Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, with an Introduction by Charles Saumarez Smith (London: The Folio Society, 2010) ("The English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word nude, on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenceless body, but of a balanced, prosperous and confident body: the body re-formed. In fact, the word was forced into our vocabulary by critics of the early eighteen century to persuade the artless islanders that, in countries where painting and sculpture were practiced and valued as they should be, the naked human body was the central subject of art." Id. at 3.).
Victoria Finlay, Colour: Travels though the Paintbox (London: The Folio Society, 2009) ("The first challenge in writing about colours is that they don't really exist. Or rather they do exist, but only because our minds create them as an interpretation of vibrations that are happening around us. Everything in the universe--whether it is classified as 'solid' or 'liquid' or 'gas' or even 'vacuum'--is shimmering and vibrating and constantly changing. But our brains don't find that a very useful way of comprehending the world. So we translate what we experience into concepts like 'objects' and 'smells' and 'sounds' and, of course, 'colours', which are altogether easier for us to understand." Id. at 3.).
Richard Fortey, The Earth: An Intimate History (London: The Folio Society, 2011) ("For some years I have been thinking about how best to describe the way in which plate tectonics has changed our perception of the earth. The world is so vast and so various that it is evidently impossible to encompass it all within one book. Yet geology underlies everything: it founds the landscape, dictates the agriculture, determines the character of villages. Geology acts as a kind of collective unconscious for the world, a deep control beneath the oceans and continents. For the general reader, the most compelling part of geological enlightenment is discovering what geology does, how it interacts with natural history, or the story of our own culture. Most of us engage with the landscape at this intimate level. Many scientists, by contrast, are propelled by the search for the inclusive model, a general theory that will change the perception of the workings of the world. Plate tectonics has transformed the way we understand the landscape, for the world alters at the bidding of the plates, but much of the transformation has been expressed in the cool prose of scientific treatise. The problem is how we can marry these two contrasting modes of perception--the intelligent naturalist's sensitive view of the details of the land with the geologist's abstract models of its genesis and transformation. My solution has been to visit particular places, to explore their natural and human history in an intimate way, thence to move to the deeper motor of the earth--to show how the lie of the land responds to a deeper beat, a slow and fundamental pulse." Id. at xiii.).
Richard Fortey, Life: An Unauthorized Biography: A Natural History of the First Four Thousand Million Years of Life on Earth (London: The Folio Society, 2008) ("The earth was born from debris that circled the nascent sun. It was a planet spun from dust and rock, and one of the smaller masses that were trapped in the thrall of the sun's attraction. The debris comprising the belt of asteroids testifies to this time of creation, being a circlet that never congealed into a planetary ball. The other planets show what the earth might have been like if just one or two circumstances of history had been different. Above all, it would have been dead." Id. at 28.).
Simon Goldhill, Richard barber, Theodore K. Rabb & Jonathan Glancey, Wonders of the World (London: The Folio Society, 2006) ('Behind science, philosophy, worship, art, poetry, sits human wonder, and with it the human need not just to stand in awe but also to ask why and how, to record, to explore. This book is an invitation to participate in the history of wonder in more than one way. It is, first to look at and explore with us some of the most amazing human achievements over the centuries of civilisation. . . . Second, however, every one of these wonders is itself a response to the world that stems form human wonder. The Pyramids are grand, religious and political responses to the crisis of death, and the pharaohs' monumental hope for immortality--a human attempt to come to terms with fearful wonder at the mystery of mortality. The silicon chip is one result of the extraordinary new understanding of the physical world which modern science has provided, from quantum physics to the genetic code. Einstein's wonder at the behavior of light led to his foundational contribution to modern physics, just as Watson and Crick's amazement at the molecular order of the world gave rise to the discovery of DNA. Our tour of the wonders of the world is not just an opportunity for some touristy gawping, but an attempt to understand the how and why of these monuments." "The second basic human response to the world that motivates this book is the list. . . . Lists are a primary means of ordering the world, of recording property in a systematic way, of maintaining the genealogies which give family history. That is, without lists society would lack its own history as well as its principles of organisation. If wonder is an awestruck feeling of amazement, a list is much calmer way of putting some order into a response to the world." Id.at at 8-9.).
Robin Hanbury-Tenison, ed., The Great Explorers (London: Thanes & Hudson, 2010).
Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (New York: Viking, 2010) ("If you want to tell the history of the whole world, a history that does not unduly privilege one part of humanity, you cannot do it through text alone, because only some of the world has ever had texts, while most of the world, for most of the time, has not. Writing is one of humanity's later achievements, and until fairly recently even many literate societies recorded their concerns and aspirations not only in writings but in things." Id. at xvii.).
