Tag: 2016
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Selisker, Scott, Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons and American Unfreedom
Scott Selisker, Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons and American Unfreedom (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2016) 272 pp. $26.00 Pb, $91.00 Hb. ISBN: 978-0-8166-9987-2 Human Programming is a focused analysis of the history of the trope of the human automaton, starting with its early use as cold war American propaganda and rising to the contemporary treatment…
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Offord, Mark, Wordsworth and the Art of Philosophical Travel
Mark Offord, Wordsworth and the Art of Philosophical Travel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016) £64.99 Hb. ISBN: 9781107155589 From its title, Mark Offord’s book appears to offer a unique reworked reading of Wordsworth’s ‘pictures of Nature, Man and Society’ (1) as an art of travel. When Offord allows himself the space in which to directly…
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Flandreau, Marc, Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: a financial history of Victorian Britain
Marc Flandreau, Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: a Financial History of Victorian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2016) 416 pp. $35.00 Pb, $105.00 Hb. ISBN: 9780226360447 In Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange:, Marc Flandreau argues that the economic value of ‘truth’ underpins the development of anthropology as its own discipline in the nineteenth century,…
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Harman, Graham, Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory
Graham Harman, Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity 2016) 140pp. £9.99 Pb, £40.00 Hb. ISBN: 9781509500963 In Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory, Graham Harman examines the status of objects as part of his ongoing project of Object-Oriented Ontology. According to Object-Oriented Ontology, as well as the related perspective of Actor-Network Theory, one of the…
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Golinski, Jan, The Experimental Self: Humphry Davy and the Making of a Man of Science
Jan Golinski, The Experimental Self: Humphry Davy and the Making of a Man of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2016) 256 pp. $30.00 Hb. ISBN: 9780226351360 One of the early biographies of Humphry Davy (1778–1829) was entitled The Mercurial Chemist; mercurial being a not inappropriate description of his personality. In this latest biographical study…
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Bauman, Zygmunt and Riccardo Mazzeo, In Praise of Literature
Zygmunt Bauman and Riccardo Mazzeo, In Praise of Literature (Cambridge: Polity 2016) 180pp. £14.99 Pb., £50 Hb. ISBN: 9781509502684 Writing this review in April 2017, one ought to respectfully note the death of featured co-author Zygmunt Bauman in January of this year. This long-time sociology professor at the University of Leeds, who emigrated from Poland…
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Phillips, Natalie M, Distraction: Problems of Attention in Eighteenth-Century Literature
Natalie M Phillips, Distraction: Problems of Attention in Eighteenth-Century Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2016) 304 pp. $50.00 EPUB, MOBI, PDF, $50.00 Hb. ISBN: 9781421420127 Natalie M. Phillips’s Distraction ventures with ease and lucidity into the fields of cognitive historicism and literary criticism, offering an intellectual history of distraction and novel perspectives into literary…
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Nekrašas, Evaldas, The Positive Mind: Its Development and Impact on Modernity and Postmodernity
Evaldas Nekrašas, The Positive Mind: Its Development and Impact on Modernity and Postmodernity (Budapest-New York: Central European University Press 2016) 382 pp. £41.00 Hb. ISBN: 978-963-386-081-6 In this insightful book, the author sets out to re-evaluate what society often regards as a passé theory in philosophy. The Positive Mind: Its Development and Impact on Modernity…
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Griffiths, Devin, The Age of Analogy: Science and Literature between the Darwins
Devin Griffiths, The Age of Analogy: Science and Literature between the Darwins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2016) xii + 339 pp. $55 EPUB, MOBI, PDF, $55 Hb. ISBN: 978-1-4214-2076-9 In The Age of Analogy, Devin Griffiths sets out to achieve several things at once. Firstly, he proposes a history of interactions between science and…
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Wagner, Corinna and Andy Brown (eds), A Body of Work: An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine
Corinna Wagner and Andy Brown (eds), A Body of Work: An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine (London: Bloomsbury 2016) 532pp. £28.99 Pb , £95.00 Hb. ISBN: 978-1472511812 Beginning with Wilfred Eastwood’s A Book of Science Verse (Macmillan 1961), there have been several anthologies of poetry and science, most notably Poems of Science, ed. John Heath-Stubbs and…
