Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Alchemy of Us, The: How Humans & Matter Transformed One Another
Author: RAMIREZ AINISSA
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 02/07/2021
Imprint: MIT PRESS
Price: $30.00
Publishing status: Active
In the bestselling tradition of Stuff Matters and The Disappearing Spoon: a clever and
engaging look at materials, the innovations they made possible, and how these
technologies changed us.
In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines eight
inventions–clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs,
hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips–and reveals how they shaped the human
experience. Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired
Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention pointed the way to the computer.
She describes, among other things, how our pursuit of precision in timepieces changed
how we sleep; how the railroad helped commercialize Christmas; how the necessary
brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway’s writing style; and how a young chemist
exposed the use of Polaroid’s cameras to create passbooks to track Black citizens in
apartheid South Africa. These fascinating and inspiring stories offer new perspectives on
our relationships with technologies.
ISBN: 9780262542265
Pages: 328