher female representation among billionaires under 50, women still comprise just under 18% of young billionaires. Most have either inherited their fortune or received a generous divorce settlement. Tech and finance is still the most common industry among billionaires.
August Supplement
“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.”
Leo Tolstoi, Russian Novelist; 1828-1910