In An Artisan Intellectual, Christopher Ferguson examines the life and ideas of English tailor and writer James Carter, one of countless and largely anonymous citizens whose lives dramatically transformed during Britain’s long march to modernity. Carter began his working life at age thirteen as an apprentice and continued to work as a tailor throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, first in Colchester and then in London. As the Industrial Revolution brought innovations to every aspect of British life, Carter took advantage of opportunities to push against the boundaries of his working-class background. He supplemented his income through his writing, publishing often unsigned books, articles, and poems on subjects as diverse as religion, death, nature, aesthetics, and theories of civilization. Carter’s words give us a fascinating window into the revolutionary forces that upended the world of ordinary citizens in this era and demonstrate how the changes in daily life impacted personal experiences and intellectual pursuits as well as labor practices and living and working environments. Ferguson deftly explores a forgotten tailor’s varied responses to the many transformations that produced the world’s first modern society.

In The Composer as Intellectual, musicologist Jane Fulcher reveals the extent to which leading French composers between the World Wars were not only aware of but also engaged intellectually and creatively with the central political and ideological issues of the period. Employing recent sociological and historical insights, she demonstrates the extent to which composers, particularly those in Paris since the Dreyfus Affair, considered themselves and were considered to be intellectuals, and interacted closely with intellectuals in other fields. Their consciousness raised by the First World War and the xenophobic nationalism of official culture, some joined parties or movements, allying themselves with and propagating different sets of cultural and political-social goals. Fulcher shows how these composers furthered their ideals through the specific language and means of their art, rejecting the dominant cultural exclusions or constraints of conservative postwar institutions and creatively translating their cultural values into terms of form and style. This was not only the case with Debussy in wartime, but with Ravel in the twenties, when he became a socialist and unequivocally refused to espouse a narrow, exclusionary nationalism. It was also the case with the group called "Les Six," who responded culturally in the twenties and then politically in the thirties, when most of them supported the programs of the Popular Front. Others could not be enthusiastic about the latter and, largely excluded from official culture, sought out more compatible movements or returned to the Catholic Church. Like many French Catholics, they faced the crisis of Catholicism in the thirties when the church not only supported Franco, but Mussolini's imperialistic aggression in Ethiopia. While Poulenc embraced traditional Catholicism, Messiaen turned to more progressive Catholic movements that embraced modern art and insisted that religion must cross national and racial boundaries. Fulcher demonstrates how closely music had become a field of clashing ideologies in this period. She shows also how certain French composers responded, and how their responses influenced specific aspects of their professional and stylistic development. She thus argues that, from this perspective, we can not only better understand specific aspects of the stylistic evolution of these composers, but also perceive the role that their art played in the ideological battles and in heightening cultural-political awareness of their time.

In An Artisan Intellectual, Christopher Ferguson examines the life and ideas of English tailor and writer James Carter, one of countless and largely anonymous citizens whose lives dramatically transformed during Britain’s long march to modernity. Carter began his working life at age thirteen as an apprentice and continued to work as a tailor throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, first in Colchester and then in London. As the Industrial Revolution brought innovations to every aspect of British life, Carter took advantage of opportunities to push against the boundaries of his working-class background. He supplemented his income through his writing, publishing often unsigned books, articles, and poems on subjects as diverse as religion, death, nature, aesthetics, and theories of civilization. Carter’s words give us a fascinating window into the revolutionary forces that upended the world of ordinary citizens in this era and demonstrate how the changes in daily life impacted personal experiences and intellectual pursuits as well as labor practices and living and working environments. Ferguson deftly explores a forgotten tailor’s varied responses to the many transformations that produced the world’s first modern society.

Reveals the experience of reading in many cultures and across the agesCovers reading practices around the world from 19th-century Africa to the reading of music in the 20th-century USEmploys a wide range of methodologies a Showcases new research including reading at night; readers as writers and critics; and 21st-century neuroscienceChallenges previous models with new data on travelling readers, images of readers, and digital reading and fan culturesModern Readers explores the myriad places and spaces in which reading has typically taken place since the eighteenth century, from the bedrooms of the English upper classes, through large parts of nineteenth-century Africa and on-board ships and trains travelling the world, to twenty-first-century reading groups. It encompasses a range of genres from to science fiction, music and self-help to Government propaganda.

Using psychology to develop spaces that enrich human experience Place design matters. Everyone perceives the world around them in a slightly different way, but there are fundamental laws that describe how people experience their physical environments. Place science principles can be applied in homes, schools, stores, restaurants, workplaces, healthcare facilities, and the other spaces people inhabit. This guide to person-centered place design shows architects, landscape architects, interior designers, and other interested individuals how to develop spaces that enrich human experience using concepts derived from rigorous qualitative and quantitative research. In Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture, applied environmental psychologist Sally Augustin offers design practitioners accessible environmental psychological insights into how elements of the physical environment influence human attitudes and behaviors. She introduces the general principles of place science and shows how factors such as colors, scents, textures, and the spatial composition of a room, as well as personality and cultural identity, impact the experience of a place. These principles are applied to multiple building types, including residences, workplaces, healthcare facilities, schools, and retail spaces. Building a bridge between research and design practice, Place Advantage gives people designing and using spaces the evidence-based information and psychological insight to create environments that encourage people to work effectively, learn better, get healthy, and enjoy life.

Includes section "Book reviews."