‘Elegant and multi-focal. Glorious!’ Simon Garfield<\/b><\/p>\n
‘It will make you look at specs with fresh eyes’ New Statesman<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
‘Lively, engaging and admirably wide-ranging’ The Times<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
‘Fascinating’ Observer<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
The humble pair of glasses might just be one of the world’s greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that might otherwise appear a blur. And yet how much do many of us really think about these things perched on the ends of our noses?<\/p>\n
Through the Looking Glasses<\/i> traces the fascinating story of spectacles: from their inception as primitive visual aids for monkish scribes right through to today’s designer eyewear and the augmented reality of Google Glass. There are encounters with ingenious medieval Italian glassmakers, myopic Renaissance rulers and spectacle-makers, as well as the silent movie star Harold Lloyd, the rock’n’roller Buddy Holly and the full-screen figure of Marilyn Monroe. This is a book about vision and the need for humanity to see clearly, and where the impulse to improve our eyesight has led us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The humble pair of glasses might just be one the world’s greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that might otherwise appear a blur. And yet how much do many of us even really think about these things perched on the ends of our noses? In this eye-opening history Travis Elborough traces the fascinating true story of spectacles: from their inception as primitive visual aids to monkish scribes right through to today’s designer eyewear and the augmented reality of Google Glass. And taking in along the way such delights as lorgnettes, monocles, pince-nez, tortoise-shell ‘Windsors’ and Ray Ban aviator shades. Peering into early theories about how the eye worked, he considers the theological and philosophical arguments about the limits of perception by Greek thinkers, Roman statesmen and Arab scholars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[142],"product_tag":[2192,1645,349],"class_list":["post-98204","product","type-product","status-publish","product_cat-general-non-fiction","product_tag-fashion-society","product_tag-inventions-inventors","product_tag-social-cultural-history","pa_book_author-elborough-travis","pa_cover-paperback","pa_dewey-617-52209-edition23","pa_imprint-abacus","pa_language-english","pa_pages-8497","pa_publisher-abacus","pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","first","onbackorder","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n