Looking at Glass Through the Ages


Book Description

Look around you! Glass is everywhere: the mirror where you brush your teeth in the morning, the test tube in your science class, and your cup of juice on the dinner table. But what do you really know about it? Where did it come from? To find out, you have to travel all the way back to ancient Egypt, where glass was first in use. Beautiful illustrations give a sense of the time and place as you span the globe and thousands of years to see glass's use expand from small pots, to bottles, to cathedral stained-glass windows to telescope lenses and more! Lots of diagrams detail the step-by-step processes of glassmaking through the ages. Another vivid and informative book from a master of explanation, Bruce Koscielniak.




Glass


Book Description

"A concise history of glassmaking around the world, from Mesopotamia to the present day"--




Into the Looking Glass


Book Description

When a 60-kiloton explosion destroyed the University of Central Florida, and much of the surrounding countryside, the authorities first thought that terrorists had somehow obtained a nuclear weapon.




Gotcha Good!


Book Description

This fifth Gotcha! book, aimed at public and school librarians and teachers, discusses well-reviewed and kid-tested nonfiction titles for third through eighth grade readers published in 2005-2007 with a few extra oldies but goodies added in. Chapters are built around the high- interest topics kids love. Irresistible book descriptions and book talks guide librarians and teachers to nonfiction books kids want to read. New features include numerous booklists to copy and save (similar to the bookmarks in Gotcha for Guys!) and profiles and interviews of some innovative authors such as Sally Walker, Kathleen Krull, Catherine Thimmesh, Steve Jenkins, Ken Mochizuki, and others. Grades 3-8. This fifth Gotcha! book, aimed at public and school librarians, as well as elementary and middle school teachers, discusses well-reviewed and kid-tested nonfiction titles for third through eighth grade readers published in 2005-2007 with a few extra oldies but goodies added in. Chapters are built around the high-interest topics kids love as the authors provide irresistible book descriptions to guide librarians and teachers to nonfiction books kids will want to read. Features include numerous booklists that can be copied and saved (similar to the bookmarks in the authors' Gotcha for Guys!), as well as profiles and interviews of some innovative nonfiction authors such as Sally Walker, Kathleen Krull, Catherine Thimmesh, Steve Jenkins, Ken Mochizuki, and others. Grades 3-8.




Through the Language Glass


Book Description

A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—culture shapes language and language, culture Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language—and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for "blue"? Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water—a "she"—becomes a "he" once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial. Audacious, delightful, and field-changing, Through the Language Glass is a classic of intellectual discovery.




Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass


Book Description

Emerging in several different versions during the author's lifetime, Lewis Carroll's Alice novels have a publishing history almost as magical and mysterious as the stories themselves. Zoe Jaques and Eugene Giddens offer a detailed and nuanced account of the initial publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and investigate how their subsequent transformations through print, illustration, film, song, music videos, and even stamp-cases and biscuit tins affected the reception of these childhood favourites. The authors consider issues related to the orality of the original tale and its impact on subsequent transmission, the differences between the manuscripts and printed editions, and the politics of writing and publishing for children in the 1860s. In addition, they take account of Carroll's own responses to the books' popularity, including his writing of major adaptations and a significant body of meta-textual commentary, and his reactions to the staging of Alice in Wonderland. Attentive to the child reader, how changing notions of childhood identity and needs affected shifting narratives of the story, and the representation of the child's body by various illustrators, the authors also make a significant contribution to childhood studies.




The Looking Glass


Book Description

Perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Sarah Dessen, Janet McNally’s imaginative story of sisterhood shows that the fiercest of loves are often the ones that exist outside of happily-ever-afters. GIRLS IN TROUBLE. That’s what Sylvie Blake’s older sister Julia renamed their favorite fairy tale book, way back when they were just girls themselves. Now Julia has disappeared—and no one knows for sure if she wants to be away, or if she’s the one in trouble. Then a copy of their old storybook arrives with a mysterious list inside, and Sylvie begins to see signs of her sister, and their favorite fairy tales, everywhere she goes. With the help of her best friend’s enigmatic brother and his beat-up car, Sylvie sets out to follow the strange signs right to Julia and return to New York with her in tow. But trouble comes in lots of forms—and Sylvie soon learns that the damsel in distress is often the only one who can save herself.




Blindness Through the Looking Glass


Book Description

Modern Western culture is saturated with images, imprinting visual standards of concepts such as beauty and femininity onto our collective consciousness. Blindness Through the Looking Glass examines how gender and femininity are performed and experienced in everyday life by women who do not rely on sight as their dominant mode of perception, identifying the multiple senses involved in the formation of gender identity within social interactions. Challenging visuality as the dominant mode to understand gender, social performance, and visual culture, the book offers an ethnographic investigation of blindness (and sight) as a human condition, putting both blindness and vision “on display” by discussing people’s auditory, tactile, and olfactory experiences as well as vision and sight, and by exploring ways that individuals perform blindness and “sightedness” in their everyday lives. Based on in-depth interviews with 40 blind women in Israel and anthropological fieldwork, the book investigates the social construction and daily experience of blindness in a range of domains. Uniquely, the book brings together blind symbolism with the everyday experiences of blind and sighted individuals, joining in mutual conversation the fields of disability studies, visual culture, anthropology of the senses, and gender studies.




The Living Age


Book Description




Japan Through the Looking Glass


Book Description

This entertaining and endlessly surprising book takes us on an exploration into every aspect of Japanese society from the most public to the most intimate. A series of meticulous investigations gradually uncovers the multi-faceted nature of a country and people who are even more extraordinary than they seem. Our journey encompasses religion, ritual, martial arts, manners, eating, drinking, hot baths, geishas, family, home, singing, wrestling, dancing, performing, clans, education, aspiration, sexes, generations, race, crime, gangs, terror, war, kindness, cruelty, money, art, imperialism, emperor, countryside, city, politics, government, law and a language that varies according to whom you are speaking. Clear-sighted, persistent, affectionate, unsentimental and honest - Alan Macfarlane shows us Japan as it has never been seen before.