- Table View
- List View
The Arts Of China
by Michael Sullivan Shelagh VainkerInternationally renowned and a crucial classroom text, The Arts of China has been revised and expanded by the late Michael Sullivan, with Shelagh Vainker. This new, sixth, edition has an emphasis on Chinese art history, not as an assemblage of related topics, but as a continuous story. With updated attributions and dating throughout and a revised bibliography, it reflects the latest archaeological discoveries, as well as giving increased attention to modern and contemporary art and to calligraphy throughout China’s history, with additional discussions of work by women artists. Visual enhancements include all new maps, and approximately one hundred new color illustrations—bringing the total to well over four hundred color illustrations. Written in the engaging and lucid style that is Sullivan's hallmark, The Arts of China is readily accessible to general readers as well as to serious students of art history. Sullivan's approach remains true to the way the Chinese themselves view art, providing readers with a sense of the sweep of history through China's dynasties. This organizational strategy makes it easy for readers to understand the distinct characteristics of each period of art and to gain a clearer view of how Chinese art has changed in relation to its historical context. With many improvements that bring it fully up to date, The Arts of China will remain the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to the history of Chinese art.
The Arts of China (Fifth Revised and Expanded Edition)
by Michael SullivanFor the fourth edition of his much-heralded The Arts of China, last published in 1984, Michael Sullivan has thoroughly revised and expanded this classic history of Chinese art from the Neolithic period to the 1990s. He draws on archaeological discoveries in the last two decades of the twentieth century that have enriched scholars' understanding of both prehistoric and ancient Chinese civilizations. At the same time, research on more recent dynasties has led to fresh interpretations of well-documented historical events and artworks. Also, China's dramatic opening to the outside world since the 1980s has triggered an explosion of contemporary Chinese art, on which Sullivan is the foremost Western authority. Written in the engaging and lucid style that is Sullivan's hallmark, The Arts of China is readily accessible to general readers as well as serious students of art history. Discussing more than three millennia of Chinese artistic endeavor, Sullivan introduces not only artworks, but also the social, political, religious, and philosophical contexts in which they were created. This fourth edition has more than 380 illustrations; many are new and nearly half are in color. With this edition Sullivan has abandoned the Wade-Giles system of romanization in favor of the official Chinese Pinyin, now widely accepted by Western readers. These improvements assure that The Arts of China will remain the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to the history of Chinese art. For the fourth edition of his much-heralded The Arts of China, last published in 1984, Michael Sullivan has thoroughly revised and expanded this classic history of Chinese art from the Neolithic period to the 1990s. He draws on archaeological discoveries in the last two decades of the twentieth century that have enriched scholars' understanding of both prehistoric and ancient Chinese civilizations. At the same time, research on more recent dynasties has led to fresh interpretations of well-documented historical events and artworks. Also, China's dramatic opening to the outside world since the 1980s has triggered an explosion of contemporary Chinese art, on which Sullivan is the foremost Western authority. Written in the engaging and lucid style that is Sullivan's hallmark, The Arts of China is readily accessible to general readers as well as serious students of art history. Discussing more than three millennia of Chinese artistic endeavor, Sullivan introduces not only artworks, but also the social, political, religious, and philosophical contexts in which they were created. This fourth edition has more than 380 illustrations; many are new and nearly half are in color. With this edition Sullivan has abandoned the Wade-Giles system of romanization in favor of the official Chinese Pinyin, now widely accepted by Western readers. These improvements assure that The Arts of China will remain the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to the history of Chinese art.
The Arts of Cinema
by Martin SeelIn The Arts of Cinema, Martin Seel explores film’s connections to the other arts and the qualities that distinguish it from them. In nine concise and elegantly written chapters, he explores the cinema’s singular aesthetic potential and uses specific examples from a diverse range of films—from Antonioni and Hitchcock to The Searchers and The Bourne Supremacy—to demonstrate the many ways this potential can be realized. Seel’s analysis provides both a new perspective on film as a comprehensive aesthetic experience and a nuanced understanding of what the medium does to us once we are in the cinema.
The Arts Of Citizenship In African Cities
by Mamadou Diouf Rosalind FredericksThe Arts of Citizenship in African Cities pushes the frontiers of how we understand cities and citizenship and offers new perspectives on African urbanism. Nuanced ethnographic analyses of life in an array of African cities illuminate the emergent infrastructures and spaces of belonging through which urban lives and politics are being forged.
The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work
by Cheryl A. Giles Willa B. MillerPowerful and Life-Affirming, this watershed volume brings together the voices of pioneers in the field of Buddhist contemplative care from hospices and hospitals to colleges, prisons, and the military. Each first-person essay offers a distillation of the wisdom gained over years of experience, and vividly shows the lived experience of each pastoral worker. The stories told here are sure to inspire-whether you are a professional caregiver or are simply called to serve through caregiving. Quite simply, this is a book that can change lives.
The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work
by Cheryl A Giles Judith Simmer-Brown Willa B Miller Pat Enkyo O'HaraPowerful and life-affirming, this watershed volume brings together the voices of pioneers in the field of contemplative care--from hospice and hospitals to colleges, prisons, and the military. Illustrating the day-to-day words and actions of pastoral workers, each first-person essay in this collection offers a distillation of the wisdom gained over years of compassionate experience. The stories told here are sure to inspire--whether you are a professional caregiver or simply feel inclined toward guiding, healing, and comforting roles. If you are inspired to read this book, or even one touching story in it, you just might find yourself inspired to change a life.
The Arts of Contemplative Care
by Willa B Miller Pat Enkyo O'Hara Judith Simmer-Brown Cheryl A GilesPowerful and life-affirming, this watershed volume brings together the voices of pioneers in the field of contemplative care--from hospice and hospitals to colleges, prisons, and the military. Illustrating the day-to-day words and actions of pastoral workers, each first-person essay in this collection offers a distillation of the wisdom gained over years of compassionate experience. The stories told here are sure to inspire--whether you are a professional caregiver or simply feel inclined toward guiding, healing, and comforting roles. If you are inspired to read this book, or even one touching story in it, you just might find yourself inspired to change a life.
The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar West Germany (Social History, Popular Culture, And Politics In Germany)
by Jennifer M Kapczynski Caroline KitaScholars of democracy long looked to the Federal Republic of Germany as a notable “success story,” a model for how to transition from a violent, authoritarian regime to a peaceable nation of rights. Although this account has been contested since its inception, the narrative has proved resilient—and it is no surprise that the current moment of crisis that Western democracies are experiencing has provoked new interest in how democracies come to be. The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar West Germany casts a fresh look at the early years of this fledgling democracy and draws attention to the broad range of ways democracy and the democratic subject were conceived and rendered at this time. These essays highlight the contradictory and competing impulses that ran through the project to democratize postwar society and cast a critical eye toward the internal biases that shaped the model of Western democracy. In so doing, the contributions probe critical questions that we continue to grapple with today. How did postwar thinkers understand what it meant to be democratic? Did they conceive of democratic subjectivity in terms of acts of participation, a set of beliefs or principles, or perhaps in terms of particular feelings or emotions? How did the work to define democracy and its subjects deploy notions of nation, race, and gender or sexuality? As this book demonstrates, the case of West Germany offers compelling ways to think more broadly about the emergence of democracy. The Arts of Democratization offers lessons that resonate with the current moment as we consider what interventions may be necessary to resuscitate democracy today.
The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar West Germany (Social History, Popular Culture, And Politics In Germany)
by Jennifer M. Kapczynski Caroline KitaScholars of democracy long looked to the Federal Republic of Germany as a notable “success story,” a model for how to transition from a violent, authoritarian regime to a peaceable nation of rights. Although this account has been contested since its inception, the narrative has proved resilient—and it is no surprise that the current moment of crisis that Western democracies are experiencing has provoked new interest in how democracies come to be. The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar West Germany casts a fresh look at the early years of this fledgling democracy and draws attention to the broad range of ways democracy and the democratic subject were conceived and rendered at this time. These essays highlight the contradictory and competing impulses that ran through the project to democratize postwar society and cast a critical eye toward the internal biases that shaped the model of Western democracy. In so doing, the contributions probe critical questions that we continue to grapple with today. How did postwar thinkers understand what it meant to be democratic? Did they conceive of democratic subjectivity in terms of acts of participation, a set of beliefs or principles, or perhaps in terms of particular feelings or emotions? How did the work to define democracy and its subjects deploy notions of nation, race and gender or sexuality? As this book demonstrates, the case of West Germany offers compelling ways to think more broadly about the emergence of democracy. The Arts of Democratization offers lessons that resonate with the current moment as we consider what interventions may be necessary to resuscitate democracy today.
Arts of Dying: Literature and Finitude in Medieval England
by D. Vance SmithPeople in the Middle Ages had chantry chapels, mortuary rolls, the daily observance of the Office of the Dead, and even purgatory—but they were still unable to talk about death. Their inability wasn’t due to religion, but philosophy: saying someone is dead is nonsense, as the person no longer is. The one thing that can talk about something that is not, as D. Vance Smith shows in this innovative, provocative book, is literature. Covering the emergence of English literature from the Old English to the late medieval periods, Arts of Dying argues that the problem of how to designate death produced a long tradition of literature about dying, which continues in the work of Heidegger, Blanchot, and Gillian Rose. Philosophy’s attempt to designate death’s impossibility is part of a literature that imagines a relationship with death, a literature that intensively and self-reflexively supposes that its very terms might solve the problem of the termination of life. A lyrical and elegiac exploration that combines medieval work on the philosophy of language with contemporary theorizing on death and dying, Arts of Dying is an important contribution to medieval studies, literary criticism, phenomenology, and continental philosophy.
The Arts of EncounterThe Arts of Encounter: Christians, Muslims, and the Power of Images in Early Modern Spain (Toronto Iberic)
by Catherine InfanteImages of crosses, the Virgin Mary, and Christ, among other devotional objects, pervaded nearly every aspect of public and private life in early modern Spain, but they were also a point of contention between Christian and Muslim cultures. Writers of narrative fiction, theatre, and poetry were attuned to these debates, and religious imagery played an important role in how early modern writers chose to portray relations between Christians and Muslims. Drawing on a wide variety of literary genres as well as other textual and visual sources – including historical chronicles, travel memoirs, captives’ testimonies, and paintings – Catherine Infante traces the references to religious visual culture and the responses they incited in cross-confessional negotiations. She reveals some of the anxieties about what it meant to belong to different ethnic or religious communities and how these communities interacted with each other within the fluid boundaries of the Mediterranean world. Focusing on the religious image as a point of contact between individuals of diverse beliefs and practices, The Arts of Encounter presents an original and necessary perspective on how Christian-Muslim relations were perceived and conveyed in print.
The Arts of Imitation in Latin Prose: Pliny's Epistles/Quintilian in Brief
by Christopher WhittonImitation was central to Roman culture, and a staple of Latin poetry. But it was also fundamental to prose. This book brings together two monuments of the High Empire, Quintilian's Institutio oratoria ('Training of the orator') and Pliny's Epistles, to reveal a spectacular project of textual and ethical imitation. As a young man Pliny had studied with Quintilian. In the Epistles he meticulously transforms and subsumes his teacher's masterpiece, together with poetry and prose ranging from Homer to Tacitus' Dialogus de oratoribus. In teasing apart Pliny's rich intertextual weave, this book reinterprets Quintilian through the eyes of one of his sharpest readers, radically reassesses the Epistles as a work of minute textual artistry, and makes a major intervention in scholarly debates on intertextuality, imitation and rhetorical culture at Rome. The result is a landmark study with far-reaching implications for how we read Latin literature.
Arts of Impoverishment: Beckett, Rothko, Resnais
by Leo Bersani Ulysse DutoitWhy taunt and flout us, as Beckett's writing does? Why discourage us from seeing, as Mark Rothko's paintings often can? Why immobilize and daze us, as Alain Resnais' films sometimes will? Why, Leo Bersnai and Ulysse Dutoit ask, would three acknowledged masters of their media make work deliberately opaque and inhospitable to an audience? This book shows how such crippling moves may signal a profoundly original - and profoundly anti-modernist - renunciation of art's authority.
The Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment (New Advances in Crime and Social Harm)
by Leonidas K. CheliotisThe arts - spanning the visual, design, performing, media, musical, and literary genres - constitute an alternative lens through which to understand state-sanctioned punishment and its place in public consciousness. Perhaps this is especially so in the case of imprisonment: its nature, its functions, and the ways in which these register in public perceptions and desires, have historically and to some extent inherently been intertwined with the arts. But the products of this intertwinement have by no means been constant or uniform. Indeed, just as exploring imprisonment and its public meanings through the lens of the arts may reveal hitherto obscured instances of social control within or outside prisons, so too it may uncover a rich and possibly inspirational archive of resistance to them. This edited collection sheds light both on state use of the arts for the purposes of controlling prisoners and the broader public, and the use made of the arts by prisoners and portions of the broader public as tools of resistance to penal states. The book also includes a number of chapters that address arts-in-prisons programmes, making distinctive contributions to the literature on their philosophy, formation, operation, effectiveness, and research evaluation, as well as taking care to explore the politics surrounding and underpinning these multiple themes.
The Arts of India
by Ajit MookerjeeThis revised and enlarged edition of The Arts of India has over 150 impressive gravure and full-color illustrations. These include various important objects and monuments not usually seen in general surveys to supplement the many essential art milestones that this book features. It is also unique in beginning its visual survey with relics of India's stone age and in concluding the book with works from the nation's great folk tradition and selected paintings by modern artists.Here is a book with captions and a text that are highly readable blends of scholarly information and informal comment by an Indian art expert. This grants the reader special insights into the concepts that lie behind art so different from that of the West.Author Mookerjee has judiciously selected photographs which present the vast panorama of Indian art from its earliest beginnings. Examples of Indian folk arts and some works by 20th-century Indian artists round out this rich historic survey of over 5,000 years of continuous creativity-a collection of paintings, reliefs, statues, and architectural monuments from this sprawling sub-continent now divided into the lands of India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma and Afghanistan.
The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-Being
by Edited by Nancy Van Styvendale;J.D. McDougall;Robert Henry;and Robert Alexander InnesDrawing attention to the ways in which creative practices are essential to the health, well-being, and healing of Indigenous peoples, The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-Being addresses the effects of artistic endeavour on the “good life”, or mino-pimatisiwin in Cree, which can be described as the balanced interconnection of physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being. In this interdisciplinary collection, Indigenous knowledges inform an approach to health as a wider set of relations that are central to well-being, wherein artistic expression furthers cultural continuity and resilience, community connection, and kinship to push back against forces of fracture and disruption imposed by colonialism. The need for healing—not only individuals but health systems and practices—is clear, especially as the trauma of colonialism is continually revealed and perpetuated within health systems. The field of Indigenous health has recently begun to recognize the fundamental connection between creative expression and well-being. This book brings together scholarship by humanities scholars, social scientists, artists, and those holding experiential knowledge from across Turtle Island to add urgently needed perspectives to this conversation. Contributors embrace a diverse range of research methods, including community-engaged scholarship with Indigenous youth, artists, Elders, and language keepers. The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-Being demonstrates the healing possibilities of Indigenous works of art, literature, film, and music from a diversity of Indigenous peoples and arts traditions. This book will resonate with health practitioners, community members, and any who recognize the power of art as a window, an entryway to access a healthy and good life.
The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture
by Jerrilynn D. Dodds Abigail Krasner Balbale Maria Rosa MenocalNamed a Book of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement, this lavishly illustrated work explores the vibrant interaction among different and sometimes opposing cultures, and how their contacts with one another transformed them all. It chronicles the tumultuous history of Castile in the wake of the Christian capture of the Islamic city of Tulaytula, now Toledo, in the eleventh century and traces the development of Castilian culture as it was forged in the new intimacy of Christians with the Muslims and Jews they had overcome. The authors paint a portrait of the culture through its arts, architecture, poetry and prose, uniquely combining literary and visual arts. Concentrating on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the book reveals the extent to which Castilian identity is deeply rooted in the experience of confrontation, interaction, and at times union with Hebrew and Arabic cultures during the first centuries of its creation. Abundantly illustrated, the volume serves as a splendid souvenir of southern Spain; beautifully written, it illuminates a culture deeply enriched by others.
Arts of Japan
by Hugo MunsterbergArts of Japan was originally published by Tuttle Publishing in print form in 1957.<P><P> This book," in the words of the author, "represents an attempt to fill a long-felt need for an account of the history of Japanese art which would deal with the crafts as well as with the so-called fine arts and carry the story of Japanese art up to the present day instead of ending with the death of Hiroshige." The reader will quickly perceive how well this aim has been achieved. Here, in a stimulating and informative text and 121 well-selected plates -12 in full colour-is a dynamic treatment of the various influences that have shaped the course of Japanese art history in the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, and handicrafts. Discussed with challenging insight are the impact of the various Indian and Chinese schools, the pervasive influenceof Zen philosophy, and the many other artistic developments, giving the reader awell-rounded picture of the great significance and contribution of Japanese art. Special features of the book are sections on handicrafts and a chapter on prehistoric art. The book comes at a time when there is an awakened interest in Oriental art throughout the world. At the same time new methods of art research have been so expanded and refined that many interpretations of earlier writers have been made obsolete. Because of linguistic barriers, political upheavals, and the limited number of specialists, misconceptions have been especially numerous in the field of Oriental art. THE ARTS OF JAPAN admirably corrects these misinterpretations, consolidates the results of the most recent scholarship, and in one compact volume presents an up-to-date, authoritative survey of Japanese an throughout its long history and in all its colorful diversity.
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene
by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Elaine Gan Heather Anne Swanson Nils BubandtLiving on a damaged planet challenges who we are and where we live. This timely anthology calls on twenty eminent humanists and scientists to revitalize curiosity, observation, and transdisciplinary conversation about life on earth.As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent &“arts of living.&” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. The essays are organized around two key figures that also serve as the publication&’s two openings: Ghosts, or landscapes haunted by the violences of modernity; and Monsters, or interspecies and intraspecies sociality. Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste—in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch.Contributors: Karen Barad, U of California, Santa Cruz; Kate Brown, U of Maryland, Baltimore; Carla Freccero, U of California, Santa Cruz; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College; Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford U; Donna J. Haraway, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andreas Hejnol, U of Bergen, Norway; Ursula K. Le Guin; Marianne Elisabeth Lien, U of Oslo; Andrew Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Margaret McFall-Ngai, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Ingrid M. Parker, U of California, Santa Cruz; Mary Louise Pratt, NYU; Anne Pringle, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Deborah Bird Rose, U of New South Wales, Sydney; Dorion Sagan; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus U.
The Arts of Logistics: Artistic Production in Supply Chain Capitalism (Post*45)
by Michael Shane BoyleWe live in a world where nothing is untouched by supply chains—art included. In this major contribution to the study of contemporary culture and supply chains, Michael Shane Boyle has assembled a global inventory of aesthetics since the 1950s that reveals logistics to be a pervasive means of artistic production. The Arts of Logistics provides a new map of supply chain capitalism, scrutinizing how artists retool technologies designed for circulating commodities. What emerges is a magisterial account of the logistics revolution that foregrounds the role played by art in the long downturn of global capitalism. With chapters on art produced from technologies including ships, barrels, containers, and drones, Boyle narrates the long history of art's connection to logistics, beginning in the transatlantic slave trade and continuing today in Silicon Valley's dreams of automation. The global reach of the artists considered reflects the geographies of supply chain capitalism itself. In taking stock of how performance, sculpture, and popular culture are entangled in trade and racialized labor regimes, Boyle profiles influential work by artists such as Christo and Allan Kaprow alongside that of contemporary figures including Cai Guo-Qiang and Selina Thompson. This incisive study demonstrates that art and logistics are linked by the infrastructures and violence that keep supply chains moving.
Arts of Perception: The Epistemological Mentality of the Spanish Baroque, 1580-1720
by Jeremy RobbinsArts of Perception offers a new account of a key period in Spanish history and culture and a fundamental reassessment of its major writers and intellectuals, including Gracián, Quevedo, Calderón, Saavedra Fajardo, López de Vega, and Sor Juana. Reading these figures in the context of European thought and the new science, and philosophy, the study considers how they developed various ‘arts of perception’ - complex perceptual strategies designed to overcome and exploit epistemic problems to enable an individual to act effectively in the moral, political, social or religious sphere. The study takes as its subject the distinctive epistemological mentality behind such ‘arts of perception’. This mentality was fostered by the creative interaction of scepticism and Stoicism, and found expression in the key concepts ser/parecer and engaño/desengaño. The work traces the emergence, development, and impact of these concepts on Spanish thought and culture. As well as offering new interpretations of specific major figures, Arts of Perception offers an interpretation of the mentality of an entire culture as it made the fraught transition to intellectual modernity. As such it ranges over numerous discourses and formative contexts and provides a wealth of new material which will be of use to all those seeking to understand and interpret the literature, culture and thought of Golden Age Spain. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Bulletin of Spanish Studies.
Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300-1600 (The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics #19)
by Randolph Starn Loren PartridgeThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived</DIV
The Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England: Memorial Cultures of the Post Reformation (Material Readings in Early Modern Culture)
by Andrew Gordon Thomas RistThe early modern period inherited a deeply-ingrained culture of Christian remembrance that proved a platform for creativity in a remarkable variety of forms. From the literature of church ritual to the construction of monuments; from portraiture to the arrangement of domestic interiors; from the development of textual rites to drama of the contemporary stage, the early modern world practiced 'arts of remembrance' at every turn. The turmoils of the Reformation and its aftermath transformed the habits of creating through remembrance. Ritually observed and radically reinvented, remembrance was a focal point of the early modern cultural imagination for an age when beliefs both crossed and divided communities of the faithful. The Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England maps the new terrain of remembrance in the post-Reformation period, charting its negotiations with the material, the textual and the performative.
The Arts of Thailand
by Luca Invernizzi Tettoni Steve Van BeekFor over a thousand years, Thailand has been a cultural crossroads for the artistic traditions of India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Indonesia, gradually evolving a unique style of artistic expression all its own. Based on exhaustive museum, library, and temple research, The Arts of Thailand covers every major form and period of Thai art and provides a complete overview of one of the world's richest artistic traditions.
The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan (Synthesis)
by Victoria LeeThe first in-depth study of Japanese fermentation science in the twentieth century.The Arts of the Microbial World explores the significance of fermentation phenomena, both as life processes and as technologies, in Japanese scientific culture. Victoria Lee’s careful study documents how Japanese scientists and skilled workers sought to use the microbe’s natural processes to create new products, from soy-sauce mold starters to MSG, vitamins to statins. In traditional brewing houses as well as in the food, fine chemical, and pharmaceutical industries across Japan, they showcased their ability to deal with the enormous sensitivity and variety of the microbial world. Charting developments in fermentation science from the turn of the twentieth century, when Japan was an industrializing country on the periphery of the world economy, to 1980 when it had emerged as a global technological and economic power, Lee highlights the role of indigenous techniques in modern science as it took shape in Japan. In doing so, she reveals how knowledge of microbes lay at the heart of some of Japan’s most prominent technological breakthroughs in the global economy. At a moment when twenty-first-century developments in the fields of antibiotic resistance, the microbiome, and green chemistry suggest that the traditional eradication-based approach to the microbial world is unsustainable, twentieth-century Japanese microbiology provides a new, broader vantage for understanding and managing microbial interactions with society.