Lydia Pyne

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. You might think that its name says it all. A bookshelf is just that - a shelf for books. It's the stuff of libraries, offices, and the bane of movers' existence. But every shelf is different and every bookshelf tells a different story. One bookshelf can creak with character in a bohemian coffee shop and another can groan with gravitas in the Library of Congress. Bookshelf takes an almost meta-approach to the object studies aim of Object Lessons: exploring the stacks as well as our bedside tables, writer and historian Lydia Pyne unpacks not just the material parts but the secret lives of bookshelves. Pyne finds bookshelves to be holders not just of books but of so many other things: values, vibes, and verbs that can be contained and displayed in the buildings and rooms of contemporary human existence. With a shrewd eye toward this particular moment in the history of books, Pyne takes the reader on a tour of the bookshelf that leads critically to this juncture: amid rumors of the death of book culture, why is the life of bookshelf in full bloom? Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.

Bookshelf

The Rise and Fall of the World's First Social Network

Postcards

Fables for the Anthropocene

Endlings

Kitaplik

How Phony Things Teach Us about Real Stuff

Genuine Fakes

'Lively, thought-provoking and consistently surprising. Lydia Pyne is the real deal.' Ed Yong, author of New York Times bestseller I Contain Multitudes Does an authentic Andy Warhol painting need to be painted by Andy Warhol? Why do audiences feel outraged when they find out that scenes from their beloved blockbuster documentaries are staged? Can people move past assuming that a diamond grown in a lab is a fake? What happens when a forged painting or manuscript becomes more valuable than its original? This is a book about genuine fakes – the curious and complex objects that provoke these very sorts of questions. Genuine fakes fall into the space between things that are real and things that are not; whether or not we think that those things are authentic is a matter of perspective. Unsurprisingly, the world is full of genuine fakes – full of things that defy simple categorisation. From stories of audacious forgeries to feats of technological innovation, historian Lydia Pyne explores how the authenticity of eight genuine fakes depends on their unique combinations of history, science and culture. The stories of art forgeries, fake fossils, nature documentaries, synthetic flavours, museum exhibits, Maya codices and Palaeolithic replicas show that genuine fakes are both complicated and change over time. Drawing from historical archives, interviews, museum exhibits and science fiction as well as her own research, Pyne brings each genuine fake to life through unexpected and often outrageous stories. Genuine Fakes will make readers think about all the unreal things they encounter in their daily lives, and why they invoke the reactions – surprise, wonder, understanding or annoyance – that they do.

How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff

Stephen J. Pyne

An illuminating investigation into the Pleistocene era's dual character as a geologic time and a cultural idea explains the global changes that created our world while describing how ideas about the Pleistocene have shaped intellectual culture, science and modern origins beliefs. 20,000 first printing.

Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene

The Last Lost World

DURANTE EL SIGLO XX, la búsqueda de nuestros ancestros abarcó cuatro continentes y dio como resultado el descubrimiento de cientos de fósiles. La mayoría de estos descubrimientos viven plácidamente en colecciones de museos, pero algunos se han convertido en celebridades, abrazados por amplias audiencias y considerados puntos de referencia para entender nuestros orígenes. En este libro, la divulgadora científica Lydia Pyne explora la forma en que siete esqueletos alcanzaron la fama. Pyne nos presenta al Neandertal de La Chapelle, prototipo de 100 años de caricaturas del hombre de las cavernas; al Hombre de Piltdown, "simio de los albores" de Charles Dawson, que fue aceptado por la comunidad científica durante cuarenta años, hasta que se reveló que no era sino un fraude cuidadosamente elaborado; al Niño de Taung, un pequeño cráneo cuya fama se debe a la tenacidad de su descubridor; unos huesos procedentes de China, mundialmente conocidos como el Hombre de Pekín, y que se perdieron para siempre en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, así como a la entrañable Lucy, que debe su nombre a la canción de los Beatles y que es un verdadero icono de la evolución, y al "hobbit" de 90 cm procedente de Flores, Indonesia, para cerrar con el Australopithecus sediba, un fósil de 2008 que tiene su propia cuenta de Twitter. Pyne recurre a la paleoantropología, a entrevistas, a exhibiciones de museo, ciencia ficción e incluso a la poesía, para traer a la vida a cada fósil. También captura su vida después de la vida, igual de importante y atractiva: cómo son descritos, exhibidos y compartidos entre las comunidades científicas y el público.

Los fósiles más famosos de la humanidad

Siete esqueletos

An irresistible journey of discovery, science, history, and myth making, told through the lives and afterlives of seven famous human ancestors Over the last century, the search for human ancestors has spanned four continents and resulted in the discovery of hundreds of fossils. While most of these discoveries live quietly in museum collections, there are a few that have become world-renowned celebrity personas—ambassadors of science that speak to public audiences. In Seven Skeletons, historian of science Lydia Pyne explores how seven such famous fossils of our ancestors have the social cachet they enjoy today. Drawing from archives, museums, and interviews, Pyne builds a cultural history for each celebrity fossil—from its discovery to its afterlife in museum exhibits to its legacy in popular culture. These seven include the three-foot tall “hobbit” from Flores, the Neanderthal of La Chapelle, the Taung Child, the Piltdown Man hoax, Peking Man, Australopithecus sediba, and Lucy—each embraced and celebrated by generations, and vivid examples of how discoveries of how our ancestors have been received, remembered, and immortalized. With wit and insight, Pyne brings to life each fossil, and how it is described, put on display, and shared among scientific communities and the broader public. This fascinating, endlessly entertaining book puts the impact of paleoanthropology into new context, a reminder of how our past as a species continues to affect, in astounding ways, our present culture and imagination.

Lydia Pyne

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