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Questionnaire

By Dr Evan Kindley
Series: Object Lessons
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3.67 goodreads logo

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Check link for latest rating. ( 36 ratings, 7 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Questionnaire by Dr Evan Kindley explores the pervasive presence and history of questionnaires, tracing their evolution from Victorian confession albums to modern BuzzFeed quizzes. The book reveals how these forms intersect with literature, science, psychology, business, journalism, and surveillance, uncovering the deeper cultural implications behind the questions we answer.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$2199
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in cultural studies, social history, psychology, and contemporary digital life, particularly those curious about the hidden impact of everyday objects and forms like questionnaires.

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A history of the questionnaire from its inception in the late 19th century to its current online renaissance, surveying a wide range of fields and forms in order to ask questions about the questions we ask ourselves.

A history of the questionnaire from its inception in the late 19th century to its current online renaissance, surveying a wide range of fields and forms in order to ask questions about the questions we ask ourselves.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Questionnaires are everywhere: we fill them out at doctors’ offices and at job interviews, to express ourselves and to advance knowledge, to find love and to kill time. But where did they come from, and why have they proliferated? Evan Kindley’s Questionnaire investigates the history of "the form as form," from the Victorian confession album to the BuzzFeed quiz. By asking questions about the questions we ask ourselves, Kindley uncovers surprising connections between literature and science, psychology and business, and journalism and surveillance.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Series: Object Lessons

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  • Bicycle
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle promises to transform our lives and the world we live in, yet its time seems always yet-to-come or long-gone-by. Bicycle by...
    By Dr Jonathan Maskit
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  • Rust
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. It’s happening all the time, all around us. We cover it up. We ignore it. Rust takes on the many meanings of this oxidised substance, showing how technology bleeds into biology and ecology. Jean-Michel Rabaté combines art, science, and autobiography to share his...
    By Professor Jean-Michel Rabaté
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  • Bookshelf
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Every shelf is different, and every bookshelf tells a different story. One bookshelf can creak with character in a bohemian coffee shop, while another can groan with gravitas in the Library of Congress. Bookshelf by writer and historian Lydia Pyne explores these differences...
    By Lydia Pyne
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  • Burger
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The burger, long the All-American meal, is undergoing an identity crisis. From its shifting place in popular culture to efforts by investors such as Bill Gates to create the non-animal burger that can feed the world, the burger’s identity has become as malleable...
    By Carol J. Adams
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  • Cigarette Lighter
    Object 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...
    By Jack Pendarvis
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  • Earth
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. In Earth, a planetary scientist and a literary humanist explore what happens when we think of the Earth as an object viewable from space. As a “blue marble,” “a blue pale dot,” or, as Chaucer described it, “this litel spot of erthe,” the...
    By Professor Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Profsesor Linda T. Elkins-Tanton
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  • Egg
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This book is about a strange object—strange in part because it is something that we all have been, and that many of us eat. Nicole Walker's Egg relishes in sharp juxtapositions of seemingly fanciful or repellent topics, so that reproductive science and gustatory...
    By Dr. Nicole Walker
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  • Eye Chart
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Desert nomads tested their vision by distinguishing a pair of stars. But we have since created more disquieting ways to test the strength of the eyes. Reading the eye chart is an exercise in failure, since it only gets interesting when you cannot...
    By Professor William Germano
    Paperback
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  • High Heel
    Best Fifteen Books of March 2019, Refinery29Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, Paste Magazine Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Fetishized, demonized, celebrated, and outlawed, the high heel is central to the iconography of modern womanhood. But are high heels good? Are they feminist? What does it mean for a...
    By Summer Brennan
    Paperback
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  • Hood
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. We all wear hoods: the Grim Reaper, Red Riding Hood, torturers, executioners and the executed, athletes, labourers, anarchists, rappers, babies in onesies, and anyone who’s ever grabbed a hoodie on a chilly day. Alison Kinney’s Hood explores the material and symbolic vibrancy of...
    By Alison Kinney
    Paperback
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  • Jet Lag
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Jet lag is a momentary condition resulting from the human body and its inner clock being pitched against the time-leaping effects of modern aviation. But more than that, it is a situation that explains time, technology, and the human body. Jet lag epitomises...
    By Dr. Christopher J. Lee
    Paperback
    $2199
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  • Mushroom
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. They are the things we step on without noticing and the largest organisms on Earth. They are symbols of inexplicable growth and excruciating misery. They are grouped with plants, but they behave more like animals. In their inscrutability, mushrooms are wondrous organisms. The...
    By Dr. Sara Rich
    Paperback
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

A compelling and insightful investigation, praised for its playful intelligence and unexpected connections across fields. Hua Hsu calls it a 'marvellous book' uncovering the secret history of oversharing, while Luc Sante highlights its brisk and alarming relevance to today’s digital culture. It is recognised as a rich primer on humanity’s enduring engagement with questionnaires.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781501314773

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 28 July 2016

Country: United States

Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 16.0mm

Width: 118.0mm

Height: 164.0mm

Weight: 160g

Pages: 168

Collections

Arts & Culture Biography & Memoir Dr Evan Kindley Non-Fiction Series: Object Lessons

About the Author

Evan Kindley is Senior Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and Visiting Instructor in the Literature Department at Claremont McKenna College, USA. He has published essays and reviews in n+1, the London Review of Books, Dissent, Bookforum, the New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times.

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