Gold / Rebecca Zorach and Michael W. Phillips Jr.

Author
Zorach, Rebecca, 1969- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • London : Reaktion Books, 2016.
  • ©2016
Description
224 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 21 cm.

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Lewis Library - Stacks NK7106 .Z67 2016 Browse related items Request

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    Subject(s)
    Author
    Series
    Summary note
    For millennia, across the globe, this gleaming and incorruptible element has beguiled humankind, attracting treasure seekers, artistically adorning the dead and the living, and symbolically representing power, wealth, divinity and eternity. Gold embodies paradoxes: the very softness that made it ill-suited to making tools may have prompted its use as currency, and throughout history it has been used to symbolize the antithesis of true value - in critiques of wealth and idolatry - almost as much as it has compelled admiration. It has also often been a flashpoint for collisions between cultures with very different value systems. Indeed, the questions posed by the human desire for gold are central questions about value itself and about meaning in the broadest sense. 'Gold' offers a lively, critical look at the cultural history of the 'noblest' of metals, examining the history of gold broadly across many cultures and time periods: from controversies surrounding its religious use to its place in the history of colonialism to its modern role in science, gold has played so many roles that it is difficult to fasten the metal itself in one's sights. Together, the book and its many images explore perceptions, myths, stories and facts about gold over the centuries and across the world, providing compelling examples from history, art, literature and film and bringing the story up to the present, a time when the anxieties surrounding gold have changed, but the persistent lust for gold continues to produce new moral and physical perils.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 198-211) and index.
    Contents
    • Introduction: In search of gold
    • Wearable gold
    • Gold, religion and power
    • Gold as money
    • Gold as a medium of art
    • From alchemy to outer space : gold in science
    • Dangerous gold.
    Other title(s)
    Gold : nature and culture
    ISBN
    • 9781780235776 ((paperback))
    • 1780235771 ((paperback))
    OCLC
    932069891
    Statement on language in description
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