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Can I read Brilliant : The Evolution of Artificial Light on EtoBox?
Brilliant : The Evolution of Artificial Light by Jane Brox is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.
What is Brilliant : The Evolution of Artificial Light about?
This “superb history” of artificial light traces the evolution of society—“invariably fascinating and often original... [it] amply lives up to its title” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In Brilliant, Jane Brox explores humankind's ever-changing relationship to artificial light, from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future. More than a survey of technological development, this sweeping history reveals how artificial light changed our world, and how those social and cultural changes in turn led to the pursuit of more ways of spreading, maintaining, and controlling light. Brox plumbs the class implications of light—who had it, who didn't—through the centuries when crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours. She identifies the pursuit of whale oil as the first time the need for light thrust us toward an environmental tipping point. Only decades later, gas street lights opened up the evening hours to leisure, which changed the ways we live and sleep and the world's ecosystems. Edison's bulbs produced a light that seemed to its users all but divorced from human effort or cost. And yet, as Brox's informative portrait of our curren
Who reads Brilliant : The Evolution of Artificial Light?
It is typically read by self-directed learners exploring a subject in depth.
Common subject areas: history, science, philosophy, social sciences.
- Author
- Jane Brox
- Publisher
- Souvenir Press
- Published
- 2010
- Language
- EN
- ISBN
- 9780285638990
- Category
- nonfiction
- Subjects
- History, Engineering, Technology
- Rating
- 3.73 / 5 (311 ratings)
- Updated
- 2026-03-14