A book that is thought-provoking and entertaining, amusing and serious, wise and easy-to-understand, all at the same time. Rudolfsky's The Unfashionable Human Body is such a work. It's a discussion of apparel in the broadest sense of the word and how it has reflected and shaped attitudes to the human body (having often been literally used to shape the body itself). Text is accompanied by scores of compelling and fascinating illustrations. The overall message is one of the continual distortion and mutilation of the body and bodily functions, the atrophy of sense, the unbalancing of natural rhythms. The argument is powerful and well-presented, the author's sweep of knowledge and range of argument tremendously impressive. He discusses early Christian attitudes to sex and clothing, and traces the crucial relationship between the two throughout history. It's interesting that some Christian paintings depicted Adam and Eve as having the genitals of both sexes simultaneously before the fall, while others conceived of them as having no genitals at all. One most compelling section of the book is his discussion of the decoration and deliberate deformation of the body, ranging from tattooing to devices to deform the shape of the head, to corsets (which displace the internal organs) to the foot-binding of pre-revolutionary China. Rudolfsky points out that most of our own feet are deformed by our shoes: for example, the two big toes should be parallel and touching when placed side by side; with most of us, however, they curve inward. According to the most popular shape of shoes, the big toe should be in the middle of the foot, not on the side. Attitudes to hair are another fascinating chapter in human history. The battle against long hair in the recent past is still familiar to most of us (and is not yet over, either); we're probably less familiar with the dramatic changes through the ages; each fashion, of course, being the only one that was socially acceptable in its time.

Argues that becoming an influential Christian and a force for good in the world often means being different and doing unfashionable things with regard to money, lifestyle, personal possessions, and relationships.

A commentary on the instability of ideas and ideals that shape our way of life. Examines five basic functions: eating, sleeping, sitting, cleansing, and bathying.

"Unbearable Weight is brilliant. From an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, in engaging, jargonless (!) prose, Bordo analyzes a whole range of issues connected to the body—weight and weight loss, exercise, media images, movies, advertising, anorexia and bulimia, and much more—in a way that makes sense of our current social landscape—finally! This is a great book for anyone who wonders why women's magazines are always describing delicious food as 'sinful' and why there is a cake called Death by Chocolate. Loved it!"—Katha Pollitt, Nation columnist and author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (2001)

Presenting the history of corsetry and body sculpture, this edition shows how the relationship between fashion and sex is closely bound up with sexual self-expression. It demonstrates how the use of the corset rejected the role of the passive, maternal woman, so that in Victorian times it was seen as a scandalous threat to the social order.

Catholic Christianity was not only essential to the making of England but provides the best foundation -- intellectual, moral and social -- for the culture of and England remade.Aidan Nichols, a Dominican theologian and a pariotic Englishman, offers a renewed Catholicism as a form for the public life of society in its overall integrity. The result challenges comparison with William Temple's Christianity and the social order (1942) and T.S. Eliot's Notes towards a definition of culture (1948)... The remarkable thing about this book is how different Englsih culture looks once you have read it. -- Jonathan Clark, TLS 5509, p. 7