The book starts by analyzing the problem of how we can see so well despite what, to an engineer, might seem like horrendous defects of our eyes. An explanation is provided by a new way of thinking about seeing, the "sensorimotor" approach. In the second part of the book the sensorimotor approach is extended to all sensory experience. It is used to elucidate an outstanding mystery of consciousness, namely why, unlike today's robots, humans actually can feel things. The approach makes predictions and opens research avenues, among them the phenomena of change blindness, sensory substitution, and "looked but failed to see", as well as results on color naming and color perception and the localisation of touch on the body.

A wonderful assortment of bells from around the world identified and shown in over 590 color photographs includes bells of many sizes, shapes, styles, colors, and textures, from school bells, cowbells, and bicycle bells to souvenir bells, commemoratives, and figurines. Basic bell types include open mouth bells, crotals, gongs, mechanical bells, and chimes. Bells for every taste and inclination!

Written as a confessional letter to his son, an 18th century opera singer recounts how his gift for sound led him on an astonishing journey to Europe’s celebrated opera houses and reveals how he came to raise a son who by all rights he never could have sired. The celebrated opera singer Lo Svizzero was born in a belfry high in the Swiss Alps where his mother served as the keeper of the loudest and most beautiful bells in the land. Shaped by the bells’ glorious music, he possessed an extraordinary gift for sound. But when his preternatural hearing was discovered—along with its power to expose the sins of the church—young Moses Froben was cast out of his village with only his ears to guide him in a world fraught with danger. Rescued from certain death by two traveling monks, he finds refuge at the vast and powerful Abbey of St. Gall. There, he becomes the protégé of the Abbey’s brilliant yet repulsive choirmaster, Ulrich. But it is this gift that will cause Moses’ greatest misfortune: determined to preserve his brilliant pupil’s voice, Ulrich has Moses castrated. Now, he will forever sing with the exquisite voice of an angel—a musico—yet castration is an abomination in the Swiss Confederation, and so he must hide his shameful condition from his friends and even from the girl he has come to love. When his saviors are exiled and his beloved leaves St. Gall for an arranged marriage in Vienna, he decides he can deny the truth no longer and he follows her—to sumptuous Vienna, to the former monks who saved his life, to an apprenticeship at one of Europe’s greatest theaters, and to the premiere of one of history’s most beloved operas. Like the voice of Lo Svizzero, The Bells is a sublime debut novel that rings with passion, courage, and beauty.

Bell strokes toll out the death of an unknown man, and summon Lord Wimsey to East Anglia to solve the mystery.

Beth Hertzler works alongside her beloved Aunt Lizzy in their dry goods store, and serving as contact of sorts between Amish craftsmen and Englischers who want to sell the Plain people’s wares. But remorse and loneliness still echo in her heart everyday as she still wears the dark garb, indicating mourning of her fiancé. When she discovers a large, intricately carved scene of Amish children playing in the snow, something deep inside Beth’s soul responds and she wants to help the unknown artist find homes for his work–including Lizzy’s dry goods store. But she doesn’t know if her bishop will approve of the gorgeous carving or deem it idolatry. Lizzy sees the changes in her niece when Beth shows her the woodworking, and after Lizzy hunts down Jonah, the artist, she is all the more determined that Beth meets this man with the hands that create healing art. But it’s not that simple–will Lizzy’s elaborate plan to reintroduce her niece to love work? Will Jonah be able to offer Beth the sleigh ride she’s always dreamed of and a second chance at real love–or just more heartbreak?

Why were so many religious images and objects broken and damaged in the course of the Reformation? Margaret Aston's magisterial new book charts the conflicting imperatives of destruction and rebuilding throughout the English Reformation from the desecration of images, rails and screens to bells, organs and stained glass windows. She explores the motivations of those who smashed images of the crucifixion in stained glass windows and who pulled down crosses and defaced symbols of the Trinity. She shows that destruction was part of a methodology of religious revolution designed to change people as well as places and to forge in the long term new generations of new believers. Beyond blanked walls and whited windows were beliefs and minds impregnated by new modes of religious learning. Idol-breaking with its emphasis on the treacheries of images fundamentally transformed not only Anglican ways of worship but also of seeing, hearing and remembering.