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Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light
by Brox, Jane
- Used
- Fine
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Fine/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0547055277
- ISBN 13
- 9780547055275
- Seller
-
Batavia, Illinois, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
Brilliant , reminiscent of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift in its reach and of Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time in its haunting evocation of human lives, offers a sweeping view of a surprisingly revealing aspect of human historyfrom the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future. Brox plumbs the class implications of lightwho had it, who didn’tthrough the many centuries when crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours. She convincingly portrays the hell-bent pursuit of whale oil as the first time the human desire for light thrust us toward an environmental tipping point. Only decades later, gas street lights opened up the evening hours to leisure, which changed the ways we live and sleep and the world’s ecosystems. Edison’s tiny strip of paper that a breath would blow away” produced a light that seemed to its users all but divorced from human effort or cost. And yet, as Brox’s informative and hair-raising portrait of our current grid system shows, the cost is ever with us. Brilliant is infused with human voices, startling insights, andonly a few years before it becomes illegal to sell most incandescent light bulbs in the United Statestimely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Dorothy Meyer - Bookseller
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 097643
- Title
- Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light
- Author
- Brox, Jane
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Complete Numbers Starting with 1
- ISBN 10
- 0547055277
- ISBN 13
- 9780547055275
- Publisher
- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2010
- Keywords
- technical, lighting ~
Terms of Sale
Dorothy Meyer - Bookseller
About the Seller
Dorothy Meyer - Bookseller
About Dorothy Meyer - Bookseller
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...