The Museum of the Wood Age
The Museum of the Wood Age

Author: Max Adams

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-09-01

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1788543491

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A passionate and imaginative exploration of wood – the material that shaped human history. As a material, wood has no equal in strength, resilience, adaptability and availability. It has been our partner in the cultural evolution from woodland foragers to engineers of our own destiny. Tracing that partnership through tools, devices, construction and artistic expression, Max Adams explores the role that wood has played in our own history as an imaginative, curious and resourceful species. Beginning with an investigation of the material properties of various species of wood, The Museum of the Wood Age investigates the influence of six basic devices – wedge, inclined plane, screw, lever, wheel, axle and pulley – and in so doing reveals the myriad ways in which wood has been worked throughout human history. From the simple bivouacs of hunter-gatherers to sophisticated wooden buildings such as stave churches; from the decorative arts to the humble woodworking of rustic furniture; Max Adams fashions a lattice of interconnected stories and objects that trace a path of human ingenuity across half a million years of history.

The Age of Wood
The Age of Wood

Author: Roland Ennos

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-12-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1982114754

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A “smart and surprising” (Booklist) “expansive history” (Publishers Weekly) detailing the role that wood and trees have played in our global ecosystem—including human evolution and the rise and fall of empires—in the bestselling tradition of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and Mark Kurlansky’s Salt. As the dominant species on Earth, humans have made astonishing progress since our ancestors came down from the trees. But how did the descendants of small primates manage to walk upright, become top predators, and populate the world? How were humans able to develop civilizations and produce a globalized economy? Now, in The Age of Wood, Roland Ennos shows for the first time that the key to our success has been our relationship with wood. “A lively history of biology, mechanics, and culture that stretches back 60 million years” (Nature) The Age of Wood reinterprets human history and shows how our ability to exploit wood’s unique properties has profoundly shaped our bodies and minds, societies, and lives. Ennos takes us on a sweeping journey from Southeast Asia and West Africa where great apes swing among the trees, build nests, and fashion tools; to East Africa where hunter gatherers collected their food; to the structural design of wooden temples in China and Japan; and to Northern England, where archaeologists trace how coal enabled humans to build an industrial world. Addressing the effects of industrialization—including the use of fossil fuels and other energy-intensive materials to replace timber—The Age of Wood not only shows the essential role that trees play in the history and evolution of human existence, but also argues that for the benefit of our planet we must return to more traditional ways of growing, using, and understanding trees. A brilliant blend of recent research and existing scientific knowledge, this is an “excellent, thorough history in an age of our increasingly fraught relationships with natural resources” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

The Wood Age
The Wood Age

Author: Roland Ennos

Publisher: William Collins

Published: 2022-02-17

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780008318871

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Power and Liberty
Power and Liberty

Author: Gordon S. Wood

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0197546919

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Written by one of early America's most eminent historians, this book masterfully discusses the debates over constitutionalism that took place in the Revolutionary era.

Museum of Fine Arts Boston: 1870 To 2020
Museum of Fine Arts Boston: 1870 To 2020

Author: Charles Giuliano

Publisher:

Published: 2021-09-10

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780996171571

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In 1970 the Museum of Fine Arts commissioned a two-volume Centennial history by its trustee, Walter Muir Whitehill. That was a time of turmoil as then director Perry T. Rathbone was forced to resign resulting from the questionable acquisition of a portrait by Raphael later returned to Italy.Instability followed with the quick succession of acting director, Cornelius Vermeule, the ill-fated Merrill Rueppel, then Asiatic curator, Jan Fontein promoted from acting to full time director. Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1870 to 2020: An Oral History is only the second publication chronicling 150 years of a great museum with aspects of its collection second to none. The book summarizes events of the first century with a vivid update of what has occurred since then.The fascinating story of a world-class museum is updated in the words of each of its directors from Perry T. Rathbone to Matthew Teitelbaum. There are also interviews with curators, trustees, art historians, administrators, and arts journalists.The founders were individuals of class and privilege who gave generously. The tone of Brahmin elitism changed by the 1950s as the museum expanded and become more costly to maintain. There was a search for new money and expansion of the board to include Jews and people of color. By the 1960s the museum drew broad criticism for its elitism and indifference to modern/ contemporary art and Boston's contemporary artists, including the Jewish Boston Expressionists. Charges of racism have accelerated in the past few years as they have for all cultural institutions. The MFA has been charged with a transition from the "Our Museum" of its founders to a "Museum for all the people of Boston" under current director Matthew Teitelbaum.As an observer and writer, Charles Giuliano is a consummate insider. In 1963 upon graduation from Brandeis University he worked for two and a half years as a conservation intern for the Egyptian Department. He later became one of Boston's most influential art critics covering the museum for a range of publications. This book is the culmination of that coverage since the 1960s.

The History of Museums Vol 6
The History of Museums Vol 6

Author: Thomas Greenwood

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-05-31

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1040130062

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Museums and collecting is now a major area of cultural studies. This selected group of key texts opens the investigation and appreciation of museum history. Edward Edwards, chief pioneer of municipal public libraries, chronicles the founders and early donors to the British Museum. Greenwood and Murray provide informative pictures of the early history of the museum movement. Sir William Flower, Director of the British Museum (Natural History), takes a pioneering philosophical approach to the sphere of natural history in relation to museums. Similarly, Acland and Ruskin discuss and explore the relationships of art and architecture to museums.

Wood
Wood

Author: Joachim Radkau

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-12-23

Total Pages: 591

ISBN-13: 0745683614

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Ötzi the iceman could not do without wood when he was climbing his Alpine glacier, nor could medieval cathedral-builders or today's construction companies. From time immemorial, the skill of the human hand has developed by working wood, so much so that we might say that the handling of wood is a basic element in the history of the human body. The fear of a future wood famine became a panic in the 18th century and sparked the beginnings of modern environmentalism. This book traces the cultural history of wood and offers a highly original account of the connection between the raw material and the human beings who benefit from it. Even more, it shows that wood can provide a key for a better understanding of history, of the pecularities as well as the varieties of cultures, of a co-evolution of nature and culture, and even of the rise and fall of great powers. Beginning with Stone Age hunters, it follows the twists and turns of the story through the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution to the global society of the twenty-first century, in which wood is undergoing a varied and unexpected renaissance. Radkau is sceptical of claims that wood is about to disappear, arguing that such claims are self-serving arguments promoted by interest groups to secure cheaper access to, and control over, wood resources. The whole forest and timber industry often strikes the outsider as a world unto itself, a hermetically sealed black box, but when we lift the lid on this box, as Radkau does here, we will be surprised by what we find within. Wide-ranging and accessible, this rich historical analysis of one of our most cherished natural resources will find a wide readership.