Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light

Author(s): Jane Brox

Science

In "Brilliant," award-winning author Jane Brox offers a sweeping history of our transformative relationship with light--from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future--and reveals that the surprising, complex story of our illumination is also the story of our modern selves. Just five hundred years ago almost everyone lived at the mercy of the dark, yet today so much of life as we know it--our long evening hours, our flexible working days, our feelings of safety at night--depends upon cheap, abundant light. Brox not only examines the social and environmental implications of this remarkable transformation, she tells a compelling story imbued with human voices, startling insights, and timely questions about how the light of the future will shape our lives.


Product Information

"Just one of the many pleasures of Jane Brox's sweeping history of human light is its evocation of the wonder and fascination the lowly light bulb roused when it was new, before it became, by virtue of the reverse alchemy of mass production, abundant and declasse. Brox succeeds brilliantly thanks to writing that rivals her subject in sparkle, glow, and wattage." - Sylvia Nasar, author of "A Beautiful Mind "I'll gladly read anything by Jane Brox on any subject, but her poetic and original retelling of the story of manmade light provides a suitably grand occasion for her superb powers of observation and her intimate, precise, startlingly evocative prose to shine." - Carlo Rotella, author of "Cut Time

General Fields

  • : 9780285640818
  • : Souvenir Press Limited
  • : Souvenir Press Ltd
  • : December 2011
  • : 2.8 Centimeters X 12.9 Centimeters X 21.1 Centimeters
  • : United Kingdom
  • : March 2012
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Jane Brox
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 621.3209
  • : 360