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Combining a clear overview of the changing nature of photographic thinking and practice in this period, with an exploration of key concepts, the result is the first coherent history of American photography, which examines issues such as the nature of photographic exploitation, experimental techniques, the power of the photograph to shock, and whether we should subscribe to the notion of a visual history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49519754871057,"sku":"GOR004200760","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49620605763857,"sku":"GOR004200580","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50341871649041,"sku":"CIN0192842714VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415532077329,"sku":"CIN0192842714G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0192842714.jpg?v=1750694979"},{"product_id":"rethinking-the-american-city-book-miles-orvell-9780812245615","title":"Rethinking the American City","description":"Whether struggling in the wake of postindustrial decay or reinventing themselves with new technologies and populations, cities have once again moved to the center of intellectual and political concern. Rethinking the American City brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplines to examine an array of topics that illuminate the past, present, and future of cities.  Rethinking the American City offers a lively and fascinating survey of contemporary thinking about cities in a transnational context. Utilizing an innovative format, each chapter opens with an iconic image and includes a brief and provocative essay on a single topic followed by an extended dialogue among all the essayists. Topics range from energy use, design, and digital media to transportation systems and housing to public art, urban ruins, and futurist visions. By engaging with key contemporary concerns—public and private space, sustainability, ethnic and racial divisions, and technology—this volume illuminates how global society has imagined American urban life.  Contributors: Klaus Benesch, Dolores Hayden, David M. Lubin, Malcolm McCullough, Jeffrey L. Meikle, David E. Nye, Miles Orvell, Andrew Ross, Mabel O. Wilson, Albena Yaneva.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730095153425,"sku":"NGR9780812245615","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081224561X.jpg?v=1761388767"},{"product_id":"after-the-machine-book-miles-orvell-9780878057559","title":"After the Machine","description":"With beautiful illustrations by Artemis Siourthas, Drip's Big Journey is a fun way to learn about an important part of our lives. Water is something we take for granted. We drink it, we take baths and showers in it, and we use it to cook and clean. But how much do we really know about water? Drip's Big Journey is author Magdalena Simonis's story about a happy droplet of water. At first, Drip doesn't know what is happening to her. But then Drip goes on a journey and experiences the world outside. As you go along her journey, you will learn with Drip about water cycle pathways and the links between the natural world outside and the versions of each drop of water we meet.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50025591144721,"sku":"CIN0878057552G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0878057552.jpg?v=1751012647"},{"product_id":"death-and-life-of-main-street-book-miles-orvell-9781469617558","title":"The Death and Life of Main Street","description":"For more than a century, the term \"Main Street\" has conjured up nostalgic images of American small-town life. Representations exist all around us, from fiction and film to the architecture of shopping malls and Disneyland. All the while, the nation has become increasingly diverse, exposing tensions within this ideal. In The Death and Life of Main Street, Miles Orvell wrestles with the mythic allure of the small town in all its forms, illustrating how Americans continue to reinscribe these images on real places in order to forge consensus about inclusion and civic identity, especially in times of crisis.    Orvell underscores the fact that Main Street was never what it seemed; it has always been much more complex than it appears, as he shows in his discussions of figures like Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Frank Capra, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. He argues that translating the overly tidy cultural metaphor into real spaces--as has been done in recent decades, especially in the new urbanist planned communities of Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany--actually diminishes the communitarian ideals at the center of this nostalgic construct. Orvell investigates the way these tensions play out in a variety of cultural realms and explores the rise of literary and artistic traditions that deliberately challenge the tropes and assumptions of small-town ideology and life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50111974506769,"sku":"CIN1469617552G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51027933102353,"sku":"NIN9781469617558","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1469617552.jpg?v=1752929198"},{"product_id":"real-thing-book-miles-orvell-9780807842461","title":"The Real Thing","description":"This is a perceptive study of the relationship between technology and culture. Orvell discusses Whitman and his world, then considers material culture, photography, and literature. Among the cultural figures discussed are writers Henry James, John Dos Passos, and James Agee; photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Margaret Bourke-White; and architect-designers Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright. A witty essay on the significance of junk in the 1930s concludes the book.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50329030033681,"sku":"CIN080784246XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51686682329361,"sku":"CIN080784246XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/080784246X.jpg?v=1763125025"},{"product_id":"death-and-life-of-main-street-book-miles-orvell-9780807835685","title":"The Death and Life of Main Street","description":"For more than a century, the term \"\"Main Street\"\" has conjured up nostalgic images of American small-town life. Representations exist all around us, from fiction and film to the architecture of shopping malls and Disneyland. All the while, the nation has become increasingly diverse, exposing tensions within this ideal. In Main Street, Miles Orvell wrestles with the mythic allure of the small town in all its forms, illustrating how Americans continue to reinscribe these images on real places in order to forge consensus about inclusion and civic identity, especially in times of crisis.   Orvell underscores the fact that Main Street was never what it seemed; it has always been much more complex than it appears, as he shows in his discussions of figures like Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Frank Capra, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. He argues that translating the overly tidy cultural metaphor into real spaces--as has been done in recent decades, especially in the new urbanist planned communities of Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany--actually diminishes the communitarian ideals at the center of this nostalgic construct. Orvell investigates the way these tensions play out in a variety of cultural realms and explores the rise of literary and artistic traditions that deliberately challenge the tropes and assumptions of small-town ideology and life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363149943057,"sku":"CIN0807835684VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51579428307217,"sku":"GOR014335623","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1469617552_500f55a5-023d-4628-b83d-a26e38557962.jpg?v=1764162262"},{"product_id":"flannery-o-connor-book-miles-orvell-9780878055340","title":"Flannery O'Connor","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50371968729361,"sku":"CIN0878055347G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0878055347.jpg?v=1750883199"},{"product_id":"flannery-o-connor-book-miles-orvell-9780878055425","title":"Flannery O'Connor","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50715316879633,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50715319009553,"sku":"CIN0878055428G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0878055428.jpg?v=1750883201"},{"product_id":"empire-of-ruins-book-miles-orvell-9780190491604","title":"Empire of Ruins","description":"Once symbols of the past, ruins have become ubiquitous signs of our future. Americans today encounter ruins in the media on a daily basis--images of abandoned factories and malls, toxic landscapes, devastating fires, hurricanes, and floods. In this sweeping study, Miles Orvell offers a new understanding of the spectacle of ruins in US culture, exploring how photographers, writers, painters, and filmmakers have responded to ruin and destruction, both real and imaginary, in an effort to make sense of the past and envision the future.  Empire of Ruins explains why Americans in the nineteenth century yearned for the ruins of Rome and Egypt and how they portrayed a past as ancient and mysterious in the remains of Native American cultures. As the romance of ruins gave way to twentieth-century capitalism, older structures were demolished to make way for grander ones, a process interpreted by artists as a symptom of America's \"creative destruction.\" In the late twentieth century, Americans began to inhabit a perpetual state of ruins, made visible by photographs of decaying inner cities, derelict factories and malls, and the waste lands of the mining industry. This interdisciplinary work focuses on how visual media have transformed disaster and decay into spectacles that compel our moral attention even as they balance horror and beauty. Looking to the future, Orvell considers the visual portrayal of climate ruins as we face the political and ethical responsibilities of our changing world.   A wide-ranging work by an acclaimed urban, cultural, and photography scholar, Empire of Ruins offers a provocative and lavishly illustrated look at the American past, present, and future.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50999622697233,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999625187601,"sku":"NIN9780190491604","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52488718057745,"sku":"NLS9780190491604","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0190491604.jpg?v=1772273273"},{"product_id":"real-thing-book-miles-orvell-9781469615363","title":"The Real Thing","description":"In this classic study of the relationship between technology and culture, Miles Orvell demonstrates that the roots of contemporary popular culture reach back to the Victorian era, when mechanical replications of  familiar objects reigned supreme and realism dominated artistic representation. Reacting against this genteel culture of imitation, a number of artists and intellectuals at the turn of the century were inspired by the machine to create more authentic works of art that were themselves \"real things.\" The resulting tension between a culture of imitation and a culture of authenticity, argues Orvell, has become  a  defining category in our culture.   The twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new preface by the author, looking back on the late twentieth century and assessing tensions between imitation and authenticity in the context of our digital age. Considering material culture, photography, and literature, the book touches on influential figures such as writers Walt Whitman, Henry James, John Dos Passos, and James Agee; photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, and Margaret Bourke-White; and architect-designers Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51028067680529,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51028070334737,"sku":"NIN9781469615363","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1469615363.jpg?v=1763481759"},{"product_id":"photography-in-america-book-miles-orvell-9780199314225","title":"Photography in America","description":"From scientific and documentary photography to the more purely aesthetic, the camera has become a part of American culture at every level. Photography in America explores the medium from a variety of angles - portrait, landscape, photojournalism, documentary, creative digital photography, and postmodern critique of the image - in order to help students understand its impact and meaning. Organized by genres and modes, this text traces the history of a medium considered central to American culture by examining its different uses, going back to its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century and looking forward to its future.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51323037450513,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51323040268561,"sku":"CIN0199314225G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53334220800273,"sku":"CIN0199314225VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199314225.jpg?v=1751323270"},{"product_id":"public-space-and-the-ideology-of-place-in-american-culture-book-miles-orvell-9789042025745","title":"Public Space and the Ideology of Place in American Culture","description":"We typically take public space for granted, as if it has continuously been there, yet public space has always been the expression of the will of some agency (person or institution) who names the space, gives it purpose, and monitors its existence. 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