Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles - Hardcover

Elborough, Travis

 
9781408712849: Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1408712849 ISBN 13: 9781408712849
Verlag: Little, Brown, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

A personal and insightful look at the extraordinary life and times of eyewear from the Ancient Greeks to Google Glass by the author of The Bus We Loved and A Walk in the Park.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Acclaimed by the Guardian as 'one of the country's finest pop culture historians', Travis Elborough has been a freelance writer, author, broadcaster and cultural commentator for nearly two decades. Elborough's books include Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, a hymn to vinyl records that inspired the BBC4 documentary When Albums Ruled the World, in which he also appeared, and A Walk in the Park, a loving exploration of public parks and green space. Elborough regularly appears on Radio 4 and recently wrote and presented the five-part series, The Rise and Fall of the Antique, and is a frequent contributor to the Guardian and Observer, among other newspapers and magazines.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

'A cultural historian with a touch of the Betjemans and a lick of the Meades about him' Monocle magazine

'A fascinating, informative, revelatory book' William Boyd, Guardian on A Walk in the Park

'Travis Elborough is becoming a latter-day Alan Bennett. Let loose in an array of reference libraries, he summons many a curious fact ... from the shelves, which makes for a rich narrative ... Alluring detail fills every page' Christopher Hawtree, Spectator on A Walk in the Park

Aus dem Klappentext

The humble pair of glasses might just be one the world's greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that might otherwise appear a blur. And yet how much do many of us even really think about these things perched on the ends of our noses? Travis Elborough traces the fascinating true story of spectacles: from their inception as primitive visual aids to monkish scribes right through to today's designer eyewear.

Peering into early theories about how the eye worked, he considers the theological and philosophical arguments about the limits of perception by Greek thinkers, Roman statesmen and Arab scholars. There are encounters with ingenious medieval Italian glassmakers, myopic Renaissance rulers and spectacle-makers and opticians, brilliant, mad, bad and dangerous to know, in the Londons of Samuel Pepys, Dr Johnson and Sherlock Holmes.
We learn how glasses were the making of the rock' n' roller Buddy Holly, helped liberate an exasperated John Lennon from Beatlemania and added to Michael Caine's sexual allure . We see women in glasses through the lenses of crime fiction by Dorothy L Sayers and Raymond Chandler and the full-screen figure of Marilyn Monroe.

Through the Looking Glasses is about vision and the need for humanity to see clearly, and where the impulse to improve our eyesight has led us. The society of the spectacle may finally be upon us . . . but how much of it do we really see?

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Verlag
Little, Brown
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1408712849
ISBN 13 
9781408712849
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Giunti Editore
n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com

Via Bruno Buozzi, 24/26,
Granarolo dell'Emilia BO,
40057
Italien

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