Search results for ""Experiment""
New York University Press Sonic Sovereignty: Hip Hop, Indigeneity, and Shifting Popular Music Mainstreams
What does sovereignty sound like? Sonic Sovereignty considers how contemporary Indigenous musicians champion self-determination through musical expression in Canada and the United States. The framework of “sonic sovereignty” connects self-definition, collective determination, and Indigenous land rematriation to the immediate and long-lasting effects of expressive culture. Liz Przybylski covers online and offline media spaces, following musicians and producers as they, and their music, circulate across broadcast and online networks. Przybylski documents and reflects on shifts in both the music industry and political landscape over the course of a decade: as the ways in which people listen to, consume, and interact with popular music have radically changed, extensive public conversations have flourished around contemporary Indigenous culture, settler responsibility, Indigenous leadership, and decolonial futures. Sonic Sovereignty encourages us to experiment with temporal possibilities of listening by detailing moments when a sample, lyric, or musical reference moves a listener out of normative time. Nonlinear storytelling practices from hip hop music and other North American Indigenous sonic practices inform these generative listenings. The musical readings presented in this book thus explore how musicians use tools to help listeners embrace rupture, and how out-of-time listening creates decolonial possibilities.
£66.60
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC What are Exhibitions for? An Anthropological Approach
Why do people go to exhibitions, and what do they hope to gain from the experience? What would happen if people were encouraged to move freely through exhibition spaces, take photographs and be playful? In this book, Inge Daniels explores what might happen if people and objects were freed from the regulations currently associated with going to an exhibition. Traditional understandings of exhibitions place the viewers in a one-way communication form, where the exhibition and those behind its creation inform their audiences. However, motivations behind exhibition-going are multiple and complex and frequently the intentions of curators do not match the expectations of their visitors. Based on an in-depth ethnographic examination of the processes involved in the making and reception of one particular exhibition-experiment as well as a study that follows 'freed' objects into their new homes, this publication will not only shed light on what exhibitions are, but also what they could become in the future. Featuring over 175 colour illustrations and using practical examples, this is an important contribution for students and scholars of anthropology, museum studies, photography, design and architecture.
£43.66
John Wiley & Sons Inc Mountain Building in the Uralides: Pangea to the Present
Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 132.Extending for more than 2000 kilometers from the islands of Novaya Zemlya in the north to the Aral Sea in the south, the Uralide orogen forms the geographical and geological divide between Europe and Asia. For more than a century the Uralides have been one of the key areas of geological research in Russia, and have provided much of its mineral and petroleum wealth for the last 50 years. Nevertheless, the geology and tectonic evolution of the Uralide orogen were relatively unknown in the international literature until recently, when EUROPROBE and GEODE (European Science Foundation scientific programmes) brought together Russian, European, and American earth scientists to work in the Uralides project and the Urals Mineral Province project, respectively. Much of the recent research has focused around two deep seismic surveys, Europrobe's Seismic Reflection Profiling in the Urals (ESRU) survey in the Middle Urals and the multicomponent Urals Seismic Experiment and Integrated Studies (URSEIS) survey in the South Urals. These experiments were accompanied by a large number of geological, geochemical, geochronological, and geophysical studies.
£75.95
Duke University Press Roy Cape: A Life on the Calypso and Soca Bandstand
Roy Cape is a Trinidadian saxophonist active as a band musician for more than fifty years and as a bandleader for more than thirty. He is known throughout the islands and the Caribbean diasporas in North America and Europe. Part ethnography, part biography, and part Caribbean music history, Roy Cape is about the making of reputation and circulation, and about the meaning of labor and work ethics. An experiment in storytelling, it joins Roy's voice with that of ethnomusicologist Jocelyne Guilbault. The idea for the book emerged from an exchange they had while discussing Roy's journey as a performer and bandleader. In conversation, they began experimenting with voice, with who takes the lead, who says what, when, to whom, and why. Their book reflects that dynamic, combining first-person narrative, dialogue, and the polyphony of Roy's bandmates' voices. Listening to recordings and looking at old photographs elicited more recollections, which allowed Roy to expand on recurring themes and motifs. This congenial, candid book offers different ways of knowing Roy's labor of love—his sound and work through sound, his reputation and circulation as a renowned musician and bandleader in the world.
£80.10
Duke University Press Bad Souls: Madness and Responsibility in Modern Greece
Bad Souls is an ethnographic study of responsibility among psychiatric patients and their caregivers in Thrace, the northeastern borderland of Greece. Elizabeth Anne Davis examines responsibility in this rural region through the lens of national psychiatric reform, a process designed to shift treatment from custodial hospitals to outpatient settings. Challenged to help care for themselves, patients struggled to function in communities that often seemed as much sources of mental pathology as sites of refuge. Davis documents these patients' singular experience of community, and their ambivalent aspirations to health, as they grappled with new forms of autonomy and dependency introduced by psychiatric reform. Planned, funded, and overseen largely by the European Union, this "democratic experiment," one of many reforms adopted by Greece since its accession to the EU in the early 1980s, has led Greek citizens to question the state and its administration of human rights, social welfare, and education. Exploring the therapeutic dynamics of diagnosis, persuasion, healing, and failure in Greek psychiatry, Davis traces the terrains of truth, culture, and freedom that emerge from this questioning of the state at the borders of Europe.
£27.99
Stanford University Press Writing Against Time
For centuries, a central goal of art has been to make us see the world with new eyes. Thinkers from Edmund Burke to Elaine Scarry have understood this effort as the attempt to create new forms. But as anyone who has ever worn out a song by repeated listening knows, artistic form is hardly immune to sensation-killing habit. Some of our most ambitious writers—Keats, Proust, Nabokov, Ashbery—have been obsessed by this problem. Attempting to create an image that never gets old, they experiment with virtual, ideal forms. Poems and novels become workshops, as fragments of the real world are scrutinized for insights and the shape of an ideal artwork is pieced together. These writers, voracious in their appetite for any knowledge that will further their goal, find help in unlikely places. The logic of totalitarian regimes, the phenomenology of music, the pathology of addiction, and global commodity exchange furnish them with tools and models for arresting neurobiological time. Reading central works of the past two centuries in light of their shared ambition, Clune produces a revisionary understanding of some of our most important literature.
£21.99
Orion Publishing Co The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations
The incredible true story of living as a modern-day nomad.Bored, broke and struggling to survive in one of the most expensive cities on earth, Paul Carr realises that it would actually be cheaper to live in a hotel in Manhattan than in his one-bedroom London flat. Inspired by that possibility, he decides to sell most of his possessions, abandon his old life and spend a year living entirely without commitments.Thanks to Paul's highly developed blagging skills, what begins as a one-year experiment soon becomes a permanent lifestyle - a life lived in luxury hotels and mountain-top villas. A life of fast cars, Hollywood actresses and Icelandic rock stars. And, most bizarrely of all, a life that still costs less than surviving on cold pizza in London. Yet, as word of Paul's exploits starts to spread - first online, then through a newspaper column and a book deal - he finds himself forced to up the stakes in order to keep things interesting. With his behaviour spiralling to dangerous levels, he is forced to ask the question: is there such a thing as too much freedom?
£10.04
Princeton University Press Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World
The acute economic pressures of the 1980s have forced virtually all of Latin America and Africa and some countries in Asia into painful austerity programs and difficult economic reforms. Scholars have intensively analyzed the economics of this situation, but they have given much less attention to the political forces involved. In this volume a number of eminent contributors analyze the politics of adjustment in thirteen countries and nineteen governments, drawing comparisons not only across the full set of cases but also within clusters selected to clarify specific issues. Why do some governments respond promptly to signs of economic trouble, while others muddle indecisively for years? Why do some confine their response to temporary macroeconomic measures, while others adopt broader, even sweeping, programs of reform? What leads some countries to experiment with heterodox approaches, while most, however reluctantly, pursue orthodox courses? Why, confronted with intense political protest, have some governments persisted while others have altered or abandoned course? The answers to these questions are political, not economic, and they are examined here by Thomas M. Callaghy, Stephan Haggard, Miles Kahler, Robert R. Kauman, Joan M. Nelson, and Barbara Stallings.
£63.00
Thames & Hudson Ltd Monet's Trees: Paintings and Drawings by Claude Monet
'I perhaps owe it to flowers', wrote Claude Monet (1840-1926), ‘that I became a painter.’ One of the leading figures of the Impressionist movement and perhaps the most celebrated landscape painter of his age, Monet dedicated his life to capturing the subtleties of the natural world. Trees – willows enveloped in the eerie mists of the Seine, palm trees beneath the bright Mediterranean sun or poplars heavily laden with snow – became a significant motif in his work, and he used them to experiment with an extraordinary variety of tones and colours. Ralph Skea’s account is split into five main chapters, each focusing on a different theme: Monet’s earliest drawings and paintings of trees; his atmospheric use of rivers and coastlines, from the English Channel to the Italian Riviera; the fields, farmlands and orchards of France; parks and gardens in both the city and the countryside, including his series of paintings featuring trees reflected in his water-lily pond; and his muted depictions of trees in winter. The result is a succint and highly accessible exploration of some of the best-loved landscapes in art.
£14.99
The University of Chicago Press Thinking with Ngangas: What Afro-Cuban Ritual Can Tell Us about Scientific Practice and Vice Versa
A comparative investigation of Afro-Cuban ritual and Western science that aims to challenge the rationality of Western expert practices. Inspired by the exercises of Father Lafitau, an eighteenth-century Jesuit priest and protoethnographer who compared the lives of the Iroquois to those of the ancient Greeks, Stephan Palmié embarks on a series of unusual comparative investigations of Afro-Cuban ritual and Western science. What do organ transplants have to do with ngangas, a complex assemblage of mineral, animal, and vegetal materials, including human remains, that serve as the embodiment of the spirits of the dead? How do genomics and “ancestry projects” converge with divination and oracular systems? What does it mean that Black Cubans in the United States took advantage of Edisonian technology to project the disembodied voice of a mystical entity named ecué onto the streets of Philadelphia? Can we consider Afro-Cuban spirit possession as a form of historical knowledge production? By writing about Afro-Cuban ritual in relation to Western scientific practice, and vice versa, Palmié hopes to challenge the rationality of Western expert practices, revealing the logic that brings together enchantment and experiment.
£80.00
Thames & Hudson Ltd Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950
In this path-breaking new history, Maja and Reuben Fowkes introduce outstanding artworks and major figures from across central and eastern Europe to reveal the movements, theories and styles that have shaped artistic practice since 1950. They emphasize the particularly rich and varied art scenes of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia, extending their gaze at intervals to East Germany, Romania, the Baltic states and the rest of the Balkans. While politics in the region have been marked by unstable geography and dramatic transitions, artists have forged a path of persistent experiment and innovation. This generously illustrated overview explores the richness of their singular contribution to recent art history. Tracing art-historical changes from the short-lived unison of the socialist realist period to the incredible diversity of art in the post-communist era, the authors examine the repercussions of political events on artistic life – notably the uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the collapse of the communist bloc. But their primary interest is in the experimental art of the neo-avant-garde that resisted official agendas and engaged with global currents such as performance art, video, multimedia and net art.
£15.29
Silvana Vincenzo Castella: Berlin 89
"The landscape and architecture of a city like Berlin possess a great deal of under-track information. Inexplicable, yet perceptible, sometimes barely whispered." - Vincenzo Castella Vincenzo Castella went to Berlin for the first time between August and September 1989, without imagining that an epochal turning point was preparing in that city, with the imminent fall of the Wall, on 9th November 1989. The volume publishes for the first time the shots of that residency. A photographic cycle which, although presenting itself as a 'digression, an experiment with open outcomes' as explained by Frank Boehm in his text, with respect to the themes of his research at the time is fully inserted in a wider reflection on landscape, understood as a context built and modified by man, which is also the common thread of all of Castella's oeuvre. For today's readers, this is not just an unpublished visual document that, through a silent and essential revival, gives us a glimpse of how the city looked before history intervened to cut its boundaries, but also a crucial element to approach and deepen the work of one of the most appreciated masters of contemporary photography. Text in English, German and Italian.
£31.50
Arnoldsche Adrian Schiess - Bernhard Schobinger - Annelies Strba: Graber Collection
Through a decade of friendship, sharing the same environs and being active collectors, Sonja Graber and Christian Graber are inextricably connected to the photographer Annelies Strba, the jewellery and object artist Bernhard Schobinger and the painter Adrian Schiess. A far cry from thoughts of prestige and conjecture, one of the most extensive collections from all genres of the three Swiss artists has now emerged out of artistic and personal esteem. In the collectors, the artists and the Kunsthaus Zug, like-minded people have come together in the most indiscriminate appreciation of fine and applied art. To mark the occasion of the donation of the Graber collections to the museum, the three internationally renowned artists along with hitherto largely unpublished works are now united in one publication. Contents: Art is an Experiment for Us by Matthias Haldemann; Supporting the Artists: Building the Graber Collection by Marco Obrist; Things, Art ... Art Things by Felix Philipp Ingold; Undine's Song by Ildegarda Scheidegger; The Year's Production from 1981, the Start of Painting by Ulrich Loock; The Graber Collection at Kunsthaus Zug; artists' biographies. Text in English and German.
£37.80
Scheidegger und Spiess AG, Verlag Jean Otth: Works 1964-2013
Jean Otth (1940-2013) was a pioneer of video art in Switzerland. Even while studying art history and philosophy at the University of Lausanne and art at the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne in the early 1960s he began to experiment with the then very new medium, making full use of its visual potential. Right from the beginning, Otth's artistic trajectory, which still was influenced by the practice of painting, became closely tied to the emergence of new technologies. His works were soon exhibited in Switzerland as well as at major international shows, such as the 1973 Biennale São Paulo, the 1976 Venice Biennale, and the Documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977. Throughout his career he mixed immaterial video projection with material reality, exploring their interaction. While constantly questioning the media he used, Otth produced borderline works that test the observer and provoke desire through covering-up, reframing, and shifting. This new monograph, the first book ever available in English on this remarkable artist, features photographic and filmed works as well as his drawings from all periods of his career. Text in English and French.
£31.50
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon The Geopolitics of Memory – A Journey to Bosnia
In this daring experiment in ethnographic place-writing, cultural geographer James Riding aims to get at the heart of post-conflict Bosnia showing the past alongside the present it created via a series of journeys, and through the retelling of memories. The juxtaposition between the siege of Sarajevo and supersonic metal, the refugee journey and the aid-worker travelling in the other direction, the desperation and fury to change the present yet being stuck with many of the ethno-nationalist politicians and politics of the past -- it is a journey to Bosnia as it is understood today in popular discourse, a war-torn place defined by ethnic conflict, yet also a journey to deconstruct and reveal more than ancient ethnic hatreds portrayed on television screens across the globe from 1992 to 1995. Heavy with the weight of history on the one hand, and an inspirational place with radical emancipatory politics on the other, it is only through innovative storytelling that one can attempt to give a sense of what Bosnia itself is like in words for those who have never been, and -- most importantly -- for those who are from there.
£23.40
Oro Editions Concrete Approximations: In Pursuit of Absolute Space
Concrete is ubiquitous but contentious: culturally, environmentally, and often politically. Yet, the architecture it produces across fields of practices remains pertinent to the architectural discipline and its history. Having been incessantly normalised, misused and abused by different stakeholders and agendas, some of its material attributes still remain very much untapped until now. Liquid Pressure, one of concrete’s most vigorous properties, is always short-lived and can hardly be contained. Only its counterpart, known as the formwork or false-work in the building industry, is best at influencing and redirecting the course of its active forces. Concrete and formwork are both the live catalyst and dichotomy explored in this book, through which new forms of spatial organisations are once more made possible. To experiment with concrete is to actively engage with its live properties, in an irreversible dance in which the concrete reacts to the formwork’s materials. In this book, two key projects are laid bare, manifesting a shift in the work from an early preoccupation with material responsiveness, to one that additionally addresses concepts of spatiality and its relation to the proposed idea of augmented materiality.
£26.96
Royal Society of Chemistry Creative Chemists: Strategies for Teaching and Learning
Creative thinking, be it that of the teacher or the student, has tended to be overlooked in science, but exercising it is important. This book shows how it can be done in chemistry, both in the context of creative chemistry teaching and in learning chemistry. Going beyond principles and ideology, readers will find practical strategies, tools, examples, and case studies in a variety of contexts to bring creative thinking theory into practice. Beginning with a discussion on the nature of creativity, the authors’ debunk misconceptions and address the relationship between creativity and problem solving. Delving into opportunities for practising creative thinking in science, for instance, hypothesis generation and experiment design, the authors’ then move on to discussions around assessing and evaluating creative thinking. Further areas covered include: multisensory chemistry, language and literacy, practical work and story-telling. As a resource, this book points the way to fostering exploration and the development of creative thinking in chemistry for the benefit of the student, and for the benefit of the teacher in offering a source of satisfaction and achievement in the work they do. With a foreword by John Holman.
£100.09
Pearson Education Limited The Play of Flowers for Algernon
This is a powerful dramatisation of Daniel Keyes's perceptive and sad novel. Charlie is a retarded adult who desperately wants to be able to read and write. He undergoes a brain operation which increases his intelligence. Yet such an operation begs many questions - can Charlie's emotional development keep pace with the intellectual? How do the psychiatrists and psychologists view Charlie - as a man or as the subject of an experiment like the mouse, Algernon? And the biggest question of all - will the operation be successful? About the series Heinemann Plays is a well established series offering the best of contemporary drama and a wide range of established classics, in value-for-money hardback versions. The series has been specially developed to support classroom teaching and performance. Within the series there are plays for the full 11-17 age range. The series also contains the best of contemporary writing, and new editions of classic plays. Heinemann Plays are sewn and bound in sturdy hardback covers, guaranteeing longer life. Heinemann Plays are ideal for class reading and performance, many with large casts and an equal mix of parts for boys and girls.
£18.36
Viz Media, Subs. of Shogakukan Inc Devil's Candy, Vol. 2
Devil’s Candy, the popular webcomic by Rem and Bikkuri, is a hilarious action-adventure that follows Kazu Decker and his science experiment, Pandora, as they navigate high school with a ghoulish supernatural twist.At Hemlock Heart Academy, science wiz Kazu Decker shows off his skills by creating a humanoid girl named Pandora. But in a world of monsters and mayhem, surviving high school is harder than getting good grades and lessons often turn violent at Hemlock. Fortunately for them, Pandora’s stoic nature and seemingly limitless strength, paired with Kazu’s luck, knowledge and friends, get them out of trouble almost as often as it gets them mixed up in it!Kazu is having a hard time getting used to Pandora’s growing independence, but then an elite rival academy, Sacred Crown, challenges the ill-matched students of Hemlock Heart to a violent game of Eggscram. Pandora’s unlimited strength soon gets recognized by a society of sinister daemons beyond the schoolyard, and now it’s not just Kazu who wants Pandora’s attention! Is Pandora prepared to take the step from schoolyard skirmishes into the wrath of the daemon world?
£12.59
Chelsea Green Publishing Co Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything
Lessons from the groundbreaking grassroots campaign that helped launch a new political revolution Rules for Revolutionaries is a bold challenge to the political establishment and the “rules” that govern campaign strategy. It tells the story of a breakthrough experiment conducted on the fringes of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign: A technology-driven team empowered volunteers to build and manage the infrastructure to make seventy-five million calls, launch eight million text messages, and hold more than one-hundred thousand public meetings—in an effort to put Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign over the top. Bond and Exley, digital iconoclasts who have been reshaping the way politics is practiced in America for two decades, have identified twenty-two rules of “Big Organizing” that can be used to drive social change movements of any kind. And they tell the inside story of one of the most amazing grassroots political campaigns ever run. Fast-paced, provocative, and profound, Rules for Revolutionaries stands as a liberating challenge to the low expectations and small thinking that dominates too many advocacy, non-profit, and campaigning organizations—and points the way forward to a future where political revolution is truly possible.
£13.49
Duke University Press The City Electric: Infrastructure and Ingenuity in Postsocialist Tanzania
Over the last twenty years of neoliberal reform, the power supply in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s metropolis, has become less reliable even as its importance has increased. Though mobile phones, televisions, and refrigerators have flooded the city, the electricity required to run these devices is still supplied by the socialist-era energy company Tanesco, which is characterized by increased fees, aging infrastructure, and a sluggish bureaucracy. While some residents contemplate off-grid solutions, others repair, extend, or tap into the state network with the assistance of freelance electricians or moonlighting utility employees. In The City Electric Michael Degani explores how electricity and its piracy has become a key site for urban Tanzanians to enact, experience, and debate their social contract with the state. Moving from the politics of generation contracts down to the street-level experience of blackouts and disconnection patrols, he reveals the logics of infrastructural modification and their effects on everyday life. As politicians, residents, electricians, and utility inspectors all redistribute flows of payment and power, they reframe the energy grid both as a technical system and as an ongoing experiment in collective interdependence.
£20.99
University of California Press Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile
Chile is widely known as the first experiment in neoliberalism in Latin America, carried out and made possible through state violence. Since the beginning of the transition in 1990, the state has pursued a national project of reconciliation construed as debts owed to the population. The state owed a "social debt" to the poor accrued through inequalities generated by economic liberalization, while society owed a "moral debt" to the victims of human rights violations. "Life in Debt" invites us into lives and world of a poor urban neighborhood in Santiago. Tracing relations and lives between 1999 and 2010, Clara Han explores how the moral and political subjects imagined and asserted by poverty and mental health policies and reparations for human rights violations are refracted through relational modes and their boundaries. Attending to intimate scenes and neighborhood life, Han reveals the force of relations in the making of selves in a world in which unstable work patterns, illness, and pervasive economic indebtedness are aspects of everyday life. Lucidly written, "Life in Debt" provides a unique meditation on both the past inhabiting actual life conditions but also on the difficulties of obligation and achievements of responsiveness.
£27.00
Wymer Publishing Paul McCartney: All The Songs
As humanly possible, this book attempts to evaluate every track that Paul McCartney has released on a major label. Thus, the premise of this book: to sift the gems from the chaff and examine what's driven McCartney up and down for fifty years. There are plenty of tracks suitable for casual fans, adolescents, even pre-schoolers. But there are tracks for an older audience too, tracks so good they can supply grown-ups with a rewarding soundtrack for a lifetime. It's these that make for a playlist worth keeping. From 1970 and beyond, the songwriting McCartney seemed to be saddled with a rickety who-cares system that generated iffy results. Gone were ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Penny Lane’. Instead, came the thought-free ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and ‘Bip Bop’, songs The Beatles wouldn't have considered for a second. Troubles swarmed around him as he searched for his place. The Beatles had theirs - where was his? Was he overly obsessed with perfection? Maybe. Or was it insecurity? His next record couldn't be a forward-thinking experiment, with sales falling wherever they may. It had to - had to - be a chart topper adored all over the world.
£39.99
WW Norton & Co The Founders at Home: The Building of America, 1735-1817
Through the Founders’ own voices—and in the homes they designed and built to embody the ideal of domestic happiness they fought to achieve—we come to understand why the American Revolution, of all great revolutions, was the only enduring success. The Founders were vivid, energetic men, with sophisticated worldviews, and this magnificent reckoning of their successes draws liberally from their own eloquent writings on their actions and well-considered intentions. Richly illustrated with America’s historical and architectural treasures, this volume also considers the houses the Founders built with such care and money to reflect their vision for the fledgling nation. That so many great thinkers—Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, John Jay, the Lees of Stratford Hall, and polemicist William Livingston—came together to accomplish what rightly seemed to them almost a miracle is a standing historical mystery, best understood by pondering the men themselves and their profound and world-changing ideas. Through impressive research and an intimate understanding of these iconic patriots, award-winning author Myron Magnet offers fresh insight into why the American experiment resulted in over two centuries of unexampled freedom and prosperity.
£27.99
The University of Chicago Press Henry David Thoreau: A Life
“Walden. Yesterday I came here to live.” That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to “live deliberately” in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854. But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond. A member of the vibrant intellectual circle centered on his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was also an ardent naturalist, a manual laborer and inventor, a radical political activist, and more. Many books have taken up various aspects of Thoreau’s character and achievements, but, as Laura Dassow Walls writes, “Thoreau has never been captured between covers; he was too quixotic, mischievous, many-sided.” Two hundred years after his birth, and two generations after the last full-scale biography, Walls restores Henry David Thoreau to us in all his profound, inspiring complexity. Walls traces the full arc of Thoreau’s life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and “America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next.” By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated? Drawing on Thoreau’s copious writings, published and unpublished, Walls presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him. “The Thoreau I sought was not in any book, so I wrote this one,” says Walls. The result is a Thoreau unlike any seen since he walked the streets of Concord, a Thoreau for our time and all time.
£19.00
Archaeopress Iron Age Hillfort Defences and the Tactics of Sling Warfare
Was the purpose of an Iron Age hillfort to defend people and resources or was it there to show the power of the community and its leaders? Was the Middle Iron Age trend to large complex ‘defences’ a response to developing tactics of assault or did the huge amounts of construction work serve the purpose of building community identity through shared labour? The name ‘hillfort’ implies a defensive purpose, but in recent decades alternative interpretations have gained favour, based on analyses suggesting that hillforts are poorly suited to military purposes and on views of Iron Age society that emphasise the importance of boundaries, symbolic display and communitybuilding. Excavations of hillfort interiors reveal they were sites for many activities; large caches of stones suggest that sling warfare was one. This book reports an investigation of these issues. Sling accuracy at a hillfort was measured for the first time, in a controlled experiment comparing attack and defence across single and developed ramparts. Tactical scenarios modelled from the results showed that hillfort development gave defenders increased advantage. These results support defence as the explanation for the features of the enclosing works of hillforts. Full details of the method and analyses are included.
£51.21
Page Two Books, Inc. Be More Wrong: How Failure Makes You an Outstanding Leader
The surest path to success is to fail. What if you could build a workplace culture that was less like a classroom, and more like a playground: a place filled with opportunities to take risks and test boundaries, with soft ground on which to fall? A place where you and your team are free to make mistakes, and get things wrong--a place where it's okay to fail? In Be More Wrong, noted leadership coach Colin Hunter shows you why, in the age of disruption, it's never been more important to fail early, fail often, and fail forward. Through his Pi2 Leadership Impact Model, he shows you how to create systems and build habits that will help you lead with greater confidence, conviction, and connection. You'll learn how to recognize different leadership styles, and what transforms a good leader into an outstanding one. As you leave your ego and expertise at the door and embark on a journey to observe human behaviour, ideate new ideas, and experiment, you'll begin to build a playground for yourself and your team. However unlikely a leader you feel yourself to be, you can get it right--by being more wrong.
£20.99
Skyhorse Publishing Saint Peter's Snow: A Novel
It could have been a common street accident that put Dr. Georg Amberg in the hospital, but for the five weeks his doctors say he has been in a coma, recovering from a brain hemorrhage after being run down by a car, he has memories of a more disturbing nature. What of the violent events in the rural village of Morwede? The old woman threatening the priest with a breadknife, angry peasants with flails and cudgels, Baron von Malchin with a pistol defending his dreams for the Holy Roman Empire--how could Dr. Amberg ignore these? And what of the secret experiment to make a mind-altering drug from a white mildew occurring on wheat--a mildew called Saint Peter's Snow. In this feverish tale of a man caught in the balance between two realities, Leo Pertuz offers a mystery of identity and a fable of faith and political fervor, banned by the Nazis when it was first published in 1933. Saint Peter's Snow is typical of Perutz's storytelling mastery: extraordinarily rich and elegant fiction that is taut with suspense, full of Old World irony and humor.
£12.02
Tilbury House,U.S. I Begin with Spring: The Life and Seasons of Henry David Thoreau
I Begin with Spring weaves natural history around Thoreau’s life and times in a richly illustrated field notebook format that can be opened anywhere and invites browsing on every page. Beginning each season with quotes from Thoreau’s schoolboy essay about the changing seasons, Early Bloomer follows him through the fields and woods of Concord, the joys and challenges of growing up, his experiment with simple living on Walden Pond, and his participation in the abolition movement, self-reliance, science, and literature. The book’s two organizing themes—the chronology of Thoreau’s life and the seasonal cycle beginning with spring—interact seamlessly on every spread, suggesting the correspondence of human seasons with nature’s. Thoreau’s annual records of blooms, bird migrations, and other natural events scroll in a timeline across the page bottoms, and the backmatter includes a summary of how those dates have changed from his day to ours and what that tells us about the science of phenology and climate change. Megan Baratta’s watercolors are augmented with historical images and reproductions of Thoreau’s own sketches to create a high-interest visual experience. The book includes a foreword from Thoreau scholar Jeffrey Cramer, Curator of Collections for the Walden Woods Project.
£16.63
HarperCollins Publishers Inc From Seed to Pumpkin: A Fall Book for Kids
In the fall, pumpkins are everywhere: in the garden, in the supermarkets, and on doorsteps. But do you know how they grow from a tiny yellow seed to a pumpkin? In this classic Level 1 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out picture book, Wendy Pfeffer's lively text combines with James Graham Hale's beautiful watercolors to bring readers into the pumpkin patch to show them how little seeds transform into big pumpkins. Now rebranded with a new cover look, this book includes a find out more section with activities such as an experiment to show how plants use roots to drink water from the ground and a recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds. Both text and artwork were vetted for accuracy by Barbara J. Bromley, Mercer County Horticulturist. This is a Level 1 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out, which means the book explores introductory concepts perfect for children in the primary grades and supports the Common Core Learning Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. Let's-Read-and-Find-Out is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.
£8.58
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd First Raise a Flag: How South Sudan Won the Longest War but Lost the Peace
When South Sudan's war began, the Beatles were playing their first hits and reaching the moon was an astronaut's dream. Half a century later, with millions massacred in Africa's longest war, the continent's biggest country split in two. It was an extraordinary, unprecedented experiment. Many have fought, but South Sudan did the impossible, and won. This is the story of an epic fight for freedom. It is also the story of a nightmare. First Raise a Flag details one of the most dramatic failures in the history of international state-building. Three years after independence, South Sudan was lowest ranked in the list of failed states. War returned, worse than ever. Peter Martell has spent over a decade reporting from palaces and battlefields, meeting those who made a country like no other: warlords and spies, missionaries and mercenaries, guerrillas and gunrunners, freedom fighters and war crime fugitives, Hollywood stars and ex-slaves. Under his seasoned foreign correspondent's gaze, he weaves with passion and colour the lively history of the world's newest country. First Raise a Flag is a moving reflection on the meaning of nationalism, the power of hope and the endurance of the human spirit.
£27.50
Taylor & Francis Ltd A Guide to Coursework in Psychology
Ever had difficulty choosing a research project?Ever wondered how your work will be marked?This book will help students to understand the coursework specifications and marking criteria for a number of key exam boards, including; AQA (specification A and B), OCR, EDEXCEL and SQA. It provides specific and highly relevant advice on how to maximise achievement in coursework. Guidance is offered on how best to choose a research project, through to practical advice on how to carry out research and write up reports. Topics to be avoided are also considered and advice on how to navigate the difficulties and avoid common pitfalls provided.Key issues covered include:* An overview of the main methods of investigation in psychology* Data analysis, including how to present data in Word and Excel and how best to comment on it* How to draw conclusions from data and create inferential statistics.Incorporating a series of examples, including an investigation from start to finish, and a laboratory experiment, this book provides clear, hands-on advice. It will be an invaluable tool for GCSE, AS and A2 students, helping them to maintain their motivation through coursework assignments and to achieve their potential.
£36.99
Emerald Publishing Limited Sex and Social Media
Sex on and with social media is often construed as deviant, risky, or something only teenagers do because they don’t know better. Yet, academic scholarship has shown that sex on/with social media can allow people to create and playfully experiment with their identities; build meaningful relationships; accept themselves or build communities. This book brings the multiplicity and richness of sexual practices on, with, and around social media to a curious, intelligent lay reader, and highlights the discrepancy between the media headlines (people fearing it) and what popular Google searches show (people wanting it). The authors describe how social media has changed and shaped sex; address the common misconceptions about socially mediated sex; explain the spaces where social media sex happens, and the practices that count as social media sex. Chapters examine the main misconceptions and anxieties pertaining to socially mediated sex; explore how sexual social media practices are part of our identity; look at it as a communal/ group phenomenon; and analyse social media platforms as the intermediaries and infrastructures shaping and constraining sex. It offers an academically informed, critical but accessible discussion on sex and sexuality on and with social media.
£17.99
Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc Candle Magic: An Enchanting Spell Book of Candles and Rituals
Harness the power of light with this collection of rituals and spells for seasoned witches, curious mystics, and new practitioners alike. Light is everywhere, but like fire, the natural power that a candle holds within its flame can be life altering. Whether you are already familiar with other spiritual magics, or are tapping into the Universe with Candle Magic as your first practice, invite the power of light to bring joy, passion, comfort, and energy to your daily life. With this invaluable handbook, learn how candles of all shapes, sizes, and colors conduct the magic and energies of light. Experiment with the different results as you add candles to your altar, with beautiful illustrations to guide you toward the enchanting flame. Organized by color magic, number magic, crystal magic, and herbal magic, the spells include: Lunar Empowerment Spell Attract Success 1010: A Spiritual Awakening Is Coming Banish Negative Energies Comfort from Stress Manifesting Your Dreams Purify Your Home And many more If you’re seeking to add a spark to your magical practice, do so now by setting intentions and manifesting your desires with candle magic.
£13.49
Rising Stars UK Ltd Reading Planet - Project Time - Level 7: Fiction (Saturn)
Eva has signed up for loads of after school activities. She wants to be brilliant at all of them, but the pressure of keeping on top of practising, training and reading for everything is a huge challenge. If only she could time travel, she'd easily be able to fit everything in ...The aromatock should be the answer to Eva's problems. One sniff and this invention transports her back in time so she can squeeze in extra rehearsals and training sessions. But the more she uses it, the more Eva finds herself in danger of meeting herself in all these other time frames. Will coming face to face with a devastating event from her childhood bring the whole experiment to a terrible end? Project Time is part of the Reading Planet range of books for Stars (Lime) to Supernova (Red+) band. Children aged 7-11 will be inspired to love reading through the gripping stories and fascinating information books created by top authors. Reading Planet books have been carefully levelled to support children in becoming fluent and confident readers. Each book features useful notes and questions to support reading at home and develop comprehension skills.Reading age: 10-11 years
£10.16
University of Texas Press William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll
William S. Burroughs's fiction and essays are legendary, but his influence on music's counterculture has been less well documented—until now. Examining how one of America's most controversial literary figures altered the destinies of many notable and varied musicians, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll reveals the transformations in music history that can be traced to Burroughs. A heroin addict and a gay man, Burroughs rose to notoriety outside the conventional literary world; his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, was banned on the grounds of obscenity, but its nonlinear structure was just as daring as its content. Casey Rae brings to life Burroughs's parallel rise to fame among daring musicians of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, when it became a rite of passage to hang out with the author or to experiment with his cut-up techniques for producing revolutionary lyrics (as the Beatles and Radiohead did). Whether they tell of him exploring the occult with David Bowie, providing Lou Reed with gritty depictions of street life, or counseling Patti Smith about coping with fame, the stories of Burroughs's backstage impact will transform the way you see America's cultural revolution—and the way you hear its music.
£14.99
Union Square & Co. Up and Away!: How Two Brothers Invented the Hot Air Balloon
“It will . . . sweep readers away.” —Kirkus Reviews “Henry’s lush, digital artwork depicts the splendors of eighteenth-century France . . . a good addition to units on aviation and inventors.” —BooklistMore than a century before the Wright Brothers invented their plane, Josephand Étienne Montgolfier sent a flying machine into the skies—a hot-air balloon with three animals in the basket. Go up, up, and away with them on their first, magical journey! Back in 1782, in Ardèche, France, lived Joseph Montgolfier, a dreamer and an inventor who liked to learn about how everything worked. When one day a gust of wind blew his papers into the fireplace, he noticed that something lifted the pieces into the air—and he realized that heat could make things rise. With the help of his brother, Étienne, he began to experiment . . . and created a new kind of flying machine: a hot-air balloon! This beautifully illustrated picture book tells the story of how the balloon came to be, King Louis XVI’s visit to see it fly, and the three animals—a rooster, a duck, and a sheep—who became its very first passengers.
£12.99
O'Reilly Media SVG Essentials 2e
Learn the essentials of Scalable Vector Graphics, the mark-up language used by most vector drawing programs and interactive web graphics tools. SVG Essentials takes you through SVG's capabilities, beginning with simple line drawings and moving through complicated features such as filters, transformations, gradients, and patterns. This thoroughly updated edition includes expanded coverage of animation, interactive graphics, and scripting SVG. Interactive examples online make it easy for you to experiment with SVG features in your web browser. Geared toward experienced designers, this book also includes appendices that explain basic concepts such as XML markup and CSS styling, so even if you have no web design experience, you can start learning SVG.Create and style graphics to match your web design in a way that looks great when printed or displayed on high-resolution screens Make your charts and decorative headings accessible to search engines and assistive technologies Add artistic effects to your graphics, text, and photographs using SVG masks, filters, and transformations Animate graphics with SVG markup, or add interactivity with CSS and JavaScript Create SVG from existing vector data or XML data, using programming languages and XSLT
£28.79
Duke University Press The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal
In his writing, Gilles Deleuze drew on a vast array of source material, from philosophy and psychoanalysis to science and art. Yet scholars have largely neglected one of the intellectual currents underlying his work: Western esotericism, specifically the lineage of hermetic thought that extends from Late Antiquity into the Renaissance through the work of figures such as Iamblichus, Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Giordano Bruno. In this book, Joshua Ramey examines the extent to which Deleuze's ethics, metaphysics, and politics were informed by, and can only be fully understood through, this hermetic tradition.Identifying key hermetic moments in Deleuze's thought, including his theories of art, subjectivity, and immanence, Ramey argues that the philosopher's work represents a kind of contemporary hermeticism, a consistent experiment in unifying thought and affect, percept and concept, and mind and nature in order to engender new relations between knowledge, power, and desire. By uncovering and clarifying the hermetic strand in Deleuze's work, Ramey offers both a new interpretation of Deleuze, particularly his insistence that the development of thought demands a spiritual ordeal, and a framework for retrieving the pre-Kantian paradigm of philosophy as spiritual practice.
£80.10
University of Minnesota Press All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy
All Thoughts Are Equal is both an introduction to the work of French philosopher François Laruelle and an exercise in nonhuman thinking. For Laruelle, standard forms of philosophy continue to dominate our models of what counts as exemplary thought and knowledge. By contrast, what Laruelle calls his “non-standard” approach attempts to bring democracy into thought, because all forms of thinking—including the nonhuman—are equal.John Ó Maoilearca examines how philosophy might appear when viewed with non-philosophical and nonhuman eyes. He does so by refusing to explain Laruelle through orthodox philosophy, opting instead to follow the structure of a film (Lars von Trier’s documentary The Five Obstructions) as an example of the non-standard method. Von Trier’s film is a meditation on the creative limits set by film, both technologically and aesthetically, and how these limits can push our experience of film—and of ourselves—beyond what is normally deemed “the perfect human.”All Thoughts Are Equal adopts film’s constraints in its own experiment by showing how Laruelle’s radically new style of philosophy is best presented through our most nonhuman form of thought—that found in cinema.
£78.30
Pluto Press The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon
‘Work hard, have fun, make history’ proclaims the slogan on the walls of Amazon’s warehouses. This cheerful message hides a reality of digital surveillance, aggressive anti-union tactics and disciplinary layoffs. Reminiscent of the tumult of early industrial capitalism, the hundreds of thousands of workers who help Amazon fulfil consumers’ desire are part of an experiment in changing the way we all work. In this book, Alessandro Delfanti takes readers inside Amazon’s warehouses to show how technological advancements and managerial techniques subdue the workers rather than empower them, as seen in the sensors that track workers’ every movement around the floor and algorithmic systems that re-route orders to circumvent worker sabotage. He looks at new technologies including robotic arms trained by humans and augmented reality goggles, showing that their aim is to standardise, measure and discipline human work rather than replace it. Despite its innovation, Amazon will always need living labour’s flexibility and low cost. And as the warehouse is increasingly automated, worker discontent increases. Striking under the banner ‘we are not robots’, employees have shown that they are acutely aware of such contradictions. The only question remains: how long will it be until Amazon’s empire collapses?
£76.50
Harvard University, Asia Center The Money Doctors from Japan: Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the Yen Bloc, 1895–1937
Money and finance have been among the most potent tools of colonial power. This study investigates the Japanese experiment with financial imperialism—or “yen diplomacy”—at several key moments between the acquisition of Taiwan in 1895 and the outbreak of the Sino–Japanese War in 1937. Through authoritarian monetary reforms and lending schemes, government officials and financial middlemen served as “money doctors” who steered capital and expertise to Japanese official and semi-official colonies in Taiwan, Korea, China, and Manchuria.Michael Schiltz points to the paradox of acute capital shortages within the Japan’s domestic economy and aggressive capital exports to its colonial possessions as the inevitable but ultimately disastrous outcome of the Japanese government’s goal to exercise macroeconomic control over greater East Asia and establish a self-sufficient “yen bloc.” Through their efforts to implement their policies and contribute to the expansion of the Japanese empire, the “money doctors” brought to the colonies a series of banking institutions and a corollary capitalist ethos, which would all have a formidable impact on the development of the receiving countries, eventually affecting their geopolitical position in the postcolonial world.
£30.56
University of California Press Stalin's Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland: An Illustrated History, 1928–1996
Robert Weinberg and Bradley Berman's carefully documented and extensively illustrated book explores the Soviet government's failed experiment to create a socialist Jewish homeland. In 1934 an area popularly known as Birobidzhan, a sparsely populated region along the Sino-Soviet border some five thousand miles east of Moscow, was designated the national homeland of Soviet Jewry. Establishing the Jewish Autonomous Region was part of the Kremlin's plan to create an enclave where secular Jewish culture rooted in Yiddish and socialism could serve as an alternative to Palestine. The Kremlin also considered the region a solution to various perceived problems besetting Soviet Jews. Birobidzhan still exists today, but despite its continued official status Jews are a small minority of the inhabitants of the region. Drawing upon documents from archives in Moscow and Birobidzhan, as well as photograph collections never seen outside Birobidzhan, Weinberg's story of the Soviet Zion sheds new light on a host of important historical and contemporary issues regarding Jewish identity, community, and culture. Given the persistence of the 'Jewish question' in Russia, the history of Birobidzhan provides an unusual point of entry into examining the fate of Soviet Jewry under communist rule.
£26.10
University of Illinois Press Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America
Winner of the American Historical Association’s 2022 Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize. White publishers and editors used their newspapers to build, nurture, and protect white supremacy across the South in the decades after the Civil War. At the same time, a vibrant Black press fought to disrupt these efforts and force the United States to live up to its democratic ideals. Journalism and Jim Crow centers the press as a crucial political actor shaping the rise of the Jim Crow South. The contributors explore the leading role of the white press in constructing an anti-democratic society by promoting and supporting not only lynching and convict labor but also coordinated campaigns of violence and fraud that disenfranchised Black voters. They also examine the Black press’s parallel fight for a multiracial democracy of equality, justice, and opportunity for all—a losing battle with tragic consequences for the American experiment. Original and revelatory, Journalism and Jim Crow opens up new ways of thinking about the complicated relationship between journalism and power in American democracy. Contributors: Sid Bedingfield, Bryan Bowman, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kathy Roberts Forde, Robert Greene II, Kristin L. Gustafson, D'Weston Haywood, Blair LM Kelley, and Razvan Sibii
£92.70
The University of Chicago Press Science in the Age of Computer Simulation
Computer simulation was first pioneered as a scientific tool in meteorology and nuclear physics in the period following World War II, but it has grown rapidly to become indispensable in a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including astrophysics, high-energy physics, climate science, engineering, ecology, and economics. Digital computer simulation helps study phenomena of great complexity, but how much do we know about the limits and possibilities of this new scientific practice? How do simulations compare to traditional experiments? And are they reliable? Eric Winsberg seeks to answer these questions in "Science in the Age of Computer Simulation". Scrutinizing these issues with a philosophical lens, Winsberg explores the impact of simulation on such issues as the nature of scientific evidence; the role of values in science; the nature and role of fictions in science; and the relationship between simulation and experiment, theories and data, and theories at different levels of description. "Science in the Age of Computer Simulation" will transform many of the core issues in philosophy of science, as well as our basic understanding of the role of the digital computer in the sciences.
£28.78
The University of Chicago Press Bound by Creativity: How Contemporary Art Is Created and Judged
What is creativity? While our traditional view of creative work might lead us to think of artists as solitary visionaries, the creative process is profoundly influenced by social interactions even when artists work alone. Sociologist Hannah Wohl draws on more than one hundred interviews and two years of ethnographic research in the New York contemporary art market to develop a rich sociological perspective of creativity. From inside the studio, we see how artists experiment with new ideas and decide which works to abandon, destroy, put into storage, or exhibit. Wohl then transports readers into the art world, where we discover how artists’ understandings of their work are shaped through interactions in studio visits, galleries, international art fairs, and collectors’ homes. Bound by Creativity reveals how artists develop conceptions of their distinctive creative visions through experimentation and social interactions. Ultimately, we come to appreciate how judgment is integral to the creative process, both resulting in the creation of original works while also limiting an artist’s ability to break new ground. Exploring creativity through the lens of judgment sheds new light on the production of cultural objects, markets, and prestige.
£78.00
The University of Chicago Press Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration
Nearly every job application asks it: have you ever been convicted of a crime? For the hundreds of thousands of young men leaving American prisons each year, their answer to that question may determine whether they can find work and begin rebuilding their lives. The product of an innovative field experiment, Marked gives us our first real glimpse into the tremendous difficulties facing ex-offenders in the job market. Devah Pager matched up pairs of young men, randomly assigned them criminal records, then sent them on hundreds of real job searches throughout the city of Milwaukee. Her applicants were attractive, articulate, and capable - yet ex-offenders received less than half the callbacks of the equally qualified applicants without criminal backgrounds. Young black men, meanwhile, paid a particularly high price: those with clean records fared no better in their job searches than white men just out of prison. Such shocking barriers to legitimate work, Pager contends, are an important reason that many ex-prisoners soon find themselves back in the realm of poverty, underground employment, and crime that led them to prison in the first place.
£44.00
The University of Chicago Press Green Victorians: The Simple Life in John Ruskin's Lake District
From Henry David Thoreau to Bill McKibben, critics and philosophers have long sought to demonstrate how a sufficient life—one without constant, environmentally damaging growth—might still be rich and satisfying. Yet one crucial episode in the history of sufficiency has been largely forgotten. Green Victorians tells the story of a circle of men and women in the English Lake District who attempted to create a new kind of economy, turning their backs on Victorian consumer society in order to live a life dependent not on material abundance and social prestige but on artful simplicity and the bonds of community. At the center of their social experiment was the charismatic art critic and political economist John Ruskin. Albritton and Albritton Jonsson show how Ruskin’s followers turned his theory into practice in a series of ambitious local projects ranging from hand spinning and woodworking to gardening, archaeology, and pedagogy. This is a lively yet unsettling story, for there was a dark side to Ruskin’s community as well—racist thinking, paternalism, and technophobia. Richly illustrated, Green Victorians breaks new ground, connecting the ideas and practices of Ruskin’s utopian community with the problems of ethical consumption then and now.
£35.12