From EverQuest to World of Warcraft, online games have evolved from the exclusive domain of computer geeks into an extraordinarily lucrative staple of the entertainment industry. People of all ages and from all walks of life now spend thousands of...
As inherently spatial beings, our sense of space in cyberspace challenges all that is familiar in terms of our ability to define, organize, govern, and map social places. In The Political Mapping of Cyberspace, Jeremy Crampton shows that cyberspace is...
We live in a surveillance society. Anyone who uses a credit card, cell phone, or even search engines to navigate the Web is being monitored and assessed—and often in ways that are imperceptible to us. The first general introduction to the growing field...
The technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted figure is an image we can easily conjure. Most of us complain that there aren't enough hours in the day and too many e-mails in our thumb-accessible inboxes. This widespread perception that life is faster...
Few virtues are as celebrated in contemporary culture as openness. Rooted in software culture and carrying more than a whiff of Silicon Valley technical utopianism, openness—of decision-making, data, and organizational structure—is seen as the cure for...
Few virtues are as celebrated in contemporary culture as openness. Rooted in software culture and carrying more than a whiff of Silicon Valley technical utopianism, openness―of decision-making, data, and organizational structure―is seen as the cure for...
Now part and parcel of everyday life almost everywhere, mobile phones have radically transformed how we acquire and exchange information. Many anticipated that in Africa, where most have gone from no phone to mobile phone, improved access to...
Victorian Bookbindings is a survey of the decoration found on mass-produced bookbindings of the nineteenth century. The designs on these bindings traditionally have been viewed as a rich, often lavish and random, assortment of ornaments. It clearly...
Just as a traveler crossing a continent won’t sense the curvature of the earth, one lifetime of reading can’t grasp the largest patterns organizing literary history. This is the guiding premise behind Distant Horizons, which uses the scope of data...
Computerized processes are everywhere in our society. They are the automated phone messaging systems that businesses use to screen calls; the link between student standardized test scores and public schools’ access to resources; the algorithms that...
One of the most important German artists of the twentieth century, Max Beckmann is known for the depth and sensuous force of his works, but little is known about his personal life. Self-Portrait in Words reveals Beckmann's experience of life from the...
"The art historian after Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich is not only participating in an activity of great intellectual excitement; he is raising and exploring issues which lie very much at the centre of psychology, of the sciences and of history...
I Remember, one of French writer Georges Perec’s most famous pieces, consists of 480 numbered paragraphs—each just a few short lines recalling a memory from his childhood. The work has neither a beginning nor an end. Nor does it contain any analysis....
One of the leading artists of his generation, the Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz (1953-2001) was known for his diverse and highly original body of work centering on the narrative possibilities of figures in environments. Juan Muñoz illustrates in full...
In this acclaimed revisionist study, Erika Doss chronicles an historic cultural change in American art from the dominance of regionalism in the 1930s to abstract expressionism in the 1940s. She centers her study on Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson...
Drawing on Freudian theories of sexuality and Kant's conception of the beautiful, French art historian Hubert Damisch considers artists as diverse as Raphael, Picasso, Watteau, and Manet to demonstrate that beauty has always been connected to ideas of...
George Inness (1825-94), long considered one of America's greatest landscape painters, has yet to receive his full due from scholars and critics. A complicated artist and thinker, Inness painted stunningly beautiful, evocative views of the American...
From Henry Darger's elaborate paintings of young girls caught in a vicious war to the sacred art of the Reverend Howard Finster, the work of outsider artists has achieved unique status in the art world. Celebrated for their lack of traditional training...
