Philosophy: aesthetics Books
Edinburgh University Press The Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels
Book Synopsis
£1,854.00
Edinburgh University Press Deleuzes Bergsonism
Book SynopsisThis critical introduction and guide to Gilles Deleuze's 1988 book 'Bergsonism' gives readers of both Deleuze and Bergson an opportunity to discover and fully connect with the philosophical encounter between these two great thinkers.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; The Method of Intuition; Duration and Multiplicity; Memory and the Virtual; Dualism or Monism?; The Elan Vital and Differentiation; Notes; Bibliography; Index.
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press Jean Baudrillard The Disappearance of Culture
Book SynopsisOriginally published between 1968 and 2009, this collection of 25 pieces includes six interviews translated into English for the first time and a new transcription of a Q&A session with Baudrillard following a lecture he gave in London in 1994, The guiding theme of the collection is Baudrillard's engagement with culture.
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press SpinozaS Philosophy of Ratio
Book SynopsisThese essays explore the surprisingly varied dimensions of this unacknowledged keystone of Spinoza's thought. They take you from Spinoza's geometrical diagrams to his concepts of mind, body, the emotions and the cosmos.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Speculative Art Histories
Book SynopsisThis collection brings together a series of creative responses to the recent speculative turn in Continental philosophy. The contributors include philosophers, art historians, architects and art practitioners. It takes a generous definition of art to include architecture, cinema, dance and new media.
£94.50
Edinburgh University Press Speculative Art Histories
Book SynopsisThis collection brings together a series of creative responses to the recent speculative turn in Continental philosophy. The contributors include philosophers, art historians, architects and art practitioners. It takes a generous definition of art to include architecture, cinema, dance and new media.
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press Critical and Clinical Cartographies
Book SynopsisThis collection is framed through Deleuze's symptomalogical approach which creates the ideal terrain for architecture and medical technologies of care to meet with robotics, alongside the newly emerging 'materialist landscape.
£94.50
Edinburgh University Press Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition
Book SynopsisAshley Woodward demonstrates what a new generation of scholars are just discovering: that Lyotard s incisive work is essential for current debates in the humanities. Lyotard s ideas about the arts and the confrontations between humanist traditions and cutting-edge sciences and technologies are today known as `posthumanism .
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press Nancy and Visual Culture
Book SynopsisThese 12 essays reanimate the dialogue between interdisciplinary scholars and practicing artists that originally gave birth to visual culture as a field of study. A new translation of Nancy s essay, 'The Image: Mimesis and Methexis', reveals how Nancy s work informs, challenges and inspires our encounters with visual culture.Trade Review"Nancy and Visual Culture offers an insightful exploration of the relevance of Nancy's work for our understanding of visual and other cultures." - Marta Weychan, University of Aberdeen, Film-Philosophy
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press Seeing Degree Zero
Book SynopsisIn literature and the visual arts, zero degree represents a neutral aesthetic situated in response to and outside of the dominant cultural order. Starting from Roland Barthes' 1953 book Writing Degree Zero, this volume examines the historical, theoretical and visual aspects of the term in collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin.
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press Seeing Degree Zero
Book SynopsisIn literature and the visual arts, zero degree represents a neutral aesthetic situated in response to and outside of the dominant cultural order. Starting from Roland Barthes' 1953 book Writing Degree Zero, this volume examines the historical, theoretical and visual aspects of the term in collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin.
£29.45
Edinburgh University Press The Imagination in Humes Philosophy
Book SynopsisThe prominence of the imagination in David Hume's philosophy has been recognised by generations of readers. In this rich study, Timothy Costelloe gives us the most complete picture yet of Hume's view of imagination and its place in his philosophy.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press The Imagination in Humes Philosophy
Book SynopsisThe prominence of the imagination in David Hume's philosophy has been recognised by generations of readers. In this rich study, Timothy Costelloe gives us the most complete picture yet of Hume's view of imagination and its place in his philosophy.
£27.54
Edinburgh University Press Ranciere and Music
Book SynopsisThis collection explores Ranciere's thought along a number of music-historical trajectories, including Italian and German opera, Romantic and modernist music, Latin American and South African music, jazz, and contemporary popular music, and sets him in dialogue with key thinkers including Adorno, Althusser, Badiou and Deleuze.
£24.69
Edinburgh University Press The Filmmakers Philosopher
Book SynopsisExploring Mamardashvili's extensive philosophical output, as well as a range of recent Russian films, Alyssa DeBlasio reveals the intellectual affinities amongst directors of the Mamardashvili generation including Alexander Sokurov, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Alexei Balabanov.
£71.25
Edinburgh University Press The Conversational Enlightenment
Book SynopsisThe Conversational Enlightenment' traces the spread of the concept of conversation during the Enlightenment, including the project of politeness, the fine arts, philosophy and public opinion.
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press SpinozaS Philosophy of Ratio
Book SynopsisThese essays explore the surprisingly varied dimensions of ratio:an unacknowledged keystone of Spinoza's thought. They take you from Spinoza's geometrical diagrams to his concepts of mind, body, the emotions and the cosmos.
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press Lyotard and Politics
Book SynopsisStuart Sim explores how Lyotard's brand of pragmatism can provide a focus for political theory and action in our cultural climate, especially in light of the dramatic resurgence of right-wing extremism.
£80.75
Edinburgh University Press Lyotard and Politics
Book SynopsisStuart Sim explores how Lyotard's brand of pragmatism can provide a focus for political theory and action in our cultural climate, especially in light of the dramatic resurgence of right-wing extremism.
£26.59
Edinburgh University Press Music Philosophy and Gender in Nancy
Book SynopsisAnalyses the role of music in the work of Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe and Badiou, and the role of gender in the history of philosophy of music.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Music Philosophy and Gender in Nancy
Book SynopsisAnalyses the role of music in the work of Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe and Badiou, and the role of gender in the history of philosophy of music.
£24.69
Edinburgh University Press The Stoic Theory of Beauty
Book SynopsisAist elkyt shows us that Stoic views about beauty were substantial and compelling.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Squid Cinema from Hell
Book SynopsisHere be Kraken! The Squid Cinema From Hell draws upon writers like Vilem Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker to offer up a critical analysis of cephalopods and other tentacular creatures in contemporary media, while also speculating that digital media might themselves constitute a weird, intelligent alien.
£27.54
Edinburgh University Press Architectural Materialisms
Book SynopsisThis book gathers 14 architects, designers, performing artists, film makers, media theorists, philosophers, mathematicians and programmers. They all argue that matter in contemporary posthuman times has to be rethought in its rich internal dynamism and its multifaceted context.
£999.99
Edinburgh University Press Ecologies of Architecture
Book SynopsisDrawing on a range of philosophical texts, Andrej Radman brings together a collection of 11 of his essays, published over the last decade, to show that when a society manipulates its matter it is not a reflection of culture; it is culture.Trade Review"Andrej Radman is one of the most insightful and interesting architectural theorists now at work. He is refreshingly meticulous in his treatment of architectural theory and Continental philosophy, and this collection of Radman's most important essays on theory from the past few years, is a significant and very welcome contribution to the domain of architectural theory." -Andrew Ballantyne, Newcastle University
£19.94
Edinburgh University Press The Fundamental Field
Book SynopsisInspired by poets from John Donne to Hlderlin, and philosophers from Nietzsche to Heidegger,Scottish poet Kenneth White and Australian philosopher Jeff Malpasreflect onthe world, place, narrative, language and politics. The volume closes with a set of three new philosophical poems by White.
£94.50
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Cigarette Lighter
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Smokers, survivalists, teenagers, collectors. The cigarette lighter is a charged, complex, yet often entirely disposable object that moves across these various groups of people, acquiring and emitting different meanings while always supplying its primary function, that of ignition. While the lighter may seem at first a niche objectonly for old fashioned cigarette smokersin this book Jack Pendarvis explodes the lighter as something with deep history, as something with quirky episodes in cultural contexts, and as something that dances with wide ranging taboos and traditions. Pendarvis shows how the lighter tarries with the cheapest ends of consumer culture as much as it displays more profound dramas of human survival, technological advances, and aesthetics.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewI didn’t realize how much I needed this book. It brought back terrible memories of an uncle dead in Vietnam, nothing but his Zippos to imagine him by, and the beautiful boy who broke my heart, leaving me with a carpenter pencil and a tiny lighter I could hang from my keychain (though I never did; that would have been much too painful). And that’s just the start! Cigarette Lighter is worth it for the index alone, but there's so much more. Like this gem: 'Your cigarette lighter represents your soul, so you get drunk and give it away to your pal, or your pal steals it without compunction. Either way, you can’t hang onto it forever.' Ah, such is life. * Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California *This book is a Zippo fueled by the remarkable mind of Jack Pendarvis. A blend of histories—movies and TV, war and cars—Cigarette Lighter is so good I took up smoking. * Chris Offutt, author of My Father, the Pornographer *Cleverly disguising itself as a Rabelaisian account of the cigarette lighter in our films and in our lives, this raucous object lesson takes as its real subject, the indefatigable Ted Ballard—octogenarian, curator of the former National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma, collector, misanthrope, raconteur, and consummate charmer—and becomes, in the end, a sly meditation on impermanence, wherein, in the words of Jack Pendarvis, the lighter finds out what the match already knows. * Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted *Table of ContentsPrologue 1. Taming Fire 2. Age of the Lighter 3. Lighter vs. Match 4. Cars 5. The Lighter in Literature and Popular Culture 6. Romance and Death: Cigarette Lighters Today Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Tumor
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. One in two men and one in three women will develop invasive cancer. Tumors have the power to redefine identities and change how people live with one another.Tumor takes readers on an intellectual adventure around the attitudes that shape how humans do scientific research, treat cancer, and talk about disease, treatment, and death. With poetic verve and acuity, Anna Leahy explores why and how tumors happen, how we think and talk about them, and how we try to rid ourselves of them. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewLeahy looks a tough subject right in the eyes, and tells its story with grace, insight, alacrity, and wit. * David Eagleman, Stanford neuroscientist, New York Times bestselling author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, and host of the PBS series The Brain with David Eagleman *In clear, compelling language, Anna Leahy writes with insight and empathy about cancer and the social and cultural dimensions of one of our greatest fears. A blend of science, journalism, and deeply personal storytelling, this book takes a lyrical approach to a complex subject we all face in some way. * Kristen Iversen, Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati, USA, and author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats (2012) *Table of Contents1. Tumor in the Family 2. Terms & Conditions 3. Self/Other(s) 4. Part & Parcel 5. Inside/Outside Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Luggage
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. You can't think about travel without thinking about luggage. And baggage has baggage. Susan Harlan takes readers on a journey with the suitcases that support, accessorize, and accompany our lives. Along the way, she shows how the materials of travel the carry-ons, totes, trunks, and train cases of the past and present have stories to tell about displacement, home, gender, class, consumption, and labor. Luggage considers bags as carefully curated microcosms of our domestic and professional selves, charting the evolution of travel across literature, film, and art. A simple suitcase, it turns out, contains more than you might think. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewIn this welcome addition to Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series, author Susan Harlan packs just enough in her sturdy devices to finish this trip on time and under budget … What is luggage? What is baggage? Are they interchangeable terms, or does the former exist only because it started as the latter? Is a backpack luggage? Questions are asked and answered. * PopMatters *In this short, delicious little extended essay, author Susan Harlan takes a closer look at our luggage, why we have it, why we use it as we do … Brisk writing threads pensive musings about our luggage with the author’s use of her own on one of her many business trips. What we choose to take, which bags and what to pack, their shape and size and appearance and more, all have a lot to say about who we are. Who knew a few bags could have such deep psychological implications? Five stars. * San Francisco Book Review *Susan Harlan writes with empathy and erudition about the things we lug, haul, pack, and leave behind. This little book — compact enough to throw in your carry-on for your next flight — is edifying and entertaining in equal measures. I loved it. * Rosie Schaap, author of Drinking With Men *For those of us who travel for a living, luggage is all things in one: tool, companion, talisman. I think about luggage a lot. Probably too much. But I’ve never read anything that — forgive me here — unpacks the history and meaning of luggage with the same depth and verve as Susan Harlan does. From Shakespeare’s Henry V to an oddly compelling contemporary visit to Alabama’s Unclaimed Baggage Center, this slim volume is worth the journey. * Nathan Thornburgh, Co-founder of Roads & Kingdoms *An intimate look at suitcases, trunks, totes, and other baggage, Luggage illuminates the intricacies of how we carry our lives with us when we travel … Harlan’s exploration of the minutiae of luggage makes for introspection … Harlan mines the life of things we pay little attention to, or simply don’t recall, and calls up nostalgia through the memory of objects. * Brevity *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Travel and Its Objects 1. Luggage and Secrets 2. The Language of Luggage 3. Packing 4. My Luggage 5. Lost Luggage: Alabama's Unclaimed Baggage Center Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Traffic
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Speed. Bump. Speed. Traffic considers the history and philosophy of roundabouts, speed bumps, the pedestrian mall, and other efforts to manage traffic. Exploring ways to reign in the power of the internal combustion engine, ramp back century-long efforts to increase the flows of traffic, and establish greater balance between humans and machines, Paul Josephson considers the history of traffic, and the political and other controversies that frame the belated technological efforts to calm it. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewTraffic is both insightful and entertaining. Based on a range of sources, it provides us with a fuller understanding of the methods by which we might be able to control the negative effects of the automobile on our cities. * Joel A. Tarr, Richard S. Caliguiri University Professor of History and Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, USA *Paul Josephson, with deft humor and brilliance, shines a spotlight on one of the simplest and most unassuming cures for our traffic ills—the speed bump. That invention is not the new, new thing, like Uber, autonomous vehicles, and paying for transit with your smart phone. The speed bump is tried and true, and represents much more than a lump of pavement. Its very idea is the way we must design the cities of the future for people and not just automobiles. * Lois DeMeester, CEO and Founder of Mobility Lab *These Object Lessons books are interesting little in-depth examinations and philosophical treatises on objects as disparate as cigarette lighters, hotels, questionnaires, eggs, drones, golf balls, shipping containers, and waste. Like many of the other authors in the series, Paul Josephson, through humor and intelligence, offers great insight. He makes reading about traffic much more pleasant than being stuck in it. * Lit Hub *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Mushrooms in Minsk 2. Speed Bumps in Twentieth Century Philosophy 3. Utopian Visions of Machines and People: A World Without Speed Bumps 4. Mumford and Moses 5. The Historical Concatenation of Congestion 6. Speed Bumpology 7. Crashworthy Automobiles as Speed Bumps 8. Race, Equality and Traffic 9. Pedestrian Malls as Large Scale Speed Bumps 10. The Woonerf: The Neighborhood Speed Bump 11. Taming Roads Themselves 12. Curb Cuts for People, Roundabouts for Automobiles 13. The Bicycle as a Neo-Luddite Traffic Solution 14. Gendered Speed Bumps 15. If Stopped in Traffic, Hope for a Crashworthy Automobile 16. Safety Delays in the Name of Freedom 17. Speed Bump Downsides 18. Waxing and Waning of Brazilian Speed Bumps 19. Potholes and Paper Money 20. Speed Bumps for Other Hopeful Technologies Notes Index
£12.20
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Burger
Book SynopsisCarol J. Adams is the author of numerous books, including the seminal The Sexual Politics of Meat (Bloomsbury Revelations). She is the co-editor of several path-breaking anthologies, including most recently Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (co-edited with Lori Gruen, Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Carol J. Adams Reader (2016). Her work is the subject of two recent anthologies, Defiant Daughters: 21 Women of Art, Activism, Animals, and The Sexual Politics of Meat and The Art of the Animal: 14 Women Artists Explore The Sexual Politics of Meat, in which a new generation of feminists, artists, and activists respond to Adams' groundbreaking work. www.caroljadams.comTrade ReviewBurger draws on an accessible combination of history and pop culture to reconsider America’s obsession with the molded-ground-beef sandwich … [It] explore[s] alternative modes of offering cultural critique, pushing against traditional divisions between academic and popular writing, and between history and critique, in search of new, more palatable forms of packaging the unsettling stories behind the Anglo-American diet. * Humanimalia *Adams provides more fascinating details and insights in this compact monograph than most readers can digest in one reading … Ultimately, Burger is a work of advocacy as well as literature and cultural analysis. * New Orleans Review *Best known for her groundbreaking The Sexual Politics of Meat, Adams would seem the least likely person to write about hamburgers with her philosophically lurid antipathy to carnivory. But if the point is to deconstruct this iconic all-American meal, then she is the woman for the job. * Times Higher Education *Burger is a small book with a big punch … Adams approaches her topic as an animal rights advocate as well as a feminist. She reminds us what the ‘everyday object’ of a hamburger really is: ‘The burger — minced, macerated, ground — is the renamed, reshaped food product furthest away from the animal.’ In this way, taking into account the lives of cows, as well as women, Adams convincingly explores the ‘violence at the heart of the hamburger.' * NPR: 13.7 Cosmos and Culture *It's tempting to say that Burger is a literary meal that fills the reader's need, but that's the essence of Adams' quick, concise, rich exploration of the role this meat (or meatless) patty has played in our lives. No matter our predilections or the political implications that often go with what we choose to consume, it's important to understand all sides of the matter … The Object Lessons series … continues to provide great food for thought. The burger … [is] an adaptable and rich subject that Adams handles with energy, expertise, and good humor. * PopMatters *Burger offers a thoughtful homage to the unsustainable modernist solution to protein delivery. Adams does not lose sight of the cultural importance of the burger’s traditional glory, but she does offer an adventurous reckoning with its impact on the planet. As the climate changes, what will take the place of ground beef in our hearts and minds? Among other things, books like this. * James Hamblin, MD, senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of If Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Operating and Maintaining a Human Body *Carol J. Adams has written a penetrating meditation on the bronze monument of all American food icons, the burger. Keenly observed, richly annotated, and sometimes fierce, this book examines the identity of the hamburger, along the way unraveling a fascinating tangle of American capitalism, environmental policy, and cultural assimilation—nothing less than the messy, scratch-and-kick pursuit of collective American hungers. Adams shows how food is never just food; it always has a beating symbolic heart. * Amy Thielen, chef, TV cook, and author of The New Midwestern Table and Give a Girl a Knife *Feminist Carol J. Adams – the luminary behind The Sexual Politics of Meat – is changing the social justice landscape once again with Burger … Burger provides a long-overdue analysis of everything from the misogynistic roots of this iconic American meal to the future of the burger (spoiler: it’s vegan). * VegNews *This little book … will be treasured by its readers. Highly recommended. * The Peaceable Table *Based on meticulous, and comprehensive, research, Adams has packed a stunning, gripping expose into these few pages – one that may make you rethink your relationship with this food. Five stars. * San Francisco Book Review *Table of Contents1. Citizen Burger 2. Hamburger 3. Cow Burger 4. Woman Burger 5. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Burger and Other Modernist Hamburger Identity Crises 6. Veggie Burger 7. Moon Shot Burger Afterword: Slippage Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Fake
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.The electric candle and faux fur, coffee substitutes and meat analogues, Obama impersonators, prosthetics. Imitation this, false that. Humans have been replacing and improving upon the real thing for millennia from wooden toes found on Egyptian mummies to the Luxor pyramid in Las Vegas. So why do people have such disdain for so-called fakes? Kati Stevens''s Fake discusses the strange history of imitations, as well as our ever-changing psychological and socioeconomic relationships with them. After all, fakes aren''t going anywhere; they seem to be going everywhere. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewFake aims to interrogate what it is we think we’re getting from the ‘real’ thing and what we’re searching for either by clamoring for ‘real’ things or by accepting their imitation … If you revel in the critical examination of objects around you and criticism of commonly accepted attitudes, this book will be your new friend. * Seattle Book Review *Fake is fascinating, clever, and utterly perspective-altering. Kati Stevens is the genuine article. * Emily Anthes, author of Frankenstein’s Cat (2013) *Table of Contents1. The Start of Something Fake 2. That Which Is Fake May Never Die 3. Quorn for Lunch; Oreos for Dessert 4. What Was Never Real Can(not) Be Faked 5. Hippopotamus Teeth 6. Davids 7. Ovid and the Real Girl 8. The Start of Something Fake, Part 2 Acknowledgments Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Doctor
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. A 3-year-old asks her physician father about his job, and his inability to provide a succinct and accurate answer inspires a critical look at the profession of modern medicine. In sorting through how patients, insurance companies, advertising agencies, filmmakers, and comedians misconstrue a doctor's role, Andrew Bomback, M.D., realizes that even doctors struggle to define their profession. As the author attempts to unravel how much of doctoring is role-playing, artifice, and bluffing, he examines the career of his father, a legendary pediatrician on the verge of retirement, and the health of his infant son, who is suffering from a vague assortment of gastrointestinal symptoms. At turns serious, comedic, analytical, and confessional, Doctor offers an unflinching look at what it means to be a physician today.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in Trade ReviewThis little gem should be required reading included in all medical schools as a reference for lessons in empathy for first- and last-year medical students, and for anyone who watches and is wary of the changes that are taking place in healthcare. Five stars. * Manhattan Book Review *Sweetly composed … As much a tribute to the legacy of his pediatrician father as it is an examination of the healing arts … Bomback covers a lot of territory in this small volume … It's a quick and understandable read that offers doorways to many other avenues worthy of deeper exploration. * PopMatters *With intelligence and humor, Andrew Bomback shows how human beings cope with issues of power and vulnerability. Doctor is an insightful read for anyone who's been on either end of the stethoscope. * Amy Fusselman, author of Idiophone (2018) and The Pharmacist's Mate (2001) *A disarming, candid, precise meditation on the inescapable role that 'complication' or 'luck'—otherwise known as 'fate'—plays in the life of any doctor or patient or, indeed, any human. * David Shields, author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (2008) *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Fourth Wall 2. My Favorite Types of Patients 3. I Have Good News and Bad News 4. You Get Better Because We Are Better 5. Doctors at Home 6. Texters and Emailers and Tweeters 7. What Are Their Names? 8. Highly Attentive Medicine 9. It’s Complicated 10. And It Will Last Forever 11. The Business of Medicine 12. A Diagnosis (Something to Do) 13. Everything You Say Is Important to Me 14. Harp Lies 15. The Longer You Stay, the Longer You Stay 16. The Future Is Already Here 17. History and Physical 18. Don’t Worry Acknowledgments Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Gin
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Gin tastes like Christmas to some and rotten pine chips to others, but nearly everyone familiar with the spirit holds immediate gin nostalgia. Although early medical textbooks treated it as a healing agent, early alchemists (as well as their critics) claimed gin's base was a path to immortalityand also Satan's tool. In more recent times, the gin trade consolidated the commercial and political power of nations and prompted a social campaign against women. Gin has been used successfully as a defense for murder; blamed for massive unrest in 18th-century England; and advertised for as an abortifacient. From its harshest proto-gin distillation days to the current smooth craft models, gin plays a powerful cultural role in film, music, and literatureone that is arguably older, broader, and more complex than any other spirit. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay seriTrade ReviewIn this expansive volume, Shonna Milliken Humphrey traces the history of gin, exploring the ways it’s been imbibed and the other uses it’s had throughout human history — some of which may surprise you. * Inside Hook *The book is far from a staid account – strange history, trivia, recipes and anecdotes abound, and Humphrey weaves autobiographical episodes throughout, making for an engaging read. * Portland Press Herald *I loved this book even more than I love gin, which is saying a lot. William Blake found a world in a grain of sand, but here Shonna Milliken Humphrey finds the whole universe in a juniper berry. By turns erudite and hilarious, thoughtful and provocative, Shonna shows us the history of the spirit, and—at times—her own heart. One of the most delightful books I’ve ever read. * Jennifer Finney Boylan, Author of Good Boy and She's Not There *This book is written in a light and fun way. Humphrey does a good job of giving you a quick overview to the history of gin, its origins, and evolution ... as a quick intro, and potential stocking filler this book works well. * Irish Tech News *This riveting little pocket-sized book about gin provides excellent rumination for the festive season. * The Australian Women's Weekly *Table of Contents1. Gin and Juice: An Introduction 2. A Potent Three-Letter Etymology 3. The Basics: Juniper 4. The Basics: Distillation 5. Class and Type 6. The Great Style Divide 7. Dutch Courage and the British Navy 8. The British Gin Craze 9. Ice Harvest, American Style 10. Gincidents 11. Portraiture and Visuals 12. Lyrics and Verse 13. Film and Literature 14. Ginaissance Acknowledgments Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Signature
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Why do we sign our names? How can a squiggle both enslave and liberate? Signatures often require a witnessas if the scrawl itself is not enough. What other kinds of beliefs and longings justify our signing practices? Signature addresses these questions as it roams from a roundtable on the Greek island of Syros, to a scene of handwriting analysis conducted in an English pub, from a wedding in Moscow, where guests sign the bride's body, to a San Franciscan tattoo parlor interested in arcane forms. The signature's history encompasses ancient handprints on cave walls, autograph hunters, the branding of slaves, metaphysical poetry, medical malpractice, hip-hop lyrics, legal challenges to electronic signatures, ice cores harvested from Greenland, and tales of forgery and autopens. Part cultural chronicle, part travelogue, Signature pursues the identifying marks made by peTrade ReviewThis is a true ‘essay film’ of a book, with multiple associative bridges flying out from its topic, into the air of pure insight. I’m thrilled to add my name to its covers. * Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude *Table of Contents1. The Dotted Line 2. S for Signature a. Real Fake b. On the Shores of Syros 3. Autograph Collecting a. “To Adam, from Big Daddy” b. A Victorian State of Mind c. Reading Character d. Criminal Signatures e. Autograph Fever 4. The Origins of Signature a. To Astuvansalmi b. There is Nothing Funny about Elk c. The Self, Extended d. Cave Signatures e. Seals and Signets 5. Signing the Body a. I Am You b. Erotic Inscription c. Autographic Skin 6 Digital Signatures, Signaling Digits a. Signing Machines i. Typewriter ii. Film iii. Gramophone b. Fingerprinting c. Electronic Signatures 7 Paw Prints & Ice Cores a. Doctrine of Signatures b. Animal Tracks c. Epigenetic Signatures d. Ice Cores Epilogue Acknowledgments
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Bird
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Hope, as Emily Dickinson famously wrote, is the thing with feathers. Erik Anderson, on the other hand, regards our obsession with birds as too sentimental, too precious. Birds don't express hope. They express themselves. But this tension between the versions of nature that lodge in our minds and the realities that surround us is the central theme of Bird. This is no field guide. It's something far more unusual and idiosyncratic, balancing science with story, anatomy with metaphor, habitat with history. Anderson illuminates the dark underbelly of our bird fetish and offers a fresh, alternative vision of one of nature's most beloved objects.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewAnderson follows the trail of fallen tail feathers across the grid, articulating his findings with an undeniable personal touch, and a philosophical sting that leaves you wondering, ‘what made us fall so deeply in love with birds? Why did it stick? What is beauty?’ among other considerations. Anderson is the lead explorer in a journey that, for many, is long overdue. Before we know it, the journey extends farther than bird-watching and observation, and we are left looking at nature with the absence of our human goggles. * 433 Magazine *“In his engaging writing style, Anderson skillfully introduces the reader to the spectacular world of birds…” * San Francisco Book Review *From tiny corpses to obsessive scientists, hot sauce on the Gulf and tears in the Hall of Asian Animals, Bird is at once a quirky natural history and a personal journey, one that says as much about humanity as about the feathered creatures we have eaten, shot, studied, extincted, protected, and, sometimes, watched. As I write these words, science tells us North American bird populations have declined by a third. Reading this book is one of the steps we can take toward giving birds back to the air that belongs, first, to them. * Christopher Cokinos, Associate Professor of English, University of Arizona, USA, and author of Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds (2009) and Bodies, of the Holocene (2013) *Table of Contents1 Put a Bird on It 2 The Hater’s Guide to Birds 3 The Buoy Bird 4 The Hater’s Guide to Birds 5 What a Name Can Do 6 The Hater’s Guide to Birds 7 There Never Was a Bird Acknowledgments Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Death of the Artist
Book SynopsisThere exists a series of contemporary artists who continually defy the traditional role of the artist/author, including Art & Language, Guerrilla Girls, Bob and Roberta Smith, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Lucky PDF. In Death of the Artist, Nicola McCartney explores their work and uses previously unpublished interviews to provoke a vital and nuanced discussion about contemporary artistic authorship. How do emerging artists navigate intellectual property or work collectively and share the recognition? How might a pseudonym aid ''artivism''? Most strikingly, she demonstrates how an alternative identity can challenge the art market and is symptomatic of greater cultural and political rebellion. As such, this book exposes the art world''s financially incentivised infrastructures, but also examines how they might be reshaped from within. In an age of cuts to arts funding and forced self-promotion, this offers an important analysis of the pressing need for the artistic community to construTrade ReviewThis book is a fine contribution to the study of modern art and artists and will help us to understand the practice and significance of alternative identities, pseudonyms and collective identity. * Art Daily *‘Nicola McCartney is part of a new generation of thinkers about art. Art now is more playful and indiscreet than it has ever been but it also aspires to talk to a political world that is both frightening but also where there is a possibility to reach new audiences. The idea of the artist in this new space is changing. In this book McCartney charts the careers of artists who question the role of the artist and who seek to subvert the notion that art is produced only by artists. McCartney asks: who do these artists think they are?’ -- Bob and Roberta Smith‘Nicola McCartney gets it: anonymous groups subvert the Western convention of the artist as a lone genius (usually a white male).’ -- Guerrilla Girls‘Nicola McCartney offers us a fresh and incisive analysis of moments in modern and contemporary art in which pseudonyms, anonymity, and collective identities are put to use. In doing so, McCartney interrogates the foundations of traditional art history and the art market. Death of the Artist is an important and exciting new contribution to our understanding of art's political efficacy.’ -- Joanne Morra, Reader in Art History and Theory, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts LondonTable of ContentsList of Figures Preface Introduction 1. Parodies of the Self: Surrealism and Ambivalent Authorship in ‘Rrose Selavy’ and ‘Claude Cahun’ 2. Collective Practice: Art & Language and LuckyPDF Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction: James Early of LuckyPDF Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 9 May 2013 3. Anonymity and Feminism: Guerrilla Girls Interview: Feminist Avengers: Guerrilla Girls Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 14 August 2013 4. Pseudonyms: Bob and Roberta Smith Interview: Art Mythologies: Bob and Roberta Smith Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 18 February 2013 5. Performance and Collaboration: ‘No, I’m Spartacus’. . . Chetwynd! Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
£17.99
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Recipe
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Recipe reveals the surprising lessons that recipes teach, in addition to the obvious instructions on how to prepare a dish or perform a process. These include lessons in hospitality, friendship, community, family and ethnic heritage, tradition, nutrition, precision and order, invention and improvisation, feasting and famine, survival and seduction and love. A recipe is a signature, as individual as the cook's fingerprint; a passport to travel the world without leaving the kitchen; a lifeline for people in hunger and in want; and always a means to expand one's worldview, if not waistline.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewFascinating. . . . [Bloom] explains how recipes unite us, contain lessons about hospitality, and can be a signature as individual as fingerprints. * Globe and Mail *Lynn Bloom’s Recipe celebrates the complications and contradictions, the serious and play, the bounty and scarcity, represented by the simple instructions that put food on the table. This book, like the object itself, 'exists as much in the imagination' as on the plate, a satisfying examination of the marvelous 'process and promise' of the humble recipe. * Karen Babine, author of All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer and Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life *A really great read. * Randomly Yours, Alex *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Secret Life of Recipes 1. “First, Turn and Face the Stove.” The Recipe as an Instruction Guide 2. “You say toma¯to, I say tomahto”: The Recipe as Conversation 3. A Taste of Home: The Recipe for Comfort Cooking in Tough Times 4. Joys of Cooking—and Eating: The Great American Thanksgiving Celebration Recipe 5. “Please, sir, I want some more.” The Recipe as a Manifestation of Power, Politics Poverty, and Punishment 6. Play With Your Food, the Recipe as Jazz Lagniappe: The Best Blueberry Pie Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Perfume
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Our sense of smell is crucial to our survival. We can smell fear, disease, food. Fragrance is also entertainment. We can smell an expensive bottle of perfume at a high-end department store. Perhaps it reminds us of our favorite aunt. A memory in a bottle is a powerful thing. Megan Volpert''s Perfume carefully balances the artistry with the science of perfume. The science takes us into the neurology of scent receptors, how taste is mostly smell, the biology of illnesses that impact scent sense, and the chemistry of making and copying perfume. The artistry of perfume involves the five scent families and symbolism, subjectivity in perfume preference, perfume marketing strategies, iconic scents and perfumers, why the industry is so secretive, and Volpert''s own experiments with making perfume. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic<Trade ReviewFascinating. * Zoomer *Perfume is an enthusiastic exploration worthy of its complex subject, pointing to mysteries related to the art and science of fragrance and welcoming newcomers to revel in them — with the understanding that some may never be solved. * Elizabeth Barrial, Founder and Head Perfumer, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab *A well-researched delight. * Glam Adelaide *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Science 2. Literature 3. Space 4. Time 5. Technology 6. Performance 7. Self 8. Other Selected Bibliography Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Understanding Nancy Understanding Modernism
Book SynopsisOver the past three decades, Jean-Luc Nancy has become one of the most celebrated contemporary philosophers. His remarkably diverse body of work, which deals with such topics as post-Heideggerian ontology, Christian painting, the experience of drunkenness, heart transplants, contemporary cinema and the problem of freedom, is entirely immersed in modernity, as he puts it. Within this plural framework, art which he explicitly defines as a modern construct plays a singular role in that it is the very prism through which he explores the problems of sense and feeling in general, particularly as they relate to our experience of modernity. The contributors to Understanding Nancy, Understanding Modernism fully delve into the heretofore under-acknowledged and under-explored modernism of Nancy's writings on philosophy and the arts through close readings of his key works as well as broader essays on the relationship between his thought and aesthetic modernity. In addition to an intervieTrade ReviewThis is a stunning collection that will be a priceless resource for readers of Nancy’s work. The essays are deeply knowledgeable and together they chart remarkably clear paths through all the major features of Nancy’s world and his thinking of 'world.' * Peggy Kamuf, Professor Emerita of French and Italian and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, USA *The texts included here demonstrate in incisive ways not only how Nancy's writings open onto understanding modernity but also how questions of modernity offer new and compelling paths for reading Nancy. It is a wonderfully impressive volume. * Philip Armstrong, Professor of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University, USA *This volume is a timely and much-needed contribution to scholarship specifically on the critical pertinence of Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking to modernism. What makes this volume additionally delightful is that it brings together experts on Nancy’s thought alongside up-and-coming scholars committed to advancing his thinking further into the future. * Irving Goh, Associate Professor of Literature, National University of Singapore, and author of The Reject: Community, Politics, and Religion after the Subject (2014), L’Existence Prépositionnelle (2019), and The Deconstruction of Sex (2021, with Jean-Luc Nancy) *Table of ContentsIntroduction (Cosmin Toma, University of Oxford, UK) Part I – Conceptualizing Nancy 1.“Jean-Luc Nancy’s Expectation: Rephrasing ‘Philoliterature’” (Ginette Michaud, Université de Montréal) 2. “Fort-pflanzung: The Literary Absolute’s Botanic Afterlife” (Stefanie Heine, University of Copenhagen) 3.“Back to The Muses: a Di-versation on the World and the Arts” (Nicholas Cotton-Lizotte, Princeton University / Collège Édouard-Montpetit) 4.“After Listening: Music, Musicians and Modernity” (Sarah Hickmott, Durham University) 5.“Fabula, Bucca, Humanitas: On Ego Sum” (Andrea Gyenge, University of Toronto) 6.“From Dis-Enclosure to Adoration: Literature and the Deconstruction of Christianity” (Schalk Gerber, Stellenbosch University / Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Part II – Nancy and Aesthetics 1.“From the Abyss” (Jean-Luc Nancy, Université de Strasbourg; trans. Mike Holland, University of Oxford / St Hugh’s College) 2. “Close Relations: Nancy and the Question of Psychoanalysis” (Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania) 3.“Noli me operare: Reading Nancy (Re)reading Blanchot” (Aukje van Rooden & Andreas Noyer, University of Amsterdam) 4. “Streams of Consciousness: River Poetry from Heidegger to Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe” (John McKeane, University of Reading) and “Altus” (Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Université de Strasbourg) 5.“The Regime of Technique: Nancy, Science and Modernism” (Ian James, Cambridge University) 6.“Le fond du film: Worlds, Images, and the Machining of Grounds (or: Blanchot Not/Beyond Nancy)” (Jeff Fort, University of California, Davis) 7.“The Poetics and Politics of Disenclosure: Nancy, Mbembe” (Michael Krimper, New York University) 8.“Nancy(’s) Surfaces” (James Martell, Lyon College) 9.“Between Modernism and Modernité: An Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy” (Jean-Luc Nancy, Université de Strasbourg & Cosmin Toma, St Hugh’s College) Part III – Glossary of Key Terms “Art” (John McKeane, University of Reading) “Body” (Juan Manuel Garrido Wainer, Universidad Alberto Hurtado) “Excription” (John Ricco, University of Toronto) “Globalization” (Barney Norman, independent scholar) “Sense” (Isabelle Perreault, Université du Québec à Rimouski) “With” (Jérôme Lèbre, ENS Lyon)
£85.50
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Blue Jeans
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Few clothing items are as ubiquitous or casual as blue jeans. Yet, their simplicity is deceptive. Blue jeans are nothing if not an exercise in opposites. Americans have accepted jeans as a symbol of their culture, but today jeans are a global consumer product category. Levi Strauss made blue jeans in the 1870s to withstand the hard work of mining, but denim has since become the epitome of leisure. In the 1950s, celebrities like Marlon Brando transformed the utilitarian clothing of industrial labor into a glamorous statement of youthful rebellion, and now, you can find jeans on chic fashion runways. For some, indigo blue might be the color of freedom, but for workers who have produced the dye, it has often been a color of oppression and tyranny. Blue Jeans considers the versatility of this iconic garment and investigates what makes denim a universal signifier, ready to fit Trade ReviewLike a best friend in a changing room, Purnell provides funny, fascinating, and sometimes horrifying commentary on your taste in jeans. Never again will you slip on a pair without thinking about the global historical and economic forces shaping your rear end. * Erin Thompson, Associate Professor of Art Crime, CUNY, USA *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction: The Most Versatile Garment 1. Distress Blue Blood Blue Dye Blue Is Not Green Blue Collar 2. Cut The Wild One Hemmed In It’s All in the Jeans The Denim Defense 3. Comfort Everywhere Everywhen Everyday Everyone Conclusion: The Paradox of Jeans Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Scream
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. When you are born, the first thing you do is scream. Be it a response to fear, anger, sadness, or happiness, the scream is a declaration of being alive. The metal vocalist cupping the microphone blares out a deafeningly harsh scream. The drill instructor screams out commands to their soldiers. And then there's the bloodcurdling screams we know from horror films. A scream has many meanings, but it is an instinctive and reflexive action that, at its core, reveals raw emotion. Investigating popular and alternative cultures, art, and science, Michael J. Seidlinger tracks the resonance of the scream across media and literature and in his own voice. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewA comprehensive and deeply personal trip through the cultural history of the scream. From Slipknot to Edvard Munch to John Carpenter and back into his own body, Michael Seidlinger reminds us all why we scream. As a singer, this one really hit home! * Geoff Rickly, singer of Thursday *Michael J. Seidlinger dissects the emotional complexity of the scream and—using examples from history, pop culture, and his own life—analyzes the way it highjacks the rational mind. Scream is an unforgettable ode to auditory extremes. * Jim Ruland, author of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records *Table of ContentsVoice (Prologue) 1. A Scream in the Night 2. Stand and Deliver 3. Speak Up, Shout Out 4. Howl at the Wall 5. A Rollercoaster of Emotions 6. “OMG I’m Screaming” The Body (Epilogue) Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Golf Ball
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Harry Brown explores the composition, history, kinetic life, and the long deterioration of golf balls, which as it turns out may outlive their hitters by a thousand years, in places far beyond our reach. Golf balls embody our efforts to impose our will on the land, whether the local golf course or the Moon, but their unpredictable spin, bounce, and roll often defy our control. Despite their considerable technical refinements, golf balls reveal the futility of control. They inevitably disappear in plain sight and find their way into hazards. Golf balls play with people. Harry Brown's short treatise on the golf ball serves up surprising lessons about the human desire to tame and control the landscape through technology. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewGolf Ball is a funny, smart, and charming meditation on an unlikely subject. Who knew that the story of this humble little white sphere could tell us so much about our history and culture? Brown weaves cultural history, literary criticism, physics, and philosophy into this wonderful book. His meditation on the golf ball deserves a place on the reading list of the curious golfer and cultural critic alike. * Orin Starn, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA, and author of The Passion of Tiger Woods *Brown starts where the curious amongst us always seem to—by taking things apart. Departing from the physical dissection of a single ball, performed as a boy, Brown rollicks through a detailed and highly entertaining exploration of the history of the game of golf. Golf Ball will fill the air of the 19th Hole with questions answered and stories told. * Tom Chiarella, Visiting Writer, Esquire Magazine, and Award-Winning Member of the Golf Writers Association of America *An intriguing mix of history, personal anecdote and cutting-edge philosophy, carrying the reader aloft over a range of courses and discourses past and present … In Golf Ball, Brown has some fun with contemporary thinking whilst never getting too bogged down in the sand trap of theory … leaving us with some intriguing questions to ponder about the objects we use, lose and overlook every day. * Neil Fitzgerald, LapsedHermit.com *Golf Ball… begins with Harry Brown explaining how his object chose him. As an eight-year-old homegrown Heideggerian of a boy, he claims, he sliced a golf ball in two to inquire into its hardness. The book derives from this severing. It inhabits the ‘glimpse of internal structure’ that it offered, unfolding in two parts: ‘Out: Thing,’ and ‘In: Phenomenon.' -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Part One: Out: Thing 1. How I cut a golf ball in half, and found a lot of things inside 2. How the golf ball keeps holy the Lord's day 3. How an empire made the golf ball, and the golf ball made an empire 4. How the golf ball blew up America and made golf more fun 5. How the golf ball went ballistic 6. How the golf ball reached détente 7. How the court decided custody of the golf ball 8. How the golf ball became the #1 ball in golf 9. How the golf ball got so cool Part Two: In: Phenomenon 10. How the golf ball vanishes before your eyes 11. How the golf ball makes us feel fulfilled, for a millisecond 12. How to control the unruly golf ball 13. How to hit the golf ball by not hitting it 14. How the golf ball looks into the abyss, and the abyss looks back 15. How the golf ball won the Golden Fleece 16. How the golf ball went to the moon 17. How the golf ball makes friends with animals 18. How the golf ball prepares for doomsday Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Blanket
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. We are born into blankets. They keep us alive and they cover us in death. We pull and tug on blankets to see us through the night or an illness. They shield us in mourning and witness our most intimate pleasures. Curious, fearless, vulnerable, and critical, Blanket interweaves cultural critique with memoir to cast new light on a ubiquitous object. Kara Thompson reveals blankets everywhere--film, art, geology, disasters, battlefields, resistance, home--and transforms an ordinary thing into a vibrant and vital carrier of stories and secrets, an object of inheritance and belonging, a companion to uncover. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewThere is nothing trivial about this little book. It addresses one ostensibly ordinary object – a blanket – but quickly turns your ideas on their heads … Author Kara Thompson traverses a continent of meanings and implications, focusing on various artworks that use some type of blanket motif, or actual blankets, to illustrate metaphorical blankets, especially ones that deal with death. You will appreciate her brilliant analysis of these artworks and their synthesis with themes of colonialism, subjugation, memory, and survival, which is sensitive and detailed. Entwined through the story is a very personal and vulnerable story, in which Thompson wraps these blankets’ abstraction into her individual experience. The book will stay with you for a long time. * Seattle Book Review *Thompson has contributed a fine addition to the Object Lessons series and provided some interesting starting points from which scores of other ideas can be explored. * PopMatters *The gift of these volumes is how they tease out the unexpected associations and implications of their subjects, and Kara Thompson’s Blanket is no exception … Thompson weaves together in her Blanket dichotomous ideas about blankets—art versus utility, hard shells versus soft wraps, infection versus protection—to illuminate the ways in which these may all be different sides of the same thing … Kara Thompson continues through her “unfoldings” to educate and surprise readers with new threads to follow and contemplate long after the small, but densely woven Blanket ends. * New York Journal of Books *Liquid brilliance blankets this book, making its forays endlessly moving—and often surprising. Simply exquisite in all its folds. * Kathryn Bond Stockton, Distinguished Professor of English, University of Utah, USA, and author of The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (2009) *Kara Thompson’s Blanket is an elegant, nearly seamless weaving through Native politics and histories, American violence, personal loss and remembrance, psychoanalysis and healing, geology, artworks and literature--varied stitches and detail toward the greater themes and design of comfort, protection, trauma, loss, and the disparate turnings of human living. Kara Thompson has stirred a deep desire in me to understand. . . to understand what? I ask myself. It is not the what, so much as the what is not: What is not seen, but within the folds. What is not often considered, but like a blanket, felt with 'a kind of muscle memory [. . .] the trace of habitation.' What is rarely accounted for in language, signifiers and terms, such as the 'affect, kinship, ceremony, inheritance, story' that imbue anything with real meaning. This book draws unexpected connections and links from one subject to the next. And in the spaces between those connections, there is a magic I have, until now, only known to exist in poetry. From one paragraph to the next, I discover something more of myself, hidden or maybe even protected, both grieving and comforted, tightly threaded within all these blankets. * Layli Long Soldier, author of Whereas (2017), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry *Table of ContentsA Note to the Reader Preface: Convolute Unfold 1 1. Witness Unfold 2 2. Folds Unfold 3 3. Transmission, Extraction Unfold 4 4. Security Unfold 5 5. Under Cover Unfold 6 6. Carriers Unfold 7 Acknowledgments Bibliography List of Figures Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Glass
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Pause and look around: you will see that you are surrounded by glass. It reflects and refracts light through your windows; it encircles a glowing filament above you; it’s in a mirror hanging on the wall; it lies shattered in a dented corner of an iPhone—you’re drinking water out of a pint glass. Taking up a most common object, rarely considered because assumed to be transparent, John Garrison draws evocative connections between historical depictions of glass and emerging visions that see it as holding a unique promise for new forms of interaction. Grounded in everyday examples, this book offers a series of surprising insights into how we increasingly find ourselves living in a world made of glass. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade Review[Glass] distills the essence of a substance that offers itself as something to be looked through, giving a shine to its contents, and as something that occupies our view, as something we have to take note of and interact with. -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *[A] book that can be read in a fascinated hour, but will influence your reading and your looking for the next month. * Times Literary Supplement *This brilliant book takes us through the looking glass, allowing us to see an everyday material in a whole new light. Glass, no matter how transparent it may seem, is always coated with many layers of meaning. In this scintillating account, John Garrison shows how the cultural framing of glass has repeatedly opened windows to other worlds, from the microscopic depths to the far reaches of the cosmos, from the imagined futures of science fiction to the bizarro-worlds of our own bathroom mirrors. * Colin Milburn, Professor of English and Science and Technology Studies, University of California Davis, USA *Table of ContentsPreface “A Day Made of Glass” Macbeth Minority Report Microscopic Vision Telescopic Vision Earrings and Landscapes Photography Shakespeare’s Sonnets “Heart of Glass” Sea Glass Google Glass Trademark Microsoft HoloLens Strange Days A Glass, Darkly Surfaces “A World of Glass” Postscript: What’s in My Pocket? Further Reading Acknowledgements Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Refrigerator
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. It may be responsible for a greater improvement in human diet and longevity than any other technology of the last two thousand years—but have you ever thought seriously about your refrigerator? That box humming in the background displays more than you might expect, even who you are and the society in which you live. Jonathan Rees examines the past, present, and future of the household refrigerator with the aim of preventing its users from ever taking it for granted again. No mere container for cold Cokes and celery stalks, the refrigerator acts as a mirror—and what it reflects is chilling indeed. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewDoes life exist without refrigerators? For most of us, the answer is no. How this common kitchen appliance achieved its indispensable status in less than a century is an amazing tale filled with surprising twists and unexpected connections. Refrigerator is a delight to read. Bravo! * Andrew F. Smith, Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America *Allow Jonathan Rees to re-introduce you to the most underappreciated appliance in your kitchen: the refrigerator. Despite its recent and as yet patchy arrival on the world stage, the humble fridge has transformed how and what we eat, for better and for worse. This concise overview should be required reading for the 99.5 percent of Americans who own a refrigerator. * Nicola Twilley, author of Edible Geography and contributing writer at The New Yorker *Jonathan Rees’s Refrigerator offers a meticulously observed history of the ‘cold chain’ of industrialized food webs, explains how refrigeration works; and goes so far as to imagine life with and without it. Beyond this mini-historical account, the real heft to this title lies in the implied ecological impact of what doing without refrigeration might mean for those in the West for whom it has become taken for granted. -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *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. … In Refrigerator, historian Jonathan Rees asks us to look again at an object many of us take for granted as it hums away in our kitchens. When's the last time you looked at that thing? Did you contemplate how the refrigerator may have done more to extend the human lifespan than any other piece of technology? … 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 *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: How Refrigerators Work Chapter Two: How to Make Your Refrigerator Stand Out Chapter Three: Are the Benefits of Refrigeration Worth the Costs? Chapter Four: Waste and Wants Chapter Five: Freezing and Freezers Conclusion Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Driver's License
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. A classic teenage fetish object, the American driver’s license has long symbolized freedom and mobility in a nation whose design assumes car travel and whose vastness rivals continents. It is youth’s pass to regulated vice—cigarettes, bars, tattoo parlors, casinos, strip joints, music venues, guns. In its more recent history, the license has become increasingly associated with freedom’s flipside: screening. The airport’s heightened security checkpoint. Controversial ID voting laws. Federally mandated, anti-terrorist driver’s license re-designs. The driver’s license encapsulates the contradictory values and practices of contemporary American culture—freedom and security, mobility and checkpoints, self-definition and standardization, democracy and exclusion, superficiality and intimacy, the stable self and the self in flux. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewRanging across the 20th century and between continents, Castile teaches a fundamental 'lesson' about the license: what's meant to fix an identity in fact generates competing meanings and values. Freedom and control, security and vulnerability, authenticity and fakery, youth and maturity. The book's Kerouacian opening and mix of pop culture references, personal anecdote, and philosophical musings invite attention to this overlooked but ever-present object. * Heather Houser, Assistant Professor of English, University of Texas at Austin, USA, and author of Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction *In Driver’s License, Meredith Castile… draws six lessons: on national identity, on the culture of faked documents, on design, teen culture, identity, and civics. -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Driver’s License is almost two short books in one. One part contains several personal stories, which evoke the much-mythologized independence of American teenagers now free to drive themselves. The other part becomes, like Hood, a condemnation of racial injustice. This section describes the de facto disenfranchisement of minority groups in the U.S. It explains how this disenfranchisement – not only when it comes to voting, but also for accessing basic social services – depends on the bureaucratic mechanics of the driver’s license and other forms of ID. Being undocumented or unable to afford driving lessons are just two of the obstacles to exercising full citizenship, and Driver’s License takes some interesting left turns to arrive at this message. Verdict: Buy. American culture so heavily fetishizes the car, yet the driver’s license is also hugely important to a sense of identity and possibility. * Book Riot *Table of ContentsAmerica Fake Design Teen Identity Civics
£9.49
Lexington Books Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the
Book SynopsisIt is commonplace to regard many great works of literature—poems, dramas, works of fiction—as in some sense philosophical. Yet ever since Plato, there has been a tension between the kind of abstract theorizing that goes on in philosophy and the focus on concrete particulars that occurs in poetry and fiction. Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Unsayable elaborates on and addresses this Platonic tension, asking in what sense, if any, literature in the form of poetry, drama, short stories, and novels can contribute significantly to our philosophical understanding. Timothy Cleveland suggests there is something in certain poems, novels, and stories that makes them especially suited to expanding our awareness and understanding into the nature of things otherwise unsayable and unconceived. Such literary works show us something that a theoretical—scientific or philosophical—discourse cannot literally say.Trade ReviewIn a wide-ranging discussion that focuses on the relationship between philosophy and literature, Cleveland argues that some works of fiction can point readers toward what is unsayable. Against Plato, the author claims there is a sense in which literature can be philosophical by providing an enhanced awareness of the world, but trying to put this into words risks losing it. Among other reflections, Cleveland offers an extended account of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” to show how the poem works as a kind of performance that provides a strong sense of the self’s fragmentation in the modern world. It may seem paradoxical to say that one can talk about the unsayable, but poetry, novels, negative theology, and Zen Buddhist koans can get beneath the surface level of meaning to transform one from within. Cleveland describes his work as “a philosophical prolegomena to fiction and the unsayable” (p. 4). He does not get bogged down in theory but offers insights and a thoughtful discussion concerning philosophical aspects of literature “that cannot be articulated, only shown” (p. 22). Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice Reviews *I recommend the book to everyone interested in questions regarding literature and philosophy that issue from the ancient quarrel. Cleveland writes clearly and pushes his arguments forward through a maze of different philosophical disciplines. As he himself states, this book was written primarily in order to honor two of his great loves, literature and philosophy, and the result is a book that invites a similar degree of enthusiasm and dedication. Concerned with the unsayable, the book, almost paradoxically, manages to say (and show!) how inspiring philosophy can be, when it is done from the heart. Most importantly perhaps, in the age when literacy is rapidly declining and fewer and fewer people read, with the STEM-areas trumping the humanities all around the world, Cleveland’s book is a much-needed reminder that certain things just are beyond theoretical grasp: they can only be shown to us by art. One can only hope that its messages will resonate with those who fail to acknowledge the social, cultural, and educational values of the arts and philosophy. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *What can be shown but not said? Where and how can something of surpassing interest or importance be shown but not said? A picture, for example, can be worth a thousand words. These questions arise when we ponder what can be shown and not said. In this book, Timothy Cleveland, a philosopher who can see deeply and broadly, shows himself able to not only see but also say much of great interest about such questions. -- Ernest Sosa, Rutgers University
£30.00
