Reaktion Books: 753 books

This timely study demonstrates how images of beauty and ugliness have constructed a visual history that records the artificial boundaries dividing "healthy" bodies from those that are "ill". "Gilman tells an excellent tale."—Jewish Chronicle

As a color, black comes in no other shades: it is a single hue with no variation, one half of a dichotomy. But what it symbolizes envelops the entire spectrum of meaning—good and bad. The Story of Black travels back to the biblical and classical eras to explore the ambiguous relationship the world’s...

“My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.” “The heart has reason that reason cannot know.” “The more I get to know President Putin, the more I get to see his heart and soul.” The heart not only drives our physical life, but throughout human history it has also been viewed...

This cultural, historical, and scientific exploration of sleeplessness by Eluned Summers-Bremner begins with the literature of ancient times, and finds its sufferers in prominent texts such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh, and the Bible. Moving to Romantic and Gothic literature,...

A hard chair. An embarrassing conversation. A mosquito bite. All these provoke in us a sense of discomfort, whether an irksome sensation or an experience of unpleasantness. While we normally define “discomfort” simply as a lack of comfort, it is unclear which came first—comfort or the lack of...

 Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have both signed bills into law with their left hands. And being left-handed certainly did not hold back the artistic achievements of Michelangelo or Raphael. And the dexterous guitar playing of Jimmi Hendrix may only have been aided by his southpaw tendencies. Left-handedness,...

Cheerfully offering themselves to passersby, berries have been juicy staples of the human diet for millennia. They are good luck charms and amulets to some, portents of doom to others. They inspire everything from lip gloss flavors to amusement parks (Knott’s Berry Farm, anyone?)—but eat some...

There are some of us who can’t even stand to look at them—and others who can’t live without them: chillies have been searing tongues and watering eyes for centuries in innumerable global cuisines. In this book, Heather Arndt Anderson explores the many ways nature has attempted to take the roofs...

What is mind? Still harder, what is consciousness? In this radical new book, eminent philosopher Ted Honderich tackles this great mystery in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience—and the rest of life. He proposes to replace all competing theories of consciousness with actualism that rests on data...

Gales, cyclones, blizzards, tornados, and hurricanes—few things demonstrate the awesome power of nature like a good storm. Devastating, diverse, and sometimes appearing completely out of nowhere, storms are also a source of both scientific and aesthetic wonder. In this book, John Withington takes...

Throughout history, swamps have been idealized and demonized, purged and protected. Today, they are simultaneously considered metaphorical places of evil, pestilence, and death, and treasured as diverse biological ecosystems teeming with life. Covering not only swamps and bogs but also marshes...

With her repulsive face and head full of living, venomous snakes, Medusa is petrifying—quite literally, since looking directly at her turned people to stone. Ever since Perseus cut off her head and presented it to Athena, she has been a woman of many forms: a dangerous female monster that had to...

From Chicago to Toronto to Shanghai, cities around the world have sprouted “iconic” buildings by celebrity architects like Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind that compete for attention both on the skyline and in the media. But in recent years, criticism of these extreme “gestural” structures,...

 Sand. Cacti. Lizards. Mirages. Deserts call to mind exotic places, a sense of adventure and freedom, but also thirst and desolation. In Desert, Roslynn D. Haynes takes a fresh look at this geographical feature and cultural entity as it becomes an increasingly threatened environment.   Considering...