Material culture Books

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisExploring ideas around minimalism, simplicity and how to live comfortably with less. The modern world can be a complicated, frenzied and noisy place, filled with too many options, products, ideas and opinions. That explains why what many of us long for is simplicity: a life that can be more pared down, peaceful and focused on the essentials. But finding simplicity is not always easy; it isn’t just a case of emptying out our closets or trimming back commitments in our diaries. True simplicity requires that we understand the roots of our distractions – and develop a canny respect for the stubborn reasons why things can grow complex and overwhelming. This book is a guide to the simpler lives we crave and deserve. It considers how we might achieve simplicity across a range of areas: our relationships, social lives, work routines and our approaches to possessions and media. Along the way, we learn about Zen Buddhism, modernist architecture, monasteries, psychoanalysis, and why we probably don’t need more than three good friends or a few treasured belongings. It isn’t enough that our lives should look simple; they need to be simple from the inside. This book takes a psychological approach, guiding us towards less contorted hearts and minds. It suggests that once we truly know who we are and what we want, we will be able to live with far less than we currently believe we need. We have for too long been drowning in excess and clutter from a confusion about our aspirations; A Simpler Life helps us tune out the static and focus on what properly matters to us.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis beautifully illustrated book takes the reader on a journey through natural history and shows the richness of animal life on our planet like you’ve never seen it before.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNeil MacGregor''s A History of the World in 100 Objects takes a bold, original approach to human history, exploring past civilizations through the objects that defined them. Encompassing a grand sweep of human history, A History of the World in 100 Objects begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with objects which characterise the world we live in today. Seen through MacGregor''s eyes, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. A stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people; Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency; and an early Victorian tea-set speaks to us about the impact of empire. An intellectual and visual feast, this is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years. ''Brilliant, engagingly written, deeply researched'' Mary Beard, Guardian ''A triumph: hugely popular, and rightly lauded as one of the most effective and intellectually ambitious initiatives in the making of ''public history'' for many decades'' Sunday Telegraph ''Highly intelligent, delightfully written and utterly absorbing '' Timothy Clifford, Spectator ''This is a story book, vivid and witty, shining with insights, connections, shocks and delights'' Gillian Reynolds Daily Telegraph

Read more less

Book Synopsis'Geeks triumph over the forces of darkness: nothing could have given me greater pleasure. Combining an exciting story with scrupulous research, Caroline Shenton has done her unlikely heroes proud' - Lucy WorsleyAs Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London's museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation's highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation's greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures. National Treasures highlights a moment from our history when an unlikely coalition of mild-mannered civil servants, social oddballs and metropolitan aesthetes became the front line in the heritage war against Hitler. Caroline Shenton shares the interwoven lives of ordinary people who kept calm and carried on in the most extraordinary of circumstances in their efforts to save the Nation's historic identity.Trade ReviewGeeks triumph over the forces of darkness: nothing could have given me greater pleasure. Combining an exciting story with scrupulous research, Caroline Shenton has done her unlikely heroes proud -- Lucy WorsleyAn engrossing and uplifting story of how some of the greatest treasures of Britains museum, gallery and library collections were protected and preserved during the darkest days of WWII -- Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the BooksAn engrossing and uplifting story of how some of the greatest treasures of Britains museum, gallery and library collections were protected and preserved during the darkest days of WWII -- Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the BooksShenton has the archivist's unerring eye for detail and the storyteller's instinct for what will make a compelling tale. It is brought to life with energy and confidence -- Julie Summers, bestselling author of JambustersEntertaining, surprising and full of brilliant vignettes, Shenton does justice to one of the great untold stories of the Second World War -- Josh Ireland, author of Churchill & SonFascinating, engaging and often eye-stretching, Caroline Shenton's account of the battle to save the nation's greatest treasures during wartime features a wonderfully eclectic cast of oddballs, bluestockings and endearingly eccentric aristocrats. A cracking read -- Giles MiltonShenton manages to combine scholarly and diligent research with a powerful narrative drive and a hugely entertaining taste for the anecdotal. Moreover, her cast of characters wouldn't disgrace an Ealing comedy. I haven't enjoyed a book so much in years -- Adrian TinniswoodReveals the wonderfully inventive ways Britain's great museums hid their priceless exhibits from Hitler's bombs -- Daily MailVigorously researched and highly entertaining -- Daily Telegraph

Read more less

Book SynopsisA beautiful memoir, travelogue, and meditation on stone by artist and stone mason Beatrice Searle.'What are you doing? If you don't mind me asking?'I say that we are taking this stone to Trondheim. I continue to tell her the story of Magnus and ancient Kings.'Would you like to stand in it?' I ask. 'That is what it is for.'At the age of twenty-six, Beatrice Searle crossed the North sea and walked 500 miles through Southern Norway on a medieval pilgrim path to Nidaros Cathedral, taking with her a 40-kilo stone from the West coast of Orkney.She had recently completed her masonry training at Lincoln Cathedral and become fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of Scandinavia, Northern Europe and the ancient Greco-Roman world; stones closely associated with travellers, saints and the inauguration of Kings. Following in their footsteps, her stone becomes a talisman of sorts, a bedrock on the move, and an offering to those she meets along the way.Stone Will Answer is an unusual adventure story of resilience and homecoming, of weight and motion, of rediscovering love and faith, and of journeys practical, spiritual and geological. A captivating blend of exploration, memoir and myth, and an insight into a beguiling craft, it asks what lessons might be learned from stone, what we choose to carry with us and what we return to put down or pick up again.Trade ReviewExtraordinary... Confessional, elemental and at times moving, this is a memorable and unique celebration of the power and beauty of stone. * Guardian *Searle is an excellent storyteller... [and Stone Will Answer] make[s] for gripping reading... it's the human spirit that emerges triumphant in this sparky blend of memoir and travelogue... Above all, this is the story of a young woman's astonishing feat of endurance * Herald *A gifted writer, capable of luminous description * Spectator *Subtle and thought-provoking * TLS *Illuminating... I was quickly taken in by Beatrice Searle's distinctive voice, and by the end I couldn't help but feel very differently about stones, rootedness, belonging, and indeed what walking might mean. Beatrice's story is exceptional, and she is an exceptional story teller. -- Kerri Andrews, author of Wandering: A History of Women Walking

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe international literary icon opens his eclectic closet and shares photos of his extensive unique personal T-shirt collection. Haruki Murakami's books have galvanized millions around the world. Many of his fans know about his 10,000-vinyl-record collection, and his obsession with running, but few have heard about a more intimate, and perhaps more unique, passion: his T-shirt-collecting habit.In Murakami T, the famously reclusive novelist shows us his T-shirts - including gems found in bookshops, charity shops and record stores - from those featuring whisky, animals, cars and superheroes, to souvenirs of marathons and a Beach Boys concert in Honolulu, to the shirt that inspired the beloved short story 'Tony Takitani'. Accompanied by short, frank essays that have been translated into English for the first time, these photographs reveal much about Murakami's multifaceted and wonderfully eccentric persona.'The world's most popular cult novelist' GuardianTrade ReviewFascinating...part ode, part exhibit that reads with restrained affection for his accidental accumulations....these tees excavate an intimate history. The choices we make about what we find and keep point to our interior worlds...Murakami's understated love letters to his tees also convey how we give life to our things and vice versa. * Atlantic *It's safe to say there is no one like Murakami * Literary Review *Murakami is one of the best writers around * Time Out, on Norwegian Wood *Everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility * Guardian, on Norwegian Wood *Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original * The Times, on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle *Undeniably a somewhat eccentric book. But it's also a very likeable one... The overall effect is not unlike sharing a conversation with a genial bloke in a bar * Reader's Digest *One of the most influential novelists of his generation. * Observer *An incredibly readable and charming tour through Murakami's life through the T-shirts he has collected along the way... [the reader] feels a personal connection with him, as if we are reading his secret diary -- Adam Davidson * Northern Echo *

Read more less

Book SynopsisHighly Commended, Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Book Prize 2022In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. This very structured form, created using garments called bodies and farthingales, existed in various extremes in Western Europe and beyond, in the form of stays, corsets, hoop petticoats and crinolines, right up until the twentieth century. With a nuanced approach that incorporates a stunning array of visual and written sources and drawing on transdisciplinary methodologies, Shaping Femininity explores the relationship between material culture and femininity by examining the lives of a wide range of women, from queens to courtiers, farmer's wives and servants, uncovering their lost voices and experiences. It reorients discussions about female foundation garments in English and wider European history, arguing that these objects of material culture began to shape and define changing notions of the feminineTrade ReviewVirtually nothing is known about early modern undergarments, although they were clearly worn by (nearly) everyone. Moving beyond surviving inventories, images and objects, Bendall reconstructed her own garments in order to understand how they shaped the female body The result is a fascinating exploration of a – literally – disguised history, one that shows how female agency shaped and defined notions of femininity alongside the male gaze. * Judges' comments, Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Book Prize 2022 *Sarah Bendall’s fascinating exploration of women’s foundation garments in Early Modern England shows not just how artisans made clothes, but how clothes made their wearers. Richly researched and beautifully illustrated, Shaping Femininity is both scholarly and accessible, and its innovative use of historical reconstruction ensures that it will become the essential study of female silhouettes before the Victorian corset. * Timothy McCall, Villanova University, USA *Body shaping garments determined the social spaces females claimed, an embodied assertion, always political. Sarah Bendall’s original and important interdisciplinary study reveals the gendered meanings of shaping garments, in elite and everyday life. History is enriched through her findings. * Beverly Lemire, University of Alberta, Canada *Shaping Femininity provides fascinating insight into female foundation garments in early modern England – their makers and wearers, their materiality and their meanings. With a richly evocative contextual background that takes in a wide range of texts, images, garments and objects, Bendall deftly shows how female bodies were a site of agency and contest, power and beauty. A powerful voice of the role of experiential learning, Bendall charts her own reconstructions of garments. The vital importance of making and experience is at the heart of this book, which insists that we take foundation garments – and the women who wore them – seriously. * Erin Griffey, University of Auckland, New Zealand *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes to the Reader Abbreviations Introduction 1. The foundations of the body: foundation garments and the early modern female silhouette 2. The artificial body: courtiers, gentlewomen and disputed visions of femininity, 1560-1650 3. The socially mobile body: consumption of foundation garments by middling and common women, 1560 – 1650 4. The body makers: making and buying foundation garments in early modern England 5. The everyday body: assumptions, tropes and the lived experience 6. The sexual body: eroticism, reproduction and control 7. The respectable body: rising consumption and the changing sensibilities of late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century England Conclusion: legacies and misconceptions Glossary Notes Selected Bibliography List of Illustrations Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis''Beautifully written and brilliantly argued, Possessed is one of the few things you really need to own'' Daniel GilbertHow ownership came to own us - and what we can do about itOur love affair with possessions seems to be all-consuming, even as we face economic and environmental breaking points. The global pandemic is a wake-up call that forces us to reassess what we value most in our lives, and yet we remain reluctant to change our ways when it comes to accumulating things. Why?The answer is our need for ownership. A uniquely human preoccupation rooted in our biology, psychological ownership can be seen in everything from nations fighting over resources to the rise of political extremism.Award-winning psychologist Bruce Hood draws on his own and international research to explain why ownership is an emotional state of mind that governs our behaviour from cradle to grave, even when it is often irrational and destructivTrade ReviewBeautifully written and brilliantly argued, Possessed is one of the few things you really need to own. -- Dan GilbertBruce Hood convincingly shows that we are possessed with possessions, but his book is one possession you have to have, especially now. Engagingly written, Possessed brings psychological science to bear on understanding how to exorcise this demon. -- Robert Plomin, author of 'Blueprint: How DNA makes us who we are'Science writing at its best: it's funny, smart, and on an fascinating topic. -- Paul Bloom * Twitter *Ownership is a surprisingly nuanced and wonderfully colorful topic, and no one is better poised to tell its story than psychologist and author Bruce Hood. The book he's written is a page-turner that puts our intuitions under the spotlight at every turn. -- David Eagleman, bestselling author of 'The Brain' and 'Incognito'Bruce Hood's excellent new book upends the concept of possession and ownership . . . Possessed combines philosophy with rigorous experimental research to examine the reasons why we want to own so much more than we need. Hood's writing is crisp and he covers an impressive range for such a slim volume. For practical strategies to declutter, read Marie Kondo. For those interested in the psychology and philosophy of materialism, this rich and engaging book will spark hours of joy. -- David Robson * The British Psychological Society blog *

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn The Language of Things Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum, decodes the things around us: their hidden meanings, our relationship with them, how they shape our lives and why we desire them. Design is everywhere. It seduces, pleases and inspires us. It makes us part with our money. It defines who we think we are. An iPhone, an anglepoise lamp, a Picasso, a banknote, an Armani suit, a William Morris textile, a Lucky Strike packet, a spacecraft - every object tells a story. And understanding their stories offers us a whole new way of seeing the world. ''Articulate and wonderfully knowledgeable ... for anyone who takes an interest in the world around us''   Time Out ''A nightmare vision of a world drowning in objects ... witty, well observed and wide-ranging''   Guardian ''An elegant, witty and free-ranging survey, from Thomas Chippendale''s ponderous 18th-century manor-house furniTrade ReviewAn elegant, witty and free-ranging survey of industrial product design from Thomas Chippendale's ponderous 18th-century manor-house furnishings to Jonathan Ive's sprightly Macintosh iBooks * Telegraph *Sudjic's book rebukes designers for their arrogance and increasing self-importance ... readable, sharp and worthwhile * FT *The Language of Things is a happy trot through the colourful landscape formed by design's eternal alternation between use and allure * Evening Standard *Deyan Sudjic presents us with a nightmare vision of a world drowning in objects ... witty, well observed and wide-ranging * Guardian *As a confessional, the book is witty and honest, and Deyan Sudjic remains one of our most insightful commentators * Royal Academy magazine *Articulate and wonderfully knowledgeable ... a very nice object in itself ... much in here for anyone who takes an interest in the world around us * Time Out *

Read more less

Book SynopsisUlrich Lehmann brings together methods and ideas from social sciences and material production to give us a new political reading of fashion in today's post-democracy. Accessing rare source material across a wide range of European languages and cultures, he gives us insight into new working structures in the manufacture of garments and textiles.

Read more less

Book Synopsis‘Beautifully written, sumptuously illustrated, constantly fascinating‘ - The TimesOn 26 November 1922 Howard Carter first peered into the newly opened tomb of an ancient Egyptian boy-king. When asked if he could see anything, he replied: ‘Yes, yes, wonderful things.’In Tutankhamun’s Trumpet, acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes a unique approach to that tomb and its contents. Instead of concentrating on the oft-told story of the discovery, or speculating on the brief life and politically fractious reign of the boy king, Wilkinson takes the objects buried with him as the source material for a wide-ranging, detailed portrait of ancient Egypt – its geography, history, culture and legacy.One hundred artefacts from the tomb, arranged in ten thematic groups, are allowed to speak again – not only for themselves, but as witnesses of the civilization that created them. Never before have the treasures of Tutankhamun been analysed and presented for what they can tell us about ancient Egyptian culture, its development, its remarkable flourishing, and its lasting impact.Filled with surprising insights, unusual details, vivid descriptions and, above all, remarkable objects, Tutankhamun’s Trumpet will appeal to all lovers of history, archaeology, art and culture, as well as all those fascinated by the Egypt of the pharaohs.‘I’ve read many books on ancient Egypt, but I’ve never felt closer to its people‘ - The Sunday TimesTrade ReviewBeautifully written, sumptuously illustrated, constantly fascinating and the work of a man who is practised at explaining the past to the present. -- David Aaronivitch * The Times *The cleverness of the book lies in how individual grave goods are used to crack open the mindset of a civilisation . . . This book thrums with life. To the ancient Egyptians, a pharaoh’s tomb was a “resurrection machine” and, in a sense, they were right. The dead cannot be resurrected but, through the artefacts they used, we can sense the lives they lived. I’ve read many books on ancient Egypt, but I’ve never felt closer to its people -- James McConnachie * The Sunday Times *The Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes 100 of the most curious of those finds and uses them to unlock the mysteries of Egyptian history and culture. -- Andrew Holgate and Laura Hackett * The Times '100 Best Books for Summer' *

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Miniature is a delightful, entertaining and illuminating investigation into our peculiar fascination with making things small, and what small things tell us about the world at large.Here you will find the secret histories of tiny Eiffel Towers, the truth about the flea circus, a doll's house made for a queen, eerie tableaux of crime scenes, miniature food, model villages and railways, and more. Simon Garfield brings together history, psychology, art and obsession, to explore what fuels the strong appeal of miniature objects among collectors, modellers and fans, and teaches us that there is greatness in the diminutive.Trade ReviewA rare treat, convivial and smart and brimming with intrigue. Simon Garfield excavates the curiouser of small worlds where not all is as it seems - obscure and wondrous, a bit bonkers and totally fascinating, and just my cup of tea -- KEGGIE CAREW, author of DadlandGarfield's book is thrilling, touching and very, very funny -- NINA STIBBEThis intriguing study of our urge to make scale models is full of bizarre stories and poignant insight . . . engaging and exuberant . . . The moral seems to be that we're all small, relatively speaking, which is perhaps why In Miniature is not only highly entertaining; it is also moving * * Observer * *If you are someone who appreciates the quirkier byways of human endeavour, there's plenty to surprise and delight in this compendium * * The Times * *Fascinating and often funny . . . As a (scaled-down) book, In Miniature is a well-built, highly polished entity. It is full of evocative sentences [and] amusing drive-by thwacks . . . But what he also shows in abundance is the sympathetic understanding of the needs and travails of "ordinary" people that lit up his previous books * * Guardian * *In Miniature is a delicious read; quirky, unpredictable and written with a genuine savour for the subject * * Mail on Sunday * *Simon Garfield's enthusiasm . . . is irresistible . . . Garfield offers not just intriguing snapshots of curiosities but some rather interesting history lessons * * Spectator * *Delightful . . . In Miniature is fascinating, funny and, in places, unexpectedly moving . . . This book is proof of the old adage that good things come in small packages * * Literary Review * *Garfield's intelligent exploration of mankind's passion for making small versions of large objects is meticulously researched * * Daily Express, Books of the Year * *Fashioned with as much love of, and relish for, the telling detail as many of the scaled-down creations it surveys, In Miniature finds Simon Garfield at both his wittiest and his most profound and philosophical. It is a book that puts the little things into the big picture, its perspective generous and its scope wide; you will never look at a doll house or model train quite the same again. Were I not an atheist I would proclaim him the god of small things -- TRAVIS ELBOROUGH

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn important book, brimming with insight.' Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse WhispererMaterial is generous, wise, fascinating and fundamentally humane.' Dan Richards, author of OutpostThrowing a pot. Building a bench. Sewing clothes. Creating a linocut illustration. Carving a spoon. What does it mean to make things with your hands in a digital age, full of mass-market, disposable items?Following the path trod by bestselling authors Lars Mytting, Robert Macfarlane and Barn the Spoon, craftsman Nick Kary explores what it means to be a maker. Through beautifully crafted writing filled with memorable craftspeople, landscapes, stories and scenery, Material is a rich celebration of what it means to imagine and create.Nick champions the voices of artisans across the UK, from potters to woodworkers, reminding us of the rich vein of knowledge and skills that d

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn introduction to the sociology of money, foregrounding how money embodies social relationsTrade Review'An extremely knowledgeable account of existing theories of money' -- Jens Beckert, author of Imagined 'Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics' (Harvard University Press, 2016)'A well-argued exploration of the history and nature of money ... Thorough and comprehensive' -- Mary Mellor, author of Money: Myths, Truths and Alternatives (Policy Press, 2019)Table of ContentsPreface 1. Economic Theories of Money – and Their Critiques 1.1. Barter, Exchange and Money 1.2. Objective versus Subjective Theories of Value 1.3. The Improbability of Exchange 2. Money’s Unlikely Origins 2.1. Gift-exchange and ceremonial monies 2.2. Money and (the End of) Violence 2.3. Economies of Sacrifice 2.4. Secrets of the Coin 3. Money and Finance 3.1. Time and Money 3.2. The Logic of Financial Markets 4. The Politics of Money 4.1. The Foundations and Fundamental Problems of Contemporary Money 4.2. Private Monies (or Bitcoin) 4.3. Sovereign Money 4.4. Central Bank Independence and the Inescapable Politicality of Money 5. Money and Society 5.1. Alienation and Freedom 5.2. Money and Functional Differentiation References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe story of ocean liners brought to life by objects and ephemera, revealing life on board, luxury and magnificence, and peril and disaster

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Material Culture of Tableware is a fascinating and authoritative study of patterned tableware in the USA. This book undertakes a visual analysis of Johnson Brothers patterns of tableware pottery, with reference to comparable designs by other British companies, such as Spode and Adams. It examines how this practical genre reflected the aesthetic values, sense of identity and aspirations of the American consumers who purchased its products. The study also sheds light on British opinions and understandings of American culture. The book's chronological organization shows how tableware designs reflected the cultural developments of American society during the long 20th century. From status-seeking 1890s beaux-arts patterns and the nostalgic historical scenes of the 1930s, to whimsical 1960s patterns and the contemporary motifs of the 1970s, The Material Culture of Tableware tells a compelling story about who 20th-century middle-class Americans were and wanted toTrade ReviewA welcome addition to the existing body of literature ... Succeeds in expanding on the fact-based approach that such books usually boast. * Journal of Design History *Zarucchi serves up wonderful insights into the transatlantic tableware trade, which celebrates the influence of British design on American culture. * Rob Kesseler, Professor of Art, Design and Science at Central Saint Martins, UK *A rigorous survey of Staffordshire printed tableware and its export to America, across three centuries of this special cultural relationship. * Stephen Dixon, Professor of Contemporary Crafts at Manchester School of Art, UK *If you ever wondered where your dinnerware or antique souvenir plate was produced, this fascinating book is sure to inform you. * Anna Calluori Holcombe, Professor of Art at the University of Florida, USA *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The “Picture” in the Shop Window 1. Old World Style for the New World 2. Allies in War and Trade 3. American History (the British Version) 4. Commemoratives and Souvenirs 5. Prosperity and Nostalgia 6. Modern Style, New Traditions Conclusion: Endings and Beginnings References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTaking us from the beginning of our story to the present day, A Cold Spell examines how ice has shaped our thoughts, actions and societies – and what it means for us that it is rapidly disappearing from our planet 'A warm-hearted tale of the bizarre, something to cuddle up with in the bleak midwinter . . . Astonishing' THE TIMES 'Bracingly original . . . As the earth warms threateningly, there could hardly be a more pertinent time for a story like this’ MICHAEL PALIN 'A book of limitless fascinations' OLIVIA LAING 'Brightly written, nimbly researched and really quite delightful' LITERARY REVIEW Ice has confounded, delighted and fascinated us since the first sparks of art and culture in Europe and it now underpins the modern world. Without ice, we would not feed ourselves or heal our sick as we do, and our towns and cities, countryside and oceans would look very different. Science would not have progressed along the avenues it did and our galleries and libraries would be missing many masterpieces. A Cold Spell uses this vital link to understanding our past to tell a surprising story of obsession, invention and adventure – how we have lived and dreamed, celebrated and traded, innovated, loved and fought over thousands of years. It brings together a sacrificial Incan mummy, Winston Churchill’s secret plans for unusual aircraft carriers, strange bones that shook Victorian beliefs about the world and a macabre journey into the depths of the human body. It is an original and unique way of looking at something that is literally all around us, whose loss confronts us daily in the news, but whose impact on our lives has never been fully explored. [An] extraordinary, complete and utter history of the human experience of the cold stuff' JOHN LEWIS-STEMPEL, COUNTRY LIFE ‘A thought-provoking chronicle of humanity . . . Leonard consistently frames ice in surprising and insightful ways, and in doing so lends it a magical quality’ GEOGRAPHICALTrade ReviewCharming and quirky . . . This is a warm-hearted tale of the bizarre, something to cuddle up with in the bleak midwinter . . . It’s astonishing how Leonard has managed to cram so much into such a relatively short volume -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *A fascinating exploration of how ice has shaped human existence . . . Ranging from the last ice age to the Anthropocene, Max Leonard’s beguiling history considers the nature of ice as well as its place in “the popular imagination” -- William Atkins * Guardian *[An] extraordinary, complete and utter history of the human experience of the cold stuff . . . Max Leonard is the most assiduous researcher and has scratched down to the very base of the ice-berg -- John Lewis-Stempel * Country Life *‘A Cold Spell appears when even the most boneheaded climate sceptics are conceding that something is up. Max Leonard, naturally, engages with this. Climate change provides a political dimension, but the book is about far more than that . . . Brightly written, nimbly researched and really quite delightful . . . A Cold Spell brims with such colourful stories -- Peter Moore * Literary Review *A thought-provoking chronicle of humanity through an icy lens. From its hand in shaping the birth and birthplace of the human race to its modern status as a metaphor for civilisation, Leonard charts the role ice has played, and continues to play, in our lives with great curiosity. The book’s success is rooted in Leonard’s ability to weave something so ubiquitous into a journey of twists and turns. Traversing history, culture, language, science and human nature via evocative tangents, he consistently frames ice in surprising and insightful ways, and in doing so lends it a magical quality. Nowhere is this truer than in stories of icy obsession – adventurers sacrificing their lives to navigate its polar domains, scientists dedicating theirs to unravelling the secrets it holds * Geographical *Leonard’s charting of the history of humanity’s interactions with ice is a brisk and fascinating piece of work, encompassing the last hours of Ötzi the Iceman, polar tourism, George Mallory’s Everest camera, and the man who almost two centuries ago came up with the wheeze of exporting ice from America to India. Climate change obviously thrums through the narrative but this is not a didactic read, rather a thoroughly entertaining and absorbing one * New European *Despite its single subject, this is a book that thinks big – or at least, widely and in unexpected places . . . An unusually wide-ranging cultural and intellectual journey . . . Max Leonard’s writing is engaging and well-paced, and he breezily summarises the fruits of voluminous research with a deft touch . . . [A book] of striking revelations, intriguing connections and thought-provoking questions about how the human relationship with ice might yet develop -- Jonathan Dore * TLS *As this entertaining tale reveals, ice has the power to grind mountains to dust, destroy ships – and even swallow up a secret American nuclear bunker . . . This is a book about the marvel of nature and our intrepid, frequently crazy efforts to understand and harness that marvel -- Simeon House * Mail on Sunday *In a bracingly original book, Max Leonard makes something we all take for granted into an absorbing pathway into history, geography and science . . . A highly readable feast of insights and surprises . . . As the earth warms threateningly, there could hardly be a more pertinent time for a story like this -- Michael PalinA book of limitless fascinations, an elegant and subtle accounting of how ice has shaped and changed human life, and how in turn humans have imperilled the existence of icy places -- Olivia LaingA brilliant and surprising book on unexpected ways ice has influenced not just Western thought but the way we live now. Come for the research, stay for the unexpected cameos -- Jennifer Lucy AllanA pleasure on every page. It's packed with fascinating stories and unexpected connections. What you’ve done so successfully is to give the reader the chance to care for ice and to understand the role it’s had in our lives, real and imaginary. Everybody who reads your book will be captivated each time ice chinks and bobs in a glass. Ice is now our destiny. By melting en masse, it is bringing chaos to Earth systems -- Nicholas CraneBeautiful, thoughtful and utterly fascinating on everything from cave paintings to Captain Birdseye – the kind of book you feel compelled to share bits from as you’re reading -- Felicity CloakePut everything on ice and read this book - a wonderful history of ingenuity, wanderlust, preservation and exploitation. Max Leonard has written an original chronicle of human nature, and you’ll skate through it with enduring insight and pleasure -- Simon GarfieldFrom Otzi the Iceman to Alpine adventurers, the invention of the cold chain to cloud seeding, A Cold Spell fills the cryosphere with stories to reconnect us to this all-too-fragile, frozen world. Europeans may have sought mastery over ice for hundreds of years, but Leonard shows how ice has shaped us too: in his deft hands it becomes a mirror revealing "the extraordinary in the ordinary", bringing home both the awe and the unease of the Anthropocene -- Jay Owen

Read more less

Book SynopsisProvides new perspectives on the increasingly complex relationships between media forms and formats, materiality, and meaning. Drawing on a range of qualitative methodologies, our consideration of the materiality of media is structured around three overarching concepts: form – the physical qualities of objects and the meanings which extend from them; format – objects considered in relation to the protocols which govern their use, and the meanings and practices which stem from them; and ephemeral meaning – the ways in which media artefacts are captured, transformed, and redefined through changing social, cultural, and technological values. Each section includes empirical chapters which provide expansive discussions of perspectives on media and materiality. It considers a range of media artefacts such as 8mm film, board games maps, videogames, cassette tapes, transistor radios and Twitter, amongst others. These are punctuated with a number of short takes – less formal, often personal takes exploring the meanings of media in context. We seek to consider the materialities which emerge across the broad and variegated range of the term’s use, and to create spaces for conversation and debate about the implications that this plurality of material meanings might have for the study of study of media, culture, and society.Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Foreword – Nicholas Gebhardt Introduction SECTION 1: FORM Short Take 1: My Notebook – Lee Griffiths 1. Investigating the Illicit: The Material Traces of Britain’s Early Trade in Obscene 8mm Films – Oliver Carter Short Take 2: ‘Press the Start Button’ – Harrison Charles 2. On, Off, and in the Map: Materializing Game Experiences Through Player Cartography – Nick Webber Short Take 3: Making Order Out of Chaos – Hilary Weston Jones 3. The Solid State of Radio – Sam Coley Short Take 4: Materialities of Television History – E. Charlotte Stevens SECTION 2: FORMAT Short Take 5: Only Dancing. Again – Philip Young 4. Between Analogue and Digital: The Cassette Tape as Hybrid Artefact – Iain A. Taylor Short Take 6: Patch Lead Possibilities – Chris Mapp 5. ‘Because It Is Not Digital’: The Cultural Value of the Analogue Book in Digital Age – Christian Moerken Short Take 7: Materialities of Spatial Confinement: Trefeglwys Meets Beirut – Dima Saber 6. Essentially (Not) the Game: Reading the Materiality of Video Game Paratexts – Regina Seiwald Short Take 8: Materialities and Craft Value – Karen Patel SECTION 3: EPHEMERAL MEANING Short Take 9: Still Angry: Still Feeding – Matt Grimes 7. Stamp of Approval: A Prosopography of the English Midlands Videogame Industry – Alex Wade and Adam Whittaker Short Take 10: The Edward Colston Experience – Martin Cox 8. Reframing Materiality in the Caribbean Diaspora Podcast – Rachel-Ann Charles and Tim Wall Short Take 11: We’re all Victorians Now – Kirsten Forkert 9. You Can Look, Share and Comment, But You Can’t Touch: The Relationship Between the Materiality and Physicality of Photographs in an Online Community Archive – Vanessa Jackson Short Take 12: Location, Agency, and Hashtag Activism During the COVID-19 Pandemic – Yemisi Akinbobola 10. Thirty-Seven Retweets – John Hillman Conclusion: Shifting Horizons of Possibility – Susanna Paasonen Notes on Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIlya Budraitskis, one of the country's most prominent leftist political commentators, explores the strange fusion of free-market ideology and postmodern nationalism that now prevails in Russia, and describes the post-Soviet evolution of its left. He incisively describes the twists and contradictions of the Kremlin's geopolitical fantasies, which blend up-to-date references to "information wars" with nostalgic celebrations of the tsars of Muscovy. Despite the revival of aggressive Cold War rhetoric, he argues, the Putin regime takes its bearings not from any Soviet inheritance, but from reactionary thinkers such as the White émigré Ivan Ilyin. Budraitskis makes an invaluable contribution by reconstructing the forgotten history of the USSR's dissident left, mapping an entire alternative tradition of heterodox Marxist and socialist thought from Khrushchev's Thaw to Gorbachev's perestroika. Doubly outsiders, within an intelligentsia dominated by liberal humanists, they offer a potential way out of the impasse between condemnations of the entire Soviet era and blanket nostalgia for Communist Party rule-suggesting new paths for the left to explore.Trade ReviewBudraitskis magnificently dismantles several myths. This includes the myth that the entire socialist past can be reduced to the idea of 'totalitarianism', and the myth that Russian society is divided in two, between liberals who love freedom and the masses, mired in tradition and thirsting for despotic rule. -- Alexei Yurchak, author of Everything Was Forever Until It Was No MoreA deep analysis of contemporary Russian reality which deftly dismantles the many myths in which that reality is shrouded. Budraitskis's writings deal with several themes and periods, but common to them all is a sensitivity to the details of the context and a capacity to question dogmatic certainties. The texts are beautifully written, in a clear, precise, and stylistically fine-tuned prose. This extremely important collection allows us to look at Russian and many other post-socialist societies from a new standpoint. -- Alexei Yurchak, author of Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No MoreIlya Budraitskis brings immense historical knowledge, moral clarity, and political insight into these crucial essays on twenty-first century Russia. From his critical analyses of Russian culture wars and the "geopoliticization of Russia" to his path-breaking history of socialist dissidence and contemporary Left discontent, Budraitskis proves an adroit guide through the post-Soviet landscape. He directs us not simply to persistent authoritarianism and reaction but also to the unrealized political alternatives that remain to be activated by Left anti-capitalists today. -- Jodi Dean. author of ComradeIlya Budraitskis is a gifted writer- non-conformist, insightful, sharp and polemical. Essays collected in this volume succeed to challenge both liberal and illiberal clichés about Putin's Russia. -- Ivan Krastev, author of Is It Tomorrow Yet?Refusing the neo-Cold War nonsense that depicts Putin's Russia as an anti-imperialist bulwark or a reincarnation of Stalin's empire, Ilya Budraitskis has more important things to think about than this confected Clash of Civilisations. Whether uncovering the forgotten socialists among the Soviet-era dissident movement or tracing the emergence of a true post-Soviet left into the present day, his work is sophisticated, invigorating and ethically rigorous. -- Owen Hatherley

Read more less

Book SynopsisShowcases over a hundred treasures from the collections of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, from the departments of Scottish History and Archaeology/Art and Design/Science and Technology/Natural Sciences/World Cultures. Table of ContentsForeword Scottish History and Archaeology Art and Design Science and Technology Natural Sciences World Cultures

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Tree explores the forms, uses, and alliances of this living object's entanglement with humanity, from antiquity to the present. Trees tower over us and yet fade into background. Their lifespan outstrips ours, and yet their wisdom remains inscrutable, treasured up in the heartwood. They serve us in many ways—as keel, lodgepole, and execution site—and yet to become human, we had to come down from their limbs. In this book Matthew Battles follows the tree's branches across art, poetry, and landscape, marking the edges of imagination with wildness and shadow. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewWhat astonishingly good writing! What a joy of a book. What a mind, this Matthew Battles. As he writes about trees, Battles could as well be describing his own wild mind: 'uncanny, possessed of depths and mystery, and feral in ways beyond my ken, . . . overspilling with dark abundance, . . . richly disruptive to one’s daily commute.' * Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Great Tide Rising: Toward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change (2016) and Piano Tide: A Novel (2016) *Battles … shows how trees--and perhaps more importantly our relationships with trees--are incredibly complicated. Even dappling--that wonderful light that comes through a tree’s leaves--is not as simple as it seems … He makes clear that trees and their data have important stories to tell. That is if we let them. * PopMatters *Table of ContentsPart One: Feral Trees The Tree of Heaven In a Dappled World A branching Heuristic Part Two: Garden and Forest In the Tree Museum From Ailanthus to Apple The Charter of the Forests Part Three: A Dark Abundance The Tree and/in History With and Without Us Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Though we try to imagine otherwise, waste is every object, plus time. Whatever else an object is, it’s also waste—or was, or will be. All that is needed is time or a change of sentiment or circumstance. Waste is not merely the field of discarded objects, but the name we give to our troubled relationship with the decaying world outside ourselves. Waste focuses on those waste objects that most fundamentally shape our lives and also attempts to understand our complicated emotional and intellectual relationships to our own refuse: nuclear waste, climate debris, pop-culture rubbish, digital detritus, and more. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewFascinating, thought-provoking, and necessary, Brian Thill’s Waste is about not just our present but our future. You can’t read it and come out of the experience unchanged. * Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times-Bestselling Author of The Southern Reach trilogy *If 'waste,' as Brian Thill points out, is any object plus time, then Waste is waste plus spirited curiosity and tremendous intelligence. With a gaze full of vigor and heart, Thill looks at the fate of what we discard—from space junk to horse corpses to bird bellies split open from plastic—and illuminates invisible margins we’d often rather forget. I read the whole book in one sitting, spellbound. * Leslie Jamison, New York Times-Bestselling Author of The Empathy Exams *Waste is the finest filth around—or really the finest mediation of it I can think of: Thill looks deeply into how what we waste controls us at the level of the personal and the public—our discards become our fate and home both—and finds treasure. * Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night *Waste pluralizes, names a condition into which objects fall, takes us beachcombing, dumpster diving. ‘Waste is every object, plus time’… The true aim of Brian Thill’s book, however, is… that non-place to which waste is sent. We cannot afford… to believe in such a zone any longer. Of course, we never really could or did — out of sight was simply out of mind. Waste always kept coming back. -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsThe beach that speaks Trash familiars/Tabflab Pigs in space Million-year panic Ruinism Splinter, shard, and stone Where the hoard is Lake Carbamazepine Acknowledgements Illustrations Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis‘A wonderful gallery of period items related to the Titanic and Olympic, presented and shared by some of the top researchers and collectors in the field. Many of these items are quite rare or unique, and are not often seen by the general public.’ – Bill Wormstedt, co-author of Recreating the TitanicThe basic facts of the Titanic’s story are well known: in April 1912 the largest ship in the world, described as ‘practically unsinkable’, set off on her maiden trip to New York. She would never make it there. Instead she would strike an iceberg just days into her journey and sink to the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, taking nearly 1,500 people with her. She would remain there undisturbed for seventy-three years.Titanic Collections: Fragments of History is a two-part series showcasing rare and important artefacts relating to the history of RMS Titanic. Many collectors prefer to hide their treasures away, but the items presented in these beautiful books have been gathered by six well-known and respected researchers, authors, historians and collectors who want to share their acquisitions with the world.The Ship focuses on artefacts relating to the Titanic herself, ranging from carpet squares and floor tiles to crockery and bath tickets. Each beautifully photographed item brings the story of the Titanic to life, and all come together as a museum for your bookshelf.Trade ReviewA wonderful gallery of period items related to the Titanic and Olympic, presented and shared by some of the top researchers and collectors in the field. Many of these items are quite rare or unique, and are not often seen by the general public. -- Bill Wormstedt * co-author of Recreating the Titanic *In Titanic Collections: Fragments of History, the authors have shared generously from their extensive collections. We see rare objects which bring to life Titanic’s story – her brief life and its disastrous end. Highly recommended! -- Mark Chirnside * author of Olympic, Titanic, Britannic: An Illustrated History of the Olympic Class Ships *In an era where so many items disappear into private collections, never to be seen again, it is a pleasure to be able to experience the story of the brief life of Titanic in such an engaging and unique way … The esteemed group of authors behind Titanic Collections: Fragments of History has done a great service. -- Tad Fitch * co-author of On a Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe second half of the seventh millennium BC saw the demise of the previously affluent and dynamic Neolithic way of life. The period is marked by significant social and economic transformations of local communities, as manifested in a new spatial organization, patterns of architecture, burial practices, and in chipped stone and pottery manufacture. This volume has three foci. The first concerns the character of these changes in different parts of the Near East with a view to placing them in a broader comparative perspective. The second concerns the social and ideological changes that took place at the end of Neolithic and the beginning of the Chalcolithic that help to explain the disintegration of constitutive principles binding the large centers, the emergence of a new social system, as well as the consequences of this process for the development of full-fledged farming communities in the region and beyond. The third concerns changes in lifeways: subsistence strategies, exploitation of the environment, and, in particular, modes of procurement, consumption, and distribution of different resources.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWINNER of the 2022 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction!WINNER of the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction!“Plastic is powerful and moving, a deep, personal exploration of the modern world.”—Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize recipient for The Making of the Atomic Bomb In Plastic: An Autobiography, Cobb’s obsession with a large plastic car part leads her to explore the violence of our consume-and-dispose culture, including her own life as a child of Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were made. The journey exposes the interconnections among plastic waste, climate change, nuclear technologies, and racism. Using a series of interwoven narratives―from ancient Phoenicia to Alabama―the book bears witness to our deepest entanglements and asks how humans continue on this planet.Trade Review"Plastic: An Autobiography is an ambitious braid of industrial history, material culture, environmental racism, and memoir. With its formal ambition and intelligence, yoking the movement between self and world, the book demonstrates that in the micro we can hold onto the macro, and in the macro the micro accrues meaning. Plastic is wildly impressive, a thoughtful meditation on plastic but also all of life."—CLMP Firecracker Award Judges Citation"Cobb is acutely aware that systemic change is the planet’s only hope. Tracking her carbon footprint when she flies or drives, the author bears striking witness to destruction: Birds and fish die from plastic detritus; decades after World War II, the stomach of an albatross was perforated by a plastic shard from a bombing raid."—KIRKUS "In this elegiac missive from the frontlines of our plastic-filled world, Cobb uses a variety of narrative forms to convey her deep despair over how plastic has overwhelmed our planet… There is elegance and power in Cobb’s truly unique environmental memoir."—Starred Review in Booklist by Colleen Mondor "Why have we created a culture of such wanton waste if we want to live on earth? In the long shelf of books interrogating our moment in the climate crisis, this memoir is a sharp, urgent breakthrough, a triumph of honesty."—John Freeman, Oregon Book Award Judge"In Plastic, Cobb investigates the origins of our contemporary intertwining crises by constructing a circle of cross-linked lyrical essays about the eternal presence and persistence of plastic in our natural world, our bodies, and our communities. Into this circle of narratives, she weaves facts, remainders, curiosities, and griefs—'the plastic will outlast the bones, the sand, this writing'—and like the shards of plastic she traces, her narrative structures are periodically broken by verse, lists, etymologies, and other voices, such as Samuel Coleridge, Claudia Rankine, and Karen Barad."—Kenyon Review "Cobb is stridently warning us of imminent ecological peril and the need to systemic transformation of our systems of production and consumption."—New York Journal of Books"Allison Cobb’s Plastic is so epic that it’s hard to know where to begin. Its composition spans over a decade of Cobb’s life and encompasses enormous changes in her own biography and family story… The book’s intellectual and political allegiances shift radically from a respectful, if mournful, immersion in the patriarchal world of technology and science to a much more critical remove. I sit down with Allison Cobb to discuss her new book Plastic: An Autobiography and her process in writing it."—Lambda Literary"A stunning tapestry of carefully woven stories, Plastic: An Autobiography is essential reading for all who are concerned about the state of our environment as well as the impact it has on those it supports.—Split Lip Mag“Allison Cobb’s Plastic: An Autobiography is the story of all of our lives. Gripping, informative, and moving, the book is both convicted and convicting, revealing the dirty and the brilliant underpinnings of our modern world. Once I picked it up, I didn’t want to put this book down. And when I finished reading, I knew much more about all the things I didn’t know I needed to know."—Camille T. Dungy, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History “Plastic: an Autobiography is a spinning gyre of history, biology, poetry, and chemistry, gathering centripetal force through attention to such particulars as a shard of plastic from WWII found lodged in the belly of an albatross sixty years later. This is a fierce and brilliant work that perhaps could only have been written by a poet who grew up in the shadow of Los Alamos, aware that the most destructive of human inventions can seem salvific until it is almost too late. Let this book be a call to awareness and action."—Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance “Allison Cobb’s Plastic: An Autobiography gathers shards of story, history, and science, along with bits of plastic left orphaned in the world. She is a daughter of the nuclear age (her father a physicist at Los Alamos) and an environmentalist, giving her voice the authority of lived experience on the edge of our industrial nightmare."—Alison Hawthorne Deming “Allison Cobb is not only a dedicated environmentalist, but she is also one of America’s most original environmental writers. The form of this book embodies narrative plasticity as each chapter is molded by history, science, memory, experience, and personal travels through the plasticsphere. After reading the final page, you will never see plastic the same way again, and you will see it everywhere."—Craig Santos Perez “Cobb carries us on a collective and at times personal journey through environment and time, juxtaposing the persistent nature of industry and convenience against the righteous indignation of the people impacted by it. I found Plastic to be just the reminder that we all need in the fight for climate and environmental justice today."—Heather Toney

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn intimate portrait of Tudor England captured, revealed and explored in 100 defining objectsTrade ReviewEverything you wanted to know about the Merrie England of the Tudors and some things you probably did not. If the Tudors seem far removed, they are also curiously modern. They had spectacles and metal prosthetic arms, while a “fuming pot” was but a prototype Air Wick. Matusiak’s mini essays accompanying the photographs are perfectly sculpted and the book is beautiful to hold. -- Charlotte Heathcote * The Sunday Express *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first ever global history of luxury, from Roman villas to Russian oligarchs: a sparkling story of novelty, excess, extravagance, and indulgence through the centuriesTrade ReviewThere's a tension at the core of the very idea of luxury, and that tension gives this book its sinew. * The Wall Street Journal *Table of Contents1. Luxury, Antiquity, and the Antique ; 2. The Courts, the Church, and Medieval and Renaissance Luxury ; 3. Luxury and the Orient ; 4. Housing Luxury: From the Hotel Particulier to the Penthouses ; 5. Luxury and the Fashionable Body ; 6. Jet Set Life: From Trans-Atlantic to Global Elites ; 7. The Chic of Poverty: The Minimalism of Luxury ; 8. Everything that Money Can Buy? Manipulating Luxury ; 9. Has Luxury Lost its Lustre? ; Further Reading ; Notes ; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom the The New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world.Trade Review"The history of paper is a history of cultural transmission, and Kurlansky tells it vividly in this compact, well-illustrated book." -- The New York Times"Kurlansky’s book is published with a deckle edge finish, a process that replaces the regular clean-cut trim of a page with a jagged, pulped roughness... It is a beautiful thing to hold and feel, and it presents a fine argument for the retention of paper as an aesthetically lusty object, let alone one that’s thrived through centuries of change." -- The Observer"Kurlansky expertly argues a case for its [paper's] continuing survival." -- The Scotsman"Kurlansky... explains how something so simple came to play such a vital part in history." -- The Sunday Business Post"Paper is not what you would call a learned book, but one learns an awful lot from it, all packaged in Kurlansky’s whipsmart prose." -- The Times

Read more less

Book SynopsisDaniel Miller is one of the leading anthropologists in Britain today and is well known for his work on material culture This new book is a manifesto for the study of material culture.Trade Review"Miller deftly displays a talent for the uncluttered presentation of ideas,largely eschewing complexity without compromising the integrity of his arguments. By constantly placing his fieldwork centre-stage, Miller allows the empirical realities of ethnography to bolster his key proposals and repeatedly encourages readers to question and reflect upon material culture and their relationships with their own ‘stuff'". Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford "[Stuff] really is a little gem. Timely, well-written and highly accessible, it is a concise and grounded resource in the struggle to analyse the complexities of contemporary cultural life ... For undergraduates and general critical readers alike, it will be a welcome and thought-provoking reminder that the material world of things we have created, and which in turn helps to create us, needs to be understood dialectically - for better and for worse." Times Higher Education "[T]here are fascinating things here: a seven-page description of how a woman who wears a sari navigates daily life through the garment; a portrait of council tenants as "artists" redecorating their flats in different ways; and analyses of fashion, furnishing and "mobile phone relationships" in Jamaica. When Miller is focused on the details, the writing hums with empathetic colour and detail." The Guardian "This is a unique book that comes from a unique scholar. In this one volume, one can see the power of material culture as a means to study culture and society more generally. The specifics are informative and the larger formulations profound. The writing is consistently clear - at times, endearing - and the content brilliant." Harvey Molotch, New York University "This book fizzes and sparkles with ideas and intelligence. Professor Miller develops his dialectical theory of material culture with enviable clarity. Readers are encouraged by his captivating style and lightly-worn scholarship to the frontiers of the subject: they will never look at their stuff in the same way again." Ray Pahl, University of EssexTable of ContentsAcknowledgements vi Prologue: My Life as an Extremist 1 1 Why Clothing is not Superficial 12 2 Theories of Things 42 3 Houses: Accommodating Theory 79 4 Media: Immaterial Culture and Applied Anthropology 110 5 Matter of Life and Death 135 Notes 157 Index 165

Read more less

Book SynopsisA treasure trove of gardening information in 50 often little known objects that have transformed the way we think about and work our gardens today.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe story of the world’s most famous liner, told through a fascinating selection of important objects

Read more less

Book SynopsisColour permeates contemporary visual and material culture and affects our senses beyond the superficial encounter by infiltrating our perceptions and memories and becoming deeply rooted in thought processes that categorise and divide along culturally constructed lines. Colour exists as a cultural as well as psycho-physical phenomenon and acquires a multitude of meanings within differing historical and cultural contexts. The contributors examine how colour becomes imbued with specific symbolic and material meanings that tint our constructions of race, gender, ideal bodies, the relationship of the self to others and of the self to technology and the built environment. By highlighting the relationship of colour across media and material culture, this volume reveals the complex interplay of cultural connotations, discursive practices and socio-psychological dynamics of colour in an international context.Trade Review “The anthology forms part of a critical yet visionary tradition of interdisciplinary studies on colour. [It] shows that much is to be gained by analyzing colour beyond the symbolic. of a collection…and [by] moving beyond entrenched binaries.” · Journal of Design HistoryTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Beyond the Language of Colour Chris Horrocks PART I: COLOUR AND VISUAL CULTURE Chapter 1. Ad Reinhardt: ‘Colour Blinds’ Michael Corris Chapter 2. The Eye Is a Sphincter (Who’s Afraid of the Postmodern Monochrome?) Antony Hudek Chapter 3. Colour Soundings: After the Tone of Francis Bacon Nicholas Chare Chapter 4. Capturing the Ephemeral. Colour as a Bridge between Art and Science Mary Pearce PART II: COLOUR AND MATERIAL CULTURE Chapter 5. Colour in Gardens: a question of class or gender? Beverley Lear Chapter 6. Critical Remarks on the Colour/Form Relation: Creating a Middle Ground Kiki Karatheodoris Chapter 7. Heidegger’s Pixel: Digital Colour as ‘Standing Reserve’ Chris Horrocks Chapter 8. The Disillusion of the Image: Cinematography, Colour, Sound and Desire Liz Watkins PART III: COLOUR, TEXT AND RACE Chapter 9. Chromatic Ambivalence: Colouring the Albino Charlotte Baker Chapter 10. Toussaint Louverture and Haitian Historiography: A Pigmentocratic Approach Charles Forsdick Chapter 11. “Linda Morenita”: Skin Colour, Beauty and the Politics of Mestizaje in Mexico Monica Moreno Index

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe third edition of Crusader Archaeology updates previous editions to include coverage of important recent work in the field. It examines what life was like for European settlers and travellers to the crusader states during the centuries of Latin rule.Examining past, recent and ongoing archaeological discoveries, and research in the field from Israel, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Cyprus, this volume includes recent findings and approaches including new exploration work in urban sites such as Jerusalem, Acre and Caesarea, new work on industrial sites and new discoveries in research including DNA studies, the field of weaponry and many other topics. It covers such topics as settlement types, fortification, daily life, day-to-day activities, warfare, religious life, arts, industry, leisure pursuits, building technology, agriculture, medicine, death and burial. It considers, in all these fields, the manner in which the Frankish population was influenced by the local and neigTable of Contents1 Background: The Crusades and Outremer; 2 The city and urban life; 3 The rural landscape; 4 The defence of the Latin East; 5 Frankish ecclesiastical architecture; 6 Frankish domestic architecture; 7 Crafts and minor arts; 8 The fine arts; 9 Building techniques and materials; 10 Medicine; 11 Burials; Postcript

Read more less

Book SynopsisMoving Objects deals with emotive design: designed objects that demand to be engaged with rather than simply used. If postmodernism depended upon ironic distance, and Critical Design is all about questions, then emotive design runs hotter than this, confronting how designers are using feelings in what they make. Damon Taylor's original study considers these emotionally laden, highly authored works, often produced in limited editions and sold like art objects such as a chair made from cuddly toys, a leather sofa that resembles a cow, and a jewellery box fashioned from human hair. Tracing the phenomenon back to the Dutch inflection' that began with Droog designers like Jurgen Bey and Hella Jongerius, Taylor conducts an analysis of the development of Design Art and looks for its origins in the uncanny explorations of surrealism. Offering a critique of Speculative Design, and an examination of the work of designers such as Mathias Bengtsson, whose work involves gTrade ReviewMoving Objects offers an innovative framework for measuring value in design. Taylor touts examples that recall our humanity and heighten our awareness of everyday objects we take for granted ... If our emotions project onto our surroundings and into our work as Taylor suggests, Moving Objects provides a robust roadmap for using those emotions to shape – and view – our world more intentional. * Design and Culture *Moving Objects is a unique book. The study uses unexpected insights and connects previously separate disciplines and different types of design. Damon Taylor shows himself to be a brilliant researcher who enriches the design world with a great knowledge of design history, an original analysis of how design works and also thinks along with us about the future possibilities in design. -- Timo de Rijk, Director of the Design Museum Den Bosch, NetherlandsTable of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Droog: the Dry and the Moist 2. Framing Design Art 3. Viscerealities 4. Valuing Emotive Design 5. Rhetorical Devices and Lyrical Things 6. To the Ends of the Earth Notes Select Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The shipping container is all around: whizzing by on the highway, trundling past on rails, unloading behind a big box store even as you shop there, clanking on the docks just out of sight. 90% of the goods and materials that move around the globe do so in shipping containers. It is an absolutely ubiquitous object, even if most of us have no direct contact with it. But what is this thing? Where has it been, and where is it going? Craig Martin's book illuminates the development of containerizationincluding design history, standardization, aesthetics, and a surprising speculative discussion of the futurity of shipping containers.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewCraig Martin has brought real love and insight to the logistical life of the shipping container. He reveals its role in the distributive space of extensive global networks and other dark places and their knotty politics, without ever losing track of our personal attachment and alienation to this box of ubiquity, this vessel of choreographed capitalism. Shipping Container is an efficient little package, calculating, brisk, economical, and yet, it is anything but a standardized account; it just sings. * Peter Adey, Professor of Human Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK *Object Lessons’ describes themselves as ‘short, beautiful books,’ and to that, I'll say, amen. … [I]t is in this simplicity that we find insight and even beauty. Shipping Container by Craig Martin asks us to contemplate an object on which we depend to move 90 percent of what goes from point A to points B through Z on the globe, but also with which very few of us have had direct contact. If you read enough ‘Object Lessons’ books, you'll fill your head with plenty of trivia to amaze and annoy your friends and loved ones — caution recommended on pontificating on the objects surrounding you. More importantly, though, in the tradition of McPhee's Oranges, they inspire us to take a second look at parts of the everyday that we've taken for granted. These are not so much lessons about the objects themselves, but opportunities for self-reflection and storytelling. They remind us that we are surrounded by a wondrous world, as long as we care to look. * Chicago Tribune *Shipping Container discusses in detail the mechanics of this object. It broadens this out to reflect on the significance of design and the efficiencies of standardization. Verdict: Borrow. Shipping Container is impressive in the way it manages to spin an apparently dull object into intelligent and interesting explanations of design and commerce. * Book Riot *Table of Contents1. Introduction: Packaging Stuff 2. 20 x 40 x 8 feet: Design and Development of a Global Object 3. Twist Lock: Global Object of Capitalism 4. Breaking the Seal: Illicit Lives of the Container 5. Four Walls: Container Afterlives: 6. Conclusion: Global Object to Come Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle promises to transform our lives and the world we live in, yet its time seems always yet-to-come or long-gone-by. Jonathan Maskit takes us on an interdisciplinary ride to see what makes the bicycle a magical machine that could yet make the world a safer, greener, and more just place.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewIn his insightful contribution to the Object Lessons series, Jonathan Maskit dives deep into this great yet humble human invention and its role in transportation. After reading Bicycle, you’ll never think of cycling the same way again * Sanna Lehtinen, Research Fellow, School of Arts, Design, and Architecture, Aalto University, Finland *Table of ContentsList of Figures 1. A Tale of Two Cyborgs 2. A Brief History 3. The Magical Machine 4. The Death Machine 5. What Does It Mean to Share the Road? 6. Right of Way 7. Bicycle Diaries 8. Motorism and Motorists 9. The Visible and the Invisible 10. Ghost Bikes 11. Idaho Stop 12. Space 13. History Repeats Itself 15. Dark Clouds, Silver Linings Acknowledgements Bibliography Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisClaire Moran is Senior Lecturer in French, Queen's University Belfast, UK.Trade ReviewThis volume contributes remarkably to the field of research on domestic space. It is an essential contribution to the discussion of spatiality of France and Belgium through its innovative and multidisciplinary themes and approaches. -- Camilla Murgia * Modern Language Review *This brilliant and impressively edited anthology encompasses an eloquent analysis of how literature and art reflected the transience in domestic interiors. The chapters of this absorbing and revealing book portray domesticity as a main narrative via the distinctive contributions by the valuable eminent scholars in the field. -- Esra Bici Nasir * Journal of Design History *Table of ContentsList of Plates List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Cultures of Domestic Space in the Nineteenth Century Claire Moran 1. ‘Louis-Philippe ou l’intérieur’: The Emergence of the Modern Interior in the Visual Culture of the July Monarchy Matteo Piccioni 2. Shattered Spaces: The Domestic Interior in Nineteenth-Century French Literature Anne Green 3. Art and Domestic Space: Continuity and Change in Private Collectors’ Interiors in Belgium, c. 1830-1930 Ulrike Müller and Marjan Sterckx 4. Inside/Out: Modernity and the Domestic Interior in Belgian Art and Literature Claire Moran 5. A Place to Grieve: Georges Rodenbach, Marcel Proust Nathalie Aubert 6. ‘Cromedeyre tout entier est une seule maison.’ The Domestic Interior in Jules Romains’ Cromedeyre-le-vieil Dominique Bauer 7. Impressionist Interiors and Modern Womanhood: The representation of domestic space in the art of Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt Sinéad Furlong-Clancy 8. Bricolage and the domestic interior in the French feminine press of the 1860s and 1870s, from La Ménagère to Stéphane Mallarmé’s La Dernière Mode Caroline Ardrey 9. The Bourgeois, their Homes and Sexualities in Colette’s Claudine Aina Marti 10. Missing Affinities? Brussels Art Nouveau and Belgian Symbolism Aniel Guxholli 11. Villa Khnopff: The Home of an Artist and the Palace of Art Maria Golovteeva 12. The Bedroom as Metonymic Portrait: Ekphrasis, Balzac and Impressionism in the Nineteenth Century Jill Owen 13. Private Rooms of the Cubist Still Life Anna Jozefacka Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisA unique perspective on one of the most infamous cities in recent American history. - Publisher's WeeklyA book that sticks with you long after you've read it. Volume 1 BrooklynHoke's writing is blunt and honest, and Sticker is a collection worth keeping. Southern Review of BooksI will never forget this book. - T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless GirlsFunny, nostalgic, and weird in the best possible way. - Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, author of My MonticelloFeatured in Electric Lit's The Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2022Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Stickers adorn our first memories, dot our notebooks and our walls, are stuck annoyingly on fruit, and accompany us into adulthood to announce our beliefs from car bumpers. They hold surprising power in their ability to define and provoke, and hold a stranTrade ReviewHoke (The Groundhog Forever) offers up an evocative reflection on queerness, race, and his hometown of Charlottesville, Va., in this conceptual 'memoir in 20 stickers.' .” Part of Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series, his book uses the humble sticker as a metaphorical linchpin for a series of essays that [offer] a unique perspective on one of the most infamous cities in recent American history. * Publishers Weekly *We’re not entirely objective here, but we’re quite fond of the Object Lessons series — and Henry Hoke’s contribution might boast the most striking cover design the series has had to date. Hoke’s book uses stickers to chronicle everything from queer identity to the recent history of Charlottesville, Virginia — all of which should make this a book that sticks with you long after you’ve read it. (Pun intended, oh yes.) * Volume 1 Brooklyn *Hoke’s keenly constructed memoir-in-essays is really a memoir-in-stickers, from the glow-in-the-dark stars and coveted Lisa Frank unicorns of childhood to a Pixies decal from his teenage years. The book also peels back the complicated notoriety of the author’s hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia, juxtaposing Dave Matthews’ fire dancer emblem against a truck emblazoned with the words “Are You Triggered?” on its back window heralding the infamous white supremacist march. * Electric Lit *Sticker is a trove of Millennial nostalgia. Its uniqueness lies not only in Hoke’s unabashed storytelling but also in its critical analysis of American current events and its brutal honesty about a city rooted in racism. In Sticker, Hoke’s Charlottesville morphs into a scrapbook, one where Hoke places many of the literal and metaphorical stickers significant to his past and his identity, one in which America memorializes some of its questionable, inhumane history and many of its darkest days. Possessing the evocative power of Melissa Faliveno’s Tomboyland, Hoke’s writing is blunt and honest, and Sticker is a collection worth keeping. -- Nicole Yurcaba * Southern Review of Books *Funny, nostalgic, and weird in the best possible way, Henry Hoke's Sticker weaves evocative personal moments with hometown lore and racial reckoning, all while making you want to dig up your old-school sticker collection—the puffy, the glowy, especially the scratch and sniff. * Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, author of My Monticello *Henry Hoke examines gender, sexuality, music, and the depths of humanity with exuberant whimsy and charm. Sticker pulses with ghost stories, lamplit streets and pine, boyhood, blood. Startlingly original and gorgeously rendered, I will never forget this book. * T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls *Table of ContentsMr. Yuk Unicorn Wahoowa Gold Star Constellation Chiquita Reinforcer Proud Parent Parental Advisory Explicit Content Rotunda Anarchy Blueberry Death to the Pixies Pink Circle Heart Fire Dancer Be Nice to Me I Gave Blood Today Are You Triggered? Hail Satan HH Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis*As read on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week*'A genius for a certain kind of social history that, in shining a light on one small place, illuminates a huge amount' Sunday TelegraphA toy train. A stack of letters. A tiny pulse glass, inherited from her great-great-grandfather, which was used to time a patient's heartbeat before pocket watches... Gillian Tindall, one of our most admired domestic history writers, examines seemingly humble objects to trace the personal and global memories stored within them, and re-animate the ghostly heartbeats of lost lives.'Elegiac... Tindall reflects on a lifetime's interest in historical recovery' The Telegraph'Tindall is a fine historian and writes with a wryness of everyday human foibles' The TimesTrade ReviewElegaic... Her books are carefully wrought acts of restoration... In The Pulse Glass, Tindall, reflects on a lifetime's interest in historical recovery -- Francis Wilson * The Telegraph *Tindall writes with affecting precision... Reading this book feels like looking out of the window on a long train journey. One is lulled by the rhythms into deep reflection and inexplicable nostalgia for the lives and landscapes of others -- Jessie Childs * History Today *Books of the Year* *An excellent suite of essays on transience and remembrance... Gillian Tindall is a high-minded Autolycus, devoted not merely to snapping up the “unconsidered trifles” of past lives but holding them to the light to glean the stories they might conceal -- Anthony Quinn * Observer *Tindall specialises in the overlooked, the underappreciated. She is very much a local historian, if you take that to mean that everything local can become universal; that the stories of ordinary people are as worth telling as the grand, the famous, the notorious... Tantalising... Tindall is a fine historian and writes with a wryness of everyday human foibles -- Emma Hogan * The Times *Gillian Tindall has a richly furnished mind, as full of pigeonholes and secret drawers as an old-fashioned Victorian desk… Tapping at floorboards, exploring cellars, leafing through yellowing love letters…she unearths what she can about the worlds we have lost -- Christina Hardyment * Times Literary Supplement *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA beautiful memoir, travelogue and meditation on stone by artist and stone mason Beatrice Searle.'Extraordinary' Guardian‘A magnificent book’ Alex Woodcock‘Exceptional’ Kerri Andrews‘Luminous’ SpectatorAt the age of twenty-six, artist and Cathedral stonemason Beatrice Searle crossed the North Sea and walked 500 miles along a medieval pilgrim path through Southern Norway, taking with her a 40-kilogram Orcadian stone.Fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of Northern Europe and the ancient Greco-Roman world, stones closely associated with travellers, saints and the inauguration of Kings, she follows in their footsteps as her stone becomes a talisman, a bedrock and an offering to those she meets along the way.Stone Will Answer is an unusual adventure story of journeys practical, spiritual and geological, of weight and motion, and an insight into a beguiling craft.Trade ReviewExtraordinary... Confessional, elemental and at times moving, this is a memorable and unique celebration of the power and beauty of stone. * Guardian *Searle is an excellent storyteller... [and Stone Will Answer] make[s] for gripping reading... it's the human spirit that emerges triumphant in this sparky blend of memoir and travelogue... Above all, this is the story of a young woman's astonishing feat of endurance * Herald *A gifted writer, capable of luminous description * Spectator *Subtle and thought-provoking * TLS *Illuminating... I was quickly taken in by Beatrice Searle's distinctive voice, and by the end I couldn't help but feel very differently about stones, rootedness, belonging, and indeed what walking might mean. Beatrice's story is exceptional, and she is an exceptional story teller. -- Kerri Andrews, author of Wandering: A History of Women WalkingA magnificent book. Written with the eye of a poet and the heart of an artist, Stone Will Answer is both a moving account of an unconventional journey and a testament to the power of stone in finding anchorage in an uncertain world -- Alex Woodcock, author of King of DustA story of dedication and tenacity that is deeply moving and utterly captivating. Stone Will Answer is a truly remarkable book, a beautifully crafted tale of an artist's extraordinary journey. Searle seamlessly contemplates the meaning of craft, ancient myths, the mutability of stone and the transformations within her own life. Its rare to read a story of such artistic integrity. I felt bereft when I finished but also buoyed by a new found fascination with stone and all its many meanings. -- Sally Huband, author of Sea BeanAn astonishing mission with huge integrity in the telling. -- Linda Cracknell, author of Writing LandscapeA story of determination and soul-searching... Compellingly narrated, entertaining and thought-provoking... treat yourself to a copy of this book and enjoy the journey * Natural Stone Specialist *A moving testimony to the power of art, of finding the extraordinary in the everyday and acting upon your instinct. To walk with Searle in its pages is to experience stone within a new light... as a part-knowable, ever-shifting medium in the process of slow but perpetual change, one long work-in-progress. -- Alex Woodcock * Caught by the River *

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Drones are in the newspaper, on the TV screen, swarming through the networks, and soon, we're told, they'll be delivering our shopping. But what are drones? The word encompasses everything from toys to weapons. And yet, as broadly defined as they are, the word “drone” fills many of us with a sense of technological dread. Adam Rothstein cuts through the mystery, the unknown, and the political posturing, and talks about what drones really are: what technologies are out there, and what’s coming next; how drones are talked about, and how they are represented in popular culture. It turns out that drones are not as scary as they appear—but they are more complicated than you might expect. Drones reveal the strange relationships that humans are forming with their new technologies. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewAdam Rothstein’s primer on drones covers such themes … as the representation of drones in science fiction and popular culture. The technological aspects are covered in detail, and there is interesting discussion of the way in which our understanding of technology is grounded in historical narratives. As Rothstein writes, the attempt to draw a boundary between one technology and another often ignores the fact that new technologies are not quite as new as we think. * Times Literary Supplement (reviewed by Christopher Coker) *Readers interested in technology and/or warfare will very much enjoy reading Drone… Adam Rothstein did an admirable job, writing about every aspect of drones in detailed and organized fashion… [T]hose keenly interested in the subject will gobble this up. -- George Erdosh * San Francisco Book Review *[Rothstein's] book is a rich collection of vignettes about how to imagine and comprehend the drone ... [Drone] really excels in tackling the multiple meanings, symbols, and narratives attached to drones, all of which provide a bird’s eye view (drone’s eye view?) of the terrain of contemporary debate ... for those beginning a research project, or just the curious, this small book packs a big punch. -- Ian G. R. Shaw, University of Glasgow * Antipode *Adam Rothstein's Drone presents this iconic figure of contemporary warfare-the disconcertingly alluring autonomous airborne machine-through the lens of a different kind of history. Privacy and tracking algorithms run side by side with the ethics of self-guided munitions, activist political programs butt heads with emerging corporate business strategies, and all of it is tied back to the earliest experiments in driverless vehicles, quaint ancestors of today's over-mythologized UAVs. In the end, Rothstein's book is an exploration of technical agency: Where did drones come from-and what do they want? * Geoff Manaugh, Editor of Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions and Author of the website BLDGBLOG *This lucid, visionary work is as close as one can get to science fiction without the baggage of science and/or fiction. Adam Rothstein's Drone will be a wonderful cultural artifact in twenty years. It will be like a broken pomegranate of contemporary speculations and anxieties. * Bruce Sterling, Author of The Zenith Angle and Professor of Internet Studies and Science Fiction at the European Graduate School, Switzerland *Portland writer and artist Adam Rothstein’s contribution to Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series digs into the history and meaning of autonomous aircraft—the ways they work, the tasks they perform, where they come from, and how the way we talk about them reflects the priorities and anxieties of our age. -- Ben Waterhouse * Oregon Humanities *Adam Rothstein’s Drone test[s] the water on what this technology might yet prove to be as it is successively explored and its limits and possibilities (military and civilian) discovered. What shall drones be? -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: Four Technology Stories Chapter Two: The Military Drone Chapter Three: The Commercial Drone (or the hole where it ought to be) Chapter Four: Blinking Lights Chapter Five: Software and Hardware Chapter Six: The Non-Drone Chapter Seven: What the Drone is For Chapter Eight: The Drone in Discourse Chapter Nine: Drone Fiction Chapter Ten: Ourselves and the Drone Chapter Eleven: Aesthetics of the Drone Chapter Twelve: The Drone as Meme List of Images Bibliography Notes

Read more less

Book SynopsisIconoclasm, Identity Politics and the Erasure of History surveys the origins, uses and manifestations of iconoclasm in history, art and public culture. It examines the various causes and uses of image/property defacement as a tool of political, national, religious and artistic process. This is one of the first books to examine the outbreak of iconoclasm in Europe and North America in the summer of 2020 in the context of previous outbreaks, and it examines the implications of iconoclasm as a form of control, censorship and expression.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Private Lives of Pictures offers a new history of British art, seen from the perspective of the home. Focusing on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, the book takes the reader on a tour of an imaginary Victorian or Edwardian house, stopping in each room to look at the pictures on the walls. The book opens up the intimate history of art in everyday life, and examines many issues including how pictures were chosen for each room, how they were displayed, and what role they played in interior design. Superbly illustrated, The Private Lives of Pictures appeals to readers interested in both art and social history, and the history of interiors.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis edited collection explores a subject of great potential for both art historians and museologists – that of the nature of the specimen and how it might be reinterpreted. Through its cross-disciplinary contributions, written by a team of art historians, artists, poets, anthropologists, critics and curators, this book looks at how artistic encounters in museums, ranging from anatomy museums to contemporary cabinets of curiosity, can provoke new modes of thinking about art, science and curating. Museological literature in the past focused on artefacts or objects; this is an original contribution to the field and offers new readings of old issues, inspiring new understandings of the relationships between art, science and curating. Brings together international expertise from art practitioners, historians, creative writers and theorists in France, the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand. Contributions from creative practitioners draw upon their own experience of producing artworks in response to specific scientific collections while historians, anthropologists, critics and writers examine how museums stimulate, incite and otherwise inspire artistic awareness of science and its specimens. One of the most important contributions this book will make is drawing together several threads of research and practice to encourage interdisciplinary discussion. It provides new ways of thinking about the relationships between art, science, museums and their objects. It concentrates on the ways in which scientific collections kindle novel aesthetic strategies and inspire new scholarly interpretations of art, science, curating and epistemology. In so doing it will make a considerable contribution to the fields of art writing, creative practice, art theory, the history of science and curating. This book will appeal to academics, researchers, undergraduates and postgraduates studying fine art, curating, museology, art history, the history of science, creative writing; visual artists, curators, and other creative practitioners. Also of interest to museum audiences. Reading list potential.Table of ContentsIntroduction Edward Juler and Alistair Robinson 1: Narratives of the ‘Fetish’ John Mack 2: Curating Interobjectively in Museums Alistair Robinson 3: ‘A Readiness to Find What Surrounds Us Strange and Odd’: Objects in the Relational Curiosity Museum Marion Endt-Jones 4: Art, Science and the Mutant Object Rahma Khazam 5: Models of Subjectivity: Surrealism, Physics and Psychoanalysis Gavin Parkinson 6: Glimpsed Phantoms of Sensation: Or, a Psychogeographical Investigation of Various Anatomical Specimens with Reference to Christine Borland’s Cet être-là, c’est à toi de le créer! Edward Juler 7 … as far back as I will remember Nadia Lichtig 8: Poetry and the Pathology Museum: A Model of Difference Christy Ducker 9: The Scientist and the Magician Irene Brown 10: Choosing, Unpicking and Connecting: On Drawing Museum Objects Richard Talbot 11: Post-Specimens and Present Ancestors: Passing Fables and Comparative Readings at the Wildgoose Memorial Library Jane Wildgoose 12: Moving beyond the Specimen (From Drawing Objects to Drawing Processes) Gemma Anderson 13: Desiccation, Suspension, Extraction: The Inhuman Art of Christine Borland Andrew Patrizio Afterword: What’s at Stake? Ludmilla Jordanova

Read more less

Book SynopsisShiny Things combines an interest in visual art with a broad attention to popular culture – the wideness of its range is striking. It is more than just an expansion of subject matter, which many of today’s innovative books also have – it considers how a specific physical property manifests itself in both art and culture at large, and contributes to an analysis of and polemics about the world. It is accessibly written but with a careful application of contemporary theory. Interesting, informative, and entertaining, this will appeal to progressive thinkers looking for new ways of presenting ideas. This is scholarship that challenges stale thought and interacts with philosophical ideas in real time, with a versatility that can often be lacking in traditional academic scholarship. Using art, especially contemporary art, as its recurrent point of reference, the authors argue that shininess has moved from a time when rarity gave shiny things a direct meaning of power and transcendence. Shininess today is pervasive; its attraction is a foundation of consumer culture with its attendant effects on our architecture, our conceptions of the body, and our production of spectacle. Power and the sacred as readings of the shiny have given way to readings of superficiality, irony and anxiety, while somehow shininess has maintained its qualities of fascination, newness and cleanliness. Examines the meanings and functions of shininess in art and in culture more generally: its contradictions of both preciousness and superficiality, and its complexities of representation; the way shininess itself is physically and metaphorically present in the construction of major conceptual categories such as hygiene, utopias, the sublime and camp; and the way the affects of shininess, rooted in its inherent disorienting excess, produce irony, anxiety, pleasure, kitsch, and fetishism. All of these large ideas are embodied in the instantly noticeable, sometimes precious and sometimes cheap physical presence of shiny things, those things that catch our eye and divert our attention. Shininess, then, is a compelling subject that instantly attracts and fascinates people. The book engages primarily with visual art, although it makes frequent use of material culture, as well as advertising, film, literature, and other areas of popular and political culture. The art world, however, is a place where many of the affects of shininess come into clearest focus, where the polemical semiotics of shine are most evident and consciously explored. Artists as diverse as Anish Kapoor (whose popular Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago is a repeating example in the book), Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Carolee Schneemann, Audrey Flack, Fra Angelico and Gerard ter Borch centre the book in an art discourse that opens up to automobiles, Richard Nixon and Liberace. Will be relevant to academics, scholars and students with an interest in contemporary theory and material and popular cultures. Potential interest across the humanities: philosophy, gender studies, perhaps public relations, advertising and marketing. It will also appeal to more general readers with an interest in popular and material cultures, art and aesthetics. It is written in a genuinely accessible style, and its ideas and theory are embodied through examples and narratives. Will be of interest to readers of Oliver Sacks, James Gleick, George Lakoff, James Elkins or Rebecca Solnit. Trade Review"Shiny Things is a smart, accessible, and often humorous, examination of the various meanings of shininess across multiple facets of culture, with a particular emphasis on the visual arts. It stands as an exemplary investigation of the meaning of an overlooked, but pervasive facet of material culture.” -- David Klamen, Dean of the School of the Arts at Indiana University Northwest

Read more less