'Elegant and multi-focal. Glorious!' Simon Garfield 'It will make you look at specs with fresh eyes' New Statesman 'Lively, engaging and admirably wide-ranging' The Times 'Fascinating' Observer The humble pair of glasses might just be one of the world's greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that might otherwise appear a blur. And yet how much do many of us really think about these things perched on the ends of our noses? Through the Looking Glasses traces the fascinating story of spectacles: from their inception as primitive visual aids for monkish scribes right through to today's designer eyewear and the augmented reality of Google Glass. There are encounters with ingenious medieval Italian glassmakers, myopic Renaissance rulers and spectacle-makers, as well as the silent movie star Harold Lloyd, the rock'n'roller Buddy Holly and the full-screen figure of Marilyn Monroe. This is a book about vision and the need for humanity to see clearly, and where the impulse to improve our eyesight has led us.
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.
Through The Looking Glass is the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is based on his meeting with another Alice, Alice Raikes. Set some six months later than the earlier book, Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. The book takes a look at the world of the mirror and the world beyond it. Reflections, distortions, and fantasy are major ingredients in this wonderful book, which brings together the worlds of the child and the adult. Sparkling characters are found in the narrative, ranging from Humpty Dumpty to the Red Queen to the Unicorn.The story opens on a snowy, wintry night, uses frequent changes in time and spatial directions as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of chess. In it, there are many mirror themes, including opposites, time running backwards, and so on.
In looking-glass land everything is reversed, just as reflections are reversed in a mirror. Brooks and hedges divide the land into a checker-board, and Alice finds herself a white pawn in the whimsical and fantastic game of chess that constitutes the bulk of the story. On her trip to the eighth square, where she at last becomes a queen, Alice meets talking flowers, looking-glass insects, a man in a white paper suit, such nursery rhyme characters as Humpty Dumpty and the Lion and the Unicorn, and many others, including Tweedledum and Tweededee and the White Knight.
Introduction by A. S. Byatt Illustrations by John Tenniel Includes commissioned endnotes Conceived by a shy British don on a golden afternoon to entertain ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have delighted generations of readers in more than eighty languages. “The clue to the enduring fascination and greatness of the Alice books,” writes A. S. Byatt in her Introduction, “lies in language. It is play, and word-play, and its endless intriguing puzzles continue to reveal themselves long after we have ceased to be children.” Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide
Privilege Through the Looking-Glass is a collection of original essays that explore privilege and status characteristics in daily life. This collection seeks to make visible that which is often invisible. It seeks to sensitize us to things we have been taught not to see. Privilege, power, oppression, and domination operate in complex and insidious ways, impacting groups and individuals. And yet, these forces that affect our lives so deeply seem to at once operate in plain sight and lurk in the shadows, making them difficult to discern. Like water to a fish, environments are nearly impossible to perceive when we are immersed in them. This book attempts to expose our environments. With engaging and powerful writing, the contributors share their personal stories as a means of connecting the personal and the public. This volume applies an intersectional perspective to explore how race, class, gender, sexuality, education, and ableness converge, creating the basis for privilege and oppression. Privilege Through the Looking-Glass encourages readers to engage in self and social reflection, and can be used in a range of courses in sociology, social work, communication, education, gender studies, and African American studies. Each chapter includes discussion questions and/or activities for further engagement. “Privilege Through the Looking-Glass offers a varied and profound examination of how privilege functions as the underside of power. This is a powerful and important book about inequality, identity, agency, and the challenge of addressing difference as part of a democratic ethos in a time of growing authoritarianism all over the world. Every educator should read this book.” – Henry A. Giroux, Professor, McMaster University “A courageous volume that blends theory, personal experiences, and reflections on contemporary debates over identity. This is a book that is more about the politics of identity than identity politics. It is a powerful testament to the urgency of understanding privilege and deserves to be read widely.” – Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor, Chapman University “Privilege Through the Looking-Glass unmasks the casual ‘isms’ that suppress the best aspects of our humanity, by assembling a powerful and honest collection of parables. Poignant and unflinching, the contributors eschew to the cloak of objectivism to give the hard truth about privilege as a social ill, and the collective responsibility of the conscious community to confront all forms of oppression... this book has lessons for anyone with the spirit to explore better ways to be themselves and relate to others.” – Ivory A. Toldson, Professor, Howard University, and Editor-in-Chief for The Journal of Negro Education Patricia Leavy, Ph.D., is an award-winning independent sociologist and best-selling author.
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.
Coco is a vivacious and enthusiastic romantic on a determined search for the one true love of her life. At about two times the age of a regular princess (or even more), she fearlessly pursues her fairy-tale ending by embracing the paradoxes and age-defying opportunities offered by the modern age. Bolstered by the notions that fifty is the new forty and divorced is the new single, she ventures into the medium of the internet, a space where all things old are excitingly renewed to search for the one. The fairyland of online dating proves to be populated by characters very much akin to those found in fairy tales of old. There are some trolls and other downright dastardly types and others of beastly appearance who turn out to be kindly. There are also some wily witches who try to trap and ensnare. Fortunately, the fairy godmothers (BFFs) mentored Coco through the Black Forest. So will she find the dashing Prince Charming and live happily ever after? Read on and see!
Songs From Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass is a collection of Lewis Carroll's poems set to music. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. Excerpt: "How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On ev'ry golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in With gently smiling jaws!"
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASSDARKLY is based on real life experiences suffered by two children deserted by their mother at an early age. They were thrust into a life of emotional and physical abuse in a foster home, where they remained for 14 years. Released to their father as teens, they ran headlong into unfamiliar territory. They fought their way to becoming productive adults. Their innate ability to survive lifes trials, given the absence of love and nurturing, was a hard lesson in growth and maturity. And this they did, becoming the best they could be.
