Download or read book Chicago Curiosities written by Scotti Cohn and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Your round-trip ticket to the wildest, wackiest, most outrageous people, places, and things the Windy City has to offer! Whether you’re a born-and-raised Chicagoan, a recent transplant, or just passing through, Chicago Curiosities will have you laughing out loud as Scotti Cohn takes you on a rollicking tour of the strangest sides of the Windy City. Watch Daedalus and Icarus fly across the façade of the Savings of America Building—and wonder if the mural’s location might carry a message for the financial industry. . . . A baboon with wings? A predatory grasshopper? Figure out for yourself just what Picasso’s “gift to Chicago”—a sculpture unveiled in 1967—represents. Want to stand out? You can do so at the Ledge at Skydeck Chicago, an all-glass architectural wonder attached to the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower). Meet the man who travels the world impersonating President Obama.
Download or read book Future Remains written by Gregg Mitman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can a pesticide pump, a jar full of sand, or an old calico print tell us about the Anthropocene—the age of humans? Just as paleontologists look to fossil remains to infer past conditions of life on earth, so might past and present-day objects offer clues to intertwined human and natural histories that shape our planetary futures. In this era of aggressive hydrocarbon extraction, extreme weather, and severe economic disparity, how might certain objects make visible the uneven interplay of economic, material, and social forces that shape relationships among human and nonhuman beings? Future Remains is a thoughtful and creative meditation on these questions. The fifteen objects gathered in this book resemble more the tarots of a fortuneteller than the archaeological finds of an expedition—they speak of planetary futures. Marco Armiero, Robert S. Emmett, and Gregg Mitman have assembled a cabinet of curiosities for the Anthropocene, bringing together a mix of lively essays, creatively chosen objects, and stunning photographs by acclaimed photographer Tim Flach. The result is a book that interrogates the origins, implications, and potential dangers of the Anthropocene and makes us wonder anew about what exactly human history is made of.
Download or read book Freak Show written by Robert Bogdan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cultural history of the travelling freak show in America chronicles the rise and fall of the industry as attitudes about disability evolved. From 1840 until 1940, hundreds of freak shows crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today’s standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative—the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America’s most popular forms of entertainment. Robert Bogdan’s fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks were not born, Bogdan reveals; they were manufactured by the amusement world, usually with the active participation of the freaks themselves. Many of the "human curiosities" found fame and fortune, until the ascent of professional medicine transformed them from marvels into pathological specimens.
Download or read book Wondrous Curiosities written by Stephanie Moser and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on her exloration of the British Museum's world-famous collection of Egyptian antiquities, this pioneering study reveals the powerful role of museums in shaping our understanding of science, culture, and history.
Download or read book The Return of Curiosity written by Nicholas Thomas and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Spy Museum, the Vacuum Cleaner Museum, the National Mustard Museum—not to mention the Art Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Center: museums have never been more robust, curating just about everything there is and assuming a new prominence in public life. The Return of Curiosity explores museums in the modern age, offering a fresh perspective on some of our most important cultural institutions and the vital function they serve as stewards of human and natural history. Reflecting on art galleries, science and history institutions, and collections all around the world, Nicholas Thomas argues that, in times marked by incredible insecurity and turbulence, museums help us sustain and enrich society. Moreover, they stimulate us to think in new ways about our world, compelling our curiosity and showing us the importance of understanding one another. Thomas looks at museums not simply as storehouses of old things but as the products of meaningful relationships between curators, the public, history, and culture. These relationships, he shows, don’t always go smoothly, but they do always offer new insights into the many ways we value—and try to preserve—the world we live in. The result is a refreshing and hopeful look at museums as a cultural force, one that, by gathering together paintings, tropical birds, antiques, or even our own bodies, offers an illuminating reflection of who we are.
Download or read book Curiosity written by Barbara M. Benedict and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this striking social history, Barbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait we learn was often depicted as an unsavory form of transgression or cultural ambition.
Download or read book In the Watchful City written by S. Qiouyi Lu and published by Tordotcom. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This masterful work positions Lu among the vanguard of contemporary futurism and speculative fiction."—Publishers Weekly, starred review In the tradition of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, debut author S. Qiouyi Lu has written a multifaceted story of borders, power, diaspora, and transformation with In the Watchful City. The city of Ora is watching. Anima is an extrasensory human tasked with surveilling and protecting Ora’s citizens via a complex living network called the Gleaming. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from harm. When a mysterious outsider enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around with the world with a story attached to each item, Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—æ never before imagined to exist. But such knowledge leaves Anima with a question that throws into doubt ær entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities written by Paul Anthony Jones and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-10-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Open The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities and you’ll find both a word and a day to remember, every day of the year. Each day has its own dedicated entry, on which a curious or notable event—and an equally curious or notable word—are explored. On the day on which flirting was banned in New York City, for instance, you’ll discover why to “sheep’s-eye” someone once meant to look at them amorously. On the day on which a disillusioned San Franciscan declared himself Emperor of the United States, you’ll find the word “mamamouchi,” a term for people who consider themselves more important than they truly are. And on the day on which George Frideric Handel completed his 259-page Messiah after twenty-four days of frenzied work, you’ll see why a French loanword, literally meaning “a small wooden barrow,” is used to refer to an intense period of work undertaken to meet a deadline. The English language is vast enough to supply us with a word for every occasion—and this linguistic “wunderkammer” is here to prove precisely that. So whatever date this book has found its way into your hands, there’s an entire year’s worth of linguistic curiosities waiting to be found.
Download or read book Illinois Curiosities written by Richard Moreno and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether you’re a born-and-raised Illinoisan, a recent transplant, or just passing through, IllinoisCuriosities will have you laughing out loud as Richard Moreno takes you on a rollicking tour of the strangest sides of the Prairie State. Take a date to the World’s Largest Laundromat, a 13,500-square-foot facility in Berwyn with 153 washers and 148 dryers in nearly constant use. Enter Chicago’s “sub” culture with a museum visit to the U-505, the only German submarine in the United States. Visit the site in Carthage where Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith was murdered on June 27, 1844. Learn about the strange case of H. H. Holmes’ notorious Murder Castle and the sad tale of Burr Oak Cemetery.
Download or read book Curious Collectors Collected Curiosities written by Janelle A. Schwartz and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-22 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities: An Interdisciplinary Study asks its readers to enter into an investigation of the nature of collecting as an aesthetic exercise. Spanning the sixteenth century through today, this book gathers together the work of current scholars to re-envision the task of collectors and their collections in broad strokes. Each chapter appropriates the idea of a cabinet of curiosity in order to expand its boundaries of meaning and to complicate our understanding of the acts of display and observation. These chapters also demonstrate that collecting is a universal trope which nevertheless depends on time and place for its particular expressions. Whether the collection is made up of literary texts and criticism, visual art, including mechanical reproductions, taxidermy and photography, historical travelogues, museum exhibitions, blockbuster films, or airline in-flight briefing cards, it conveys an urgent relevance to our consumer age, in which information is abundant and attention is a commodity.
Download or read book Company Curiosities written by Arthur MacGregor and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly three hundred years, the East India Company dominated British trade and relations with Asia. It made handsome profits for shareholders but also provided collectors in Europe with natural specimens and man-made rarities that were prized for their scientific, aesthetic or cultural value. An array of administrators, soldiers, surveyors spent much of their lives attempting to inventory and to comprehend India's vast country, its teeming populations and its myriad rituals and wildlife: nearly forty species of mammals and over 120 species of birds were discovered in the Katmandu valley alone; astonishing wall paintings from the fifth-century were unearthed in caves at Ajanta; and spectacular fossil fauna arrived from the Siwalik Hills. Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600-1874 offers the first-ever overview of the remarkable role of the East India Company and its servants in collecting and showcasing a treasure-house of natural specimens and man-made objects - craft materials, paintings and sculptures, weapons, costumes, jewels and ornaments - that established the look and the feel of India for those who had never ventured abroad. Arthur MacGregor tells the stories behind the remarkable discoveries and collections, and those responsible for them, and their impact on natural science, commerce and industry, and personal taste.
Download or read book Undaunted Curiosity written by Douglas W. Ayres and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enjoy a leisurely cruise in a 54 yacht on the rivers, lakes, waterways and canals of the United States and Canada, from New York City up the Hudson, thru the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario, then zigzag down the St. Lawrence River thru the Thousand Islands to Montreal. The cruise then moves across Ontario and Quebec to Hull and Ottawa on the Ottawa River into the historic 1820s Rideau Canal and its 45 colorful Lock Parks. This spectacular scenery of central Ontario leads back to Lake Ontario, at Kingston, then via the 55 locks of the Trent-Severn Waterway thru Canadas cottage-country lakes to gorgeous Georgian Bay. Here the journey turns south to Detroit, via Lakes Huron and St. Clair, then around Michigans thumb, to Sault St. Marie and Lake Superior. Moving across the Great Lakes to Chicago leads to the Illinois River into the Mississippi. The entire length of that mighty River then is cruised and described. Other tributary rivers explored town-by-city-by-town are the St. Croix, Ohio, Muskingum, Kentucky, Green, Kanawha, Allegheny, Monongahela, and Arkansas, most to their head of navigation. The White, Black, Atchafalaya, the West Gulf Intracoastal Waterway from Morgan City to Mobile, and the Tenn-Tom Waterway from Mobile Bay north to Columbus, Mississippi then follows, in detail. 190 marine charts and illustrations and 23 pages of color photos provide details of the magnificence encompassed in this book. The scenic wonders and delights of 16,000 miles of Americas Waterways are explored and exposed, showing off America the Beautiful.
Download or read book New World Objects of Knowledge written by Mark Thurner and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Downtown Chicago s Historic Movie Theatres written by Konrad Schiecke and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of downtown Chicago--its early development, later struggles, and current restoration--is mirrored in the history of the theatres that occupied its streets. This vivid chronicle tells the tale of the Windy City's theatres, from mid-nineteenth century vaudeville houses to the urban decline and renewal of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Discussed are the rebuilding efforts after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the first nickel theaters showing "moving pictures," the ornate silent movie palaces, the move to "talkies," the challenges of the Great Depression and the introduction of television, and urban decline. Today, Chicago has preserved some of its most historic movie palaces, landmarks of cultural vibrancy in its reawakened downtown. With nearly 200 photographs from the Theatre Historical Society of America, this work brings to life all of the theatres that have enlivened Chicago's entertainment district, reflecting the transformation of downtown Chicago itself.
Download or read book DK Top 10 Chicago written by DK Travel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Home to iconic skyscrapers, atmospheric blues bars, and world-class restaurants, Chicago is one of America's most exciting cities. Away from the buzz, sweeping sandy beaches and vast green parks make for the perfect place to unwind. Make the most of your trip to the Windy City with DK Eyewitness Top 10. Planning is a breeze with our simple lists of ten, covering the very best that Chicago has to offer and ensuring that you don't miss a thing. Best of all, the pocket-friendly format is light and easily portable, the perfect companion while out and about. Inside, you'll find: -Top 10 lists of Chicago's must-sees, including the Willis Tower, the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Riverwalk, and Millennium Park -Chicago's most interesting areas, with the best places for sightseeing, food and drink, and shopping -Themed lists, including the best skyscrapers, parks and beaches, blues and jazz joints, film locations, and much more -Easy-to-follow itineraries, perfect for a day trip, a weekend, or a week -A laminated pull-out map of Chicago, plus five full-colour area maps DK Eyewitness Top 10s have been helping travelers to make the most of their breaks since 2002. Looking for more on Chicago's culture, history, and attractions? Try our DK Eyewitness guides to Chicago and the USA.
Download or read book Cabinet of Curiosities written by Colleen Josephine Sheehy and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A culture of curiosity written by Leonie Hannan and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the practice of scientific enquiry as it took place in the eighteenth-century home. While histories of science have identified the genteel household as an important site for scientific experiment, they have tended to do so via biographies of important men of science. Using a wide range of historical source material, from household accounts and inventories to letters and print culture, this book investigates the tools within reach of early modern householders in their search for knowledge. It considers the under-explored question of the home as a site of knowledge production and does so by viewing scientific enquiry as one of many interrelated domestic practices. It shows that knowledge production and consumption were necessary facets of domestic life and that the eighteenth-century home generated practices that were integral to ‘Enlightenment’ enquiry.
