The Fabric of Civilization PDF Download

Author: Virginia Postrel
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541617614
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.

Author: Virginia Postrel
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061852864
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Whether it's sleek leather pants, a shiny new Apple computer, or a designer toaster, we make important decisions as consumers every day based on our sensory experience. Sensory appeals are everywhere, and they are intensifying, radically changing how Americans live and work. The twenty-first century has become the age of aesthetics, and whether we realize it or not, this influence has taken over the marketplace, and much more. In this penetrating, keenly observed book, Virginia Postrel makes the argument that appearance counts, that aesthetic value is real. Drawing from fields as diverse as fashion, real estate, politics, design, and economics, Postrel deftly chronicles our culture's aesthetic imperative and argues persuasively that it is a vital component of a healthy, forward-looking society. Intelligent, incisive, and thought-provoking, The Substance of Style is a groundbreaking portrait of the democratization of taste and a brilliant examination of the way we live now.

Author: Marypaul Yates
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393730623
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Fabrics provides designers with the information needed to make their fabric specifications easy, informed, and appropriate to the job at hand, considering aesthetics, performance, application, and green design. This thorough handbook by a textile professional describes and illustrates fibers and yarns, fabric structures, fabric design, dye and printing processes, finishes and treatments, styles and applications of cloth for furniture, window-, wall-, and floor coverings. Also covered are testing and flaws; the fabric industry, and professional practice.

Author: Virginia Postrel
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439135320
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Today we have greater wealth, health, opportunity, and choice than at any time in history. Yet a chorus of intellectuals and politicians laments our current condition -- as slaves to technology, coarsened by popular culture, and insecure in the face of economic change. The future, they tell us, is dangerously out of control, and unless we precisely govern the forces of change, we risk disaster. In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes the myths behind these claims. Using examples that range from medicine to fashion, she explores how progress truly occurs and demonstrates that human betterment depends not on conformity to one central vision but on creativity and decentralized, open-ended trial and error. She argues that these two opposing world-views -- "stasis" vs. "dynamism" -- are replacing "left" and "right" to define our cultural and political debate as we enter the next century. In this bold exploration of how civilizations learn, Postrel heralds a fundamental shift in the way we view politics, culture, technology, and society as we face an unknown -- and invigorating -- future.

Author: Douglas Trevor
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587296489
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space gathers stories about coping with grief, trying to love people who have died, and—more broadly—leaving old versions of the self behind, sometimes by choice and sometimes out of necessity. In each of the nine stories, Douglas Trevor’s characters are forced to face uncomfortable realities. For Elena Gavrushnekov in the title story, that means admitting after the death of her beloved that she still longs for contact with other human bodies. For Peter in “Central Square,” it is realizing that, like his deceased father before him, he is drinking himself to death. Unable to confront his incapacitated mother and the memory of the plane crash that killed his father, Edwin Morris in “Saint Francis in Flint” is compelled to acknowledge that his saintly aspirations are not what they appear to be, while Sharon Mackaney in “The Surprising Weight of the Body's Organs” struggles with uncontrollable outbursts of rage in the wake of her young son’s death. In moments of great pain and loss, when self-expression seems impossible and terribly useless, the characters in these stories nonetheless discover the tenderness of others. In “The River,” the narrator finds that the friendship he has forged with a French girl with whom he can only just communicate has bred intense, almost intuitive compassion, while in “Fellowship of the Bereaved,” the disconsolate brother of the deceased sister who occupies the empty center of the story uncovers not only anger in his parents but also empathy and humor. As these characters persevere in their own lives, they do so mindful of, and humanized by, the experiences of having seen people they know and love slip unexpectedly into the thin tear in the fabric of space: that quiet chasm that so resolutely separates the living from the dead.

Author: Tom Zoellner
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640094938
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This collection of "eloquent essays that examine the relationship between the American landscape and the national character" serves to remind us that despite our differences we all belong to the same land (Publishers Weekly). “How was it possible, I wondered, that all of this American land––in every direction––could be fastened together into a whole?” What does it mean when a nation accustomed to moving begins to settle down, when political discord threatens unity, and when technology disrupts traditional ways of building communities? Is a shared soil enough to reinvigorate a national spirit? From the embaattled newsrooms of small town newspapers to the pornography film sets of the Los Angeles basin, from the check–out lanes of Dollar General to the holy sites of Mormonism, from the nation’s highest peaks to the razed remains of a cherished home, like a latter–day Woody Guthrie, Tom Zoellner takes to the highways and byways of a vast land in search of the soul of its people. By turns nostalgic and probing, incisive and enraged, Zoellner’s reflections reveal a nation divided by faith, politics, and shifting economies, but––more importantly––one united by a shared sense of ownership in the common land.

Author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393285588
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
"A fascinating history of…[a craft] that preceded and made possible civilization itself." —New York Times Book Review New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.

Author: Virginia Postrel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781541617605
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, a global history of textiles and the world they made The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.

Author: Mary Schoeser
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500777799
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
The history of textiles, more than that of any other artefact, is a history of human ingenuity. From the very earliest needles of 50,000 years ago to the smart textiles of today, textiles have been fundamental to human existence, and enjoyed, prized and valued by every culture. Silks from China, cottons from India, tapestries from Flanders, dyes from South America the appeal of different weaves, colours and patterns was long a motivation for trade, the exchange of ideas and sometimes even war. Mary Schoesers groundbreaking book, now revised and updated to incorporate new research, presents a chronological survey of textiles around the world from prehistory to the present. It explores how they are made, what they are made from, how they function in society and the ways in which they are valued and given meaning as well as reflecting on the environmental challenges they present today. World Textiles offers an invaluable introduction to this vast and fascinating subject for makers, designers, textile and fashion professionals, collectors and students alike.

Author: Virginia Postrel
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416561110
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
An exploration of glamour, a potent cultural force that influences where people choose to live, which careers to pursue, where to invest, and how to vote, offers empowerment to be smarter about engaging with the world.