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Earth
Series: Object Lessons
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Earth
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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?
A literary scholar and a planetary scientist look at the Earth as object, viewed from the outside, and as a singular orb that is a challenge to scale and human self-importance.
A literary scholar and a planetary scientist look at the Earth as object, viewed from the outside, and as a singular orb that is a challenge to scale and human self-importance.
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.
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 solitary orb is a challenge to scale and to human self-importance.
Beautiful and self-contained, the Earth turns out to be far less knowable than it at first appears: its vast interior is an inferno of incandescent and yet solid rock and a reservoir of water vaster than the ocean, a world within the world.
Viewing the Earth from space invites a dive into the abyss of scale: how can humans apprehend the distances, the temperatures, and the time scale on which planets are born, evolve, and die?
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...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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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...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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...Paperback$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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...Paperback$2099Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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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...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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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...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
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?
The book Earth by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton is praised for its blend of diverse ideas reflecting on Earth's geological history and human understanding, presented in an almost alchemical manner. It is described as a magical and unusual work, exploring themes of beauty, creativity, and imagination, which broaden the subject matter beyond mere scientific discourse. The collaboration between the authors, from vastly different disciplines, offers a unique and inspirational narrative, highlighting the intriguing humanistic aspect of science. Reviewers appreciate its conversational tone, innovative approach, and the richness derived from combining their distinct perspectives.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781501317910
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 09 March 2017
Country: United States
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic USA
Illustration: 12 b/w illustrations
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 12.0mm
Width: 122.0mm
Height: 164.0mm
Weight: 136g
Pages: 144
About the Author
Jeffrey Jerone Cohen is Dean of Humanities at Arizona State University, USA, and co-president of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. He is the author or editor of 13 books, including Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (which received the 2017 René Wellek Prize for best book in comparative literature).
Linda T. Elkins-Tanton is Foundation Professor and Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, USA. She is the author of a six-book series The Solar System (1st edition 2006; 2nd edition 2010) and co-editor, with A. Schmidt and K. Fristad, of Volcanism and Global Environmental Change (2015). Her articles have been published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Nature Geoscience, Nature, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Astrophysical Journal, among other publications.
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