Summary: Documents the role of light in history, tracing how the development of specific innovations had a pivotal influence on social and cultural evolution. By the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Five Thousand Days Like This One. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
Brox's fluency in history blossomed in the third of her memoirs about her family's farm, Clearing Land (2004). She now leaps from cultivation to illumination to cover another watershed in human civilization, the development of artificial light. A companionable writer, Brox begins by considering the simple yet ingenious lamps used by the artists who created prehistoric cave paintings, then moves on describe the exhausting labor involved in making household tallow candles. Whaling and whale oil lamps, the rise of gaslight, and the invention of kerosene and the start of the oil industry––Brox elucidates each wave of technological innovation with lively interest and an eye to social ramifications. Naturally the story of electricity dominates, delivering a curious cast of inventors to the page along with incisive critiques of electrical inequities, the appliance boom, and the need today for a new "smart grid." Brox also explains the adverse consequences of continual artificial light on humans and wildlife. Invaluable and thought-provoking, Brox's inquiry into artificial light reminds us that the too-much-of-a-good-thing paradox is inherent in all of our technological endeavors. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
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