{"title":"Philipp Blom","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the insightful historical narratives of Philipp Blom. Explore themes of culture, philosophy, and society through his accessible and engaging writing. A must-read for history enthusiasts and curious minds alike.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"to-have-and-to-hold-book-philipp-blom-9780140294804","title":"To Have and to Hold","description":"TO HAVE AND TO HOLD \"is to the history of collecting what Lytton Strachey's EMINENT VICTORIANS is to the Victorian age: not the most thorough treatment, but the most fun.\"  It is a completely engrossing, idiosyncratic, ruminative, meandering, delightful, episodic exploration of the collecting mind from mediaeval times to the present - full of eccentrics, visionaries, heroes and nutcases.  It is, like Alberto Manguel's A HISTORY OF READING or Charles Sprawson's THE HAUNTS OF THE BLACK MASSEUR, itself something of a work of art.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49517687931153,"sku":"GOR002721107","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50026561110289,"sku":"GOR012439996","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53150467293457,"sku":"GOR003318256","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0140294805.jpg?v=1751443253"},{"product_id":"vertigo-years-book-philipp-blom-9780297852322","title":"The Vertigo Years","description":"Europe, early in the twentieth century: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions.  The hot topics of the day - terrorism and globalisation, immigration, consumerism, the lack of moral values and rivalling superpowers - could make one forget that it is a century ago that this era vanished in the trenches of the Somme, of Ypres, and of Passchendaele.  Or did it?  The closer one looks, the more this world seems like ours: feminism and quantum thedory, atonal music and democratisation, mass communication and commercial branding, genetics, state-sponsored genocide, colonialism, consumerism and racism, radioactivity and psychoanalysis are all terms first used during this period. This was a time radically unlike the Victorian era that preceded it, a time in which old certainties broke down and many people lost their bearings. At the heart of this vibrant Europe, was a contradiction that would cause its collapse: the new, modern world of mass production, urban life, technological warfare and a rapidly growing working class was still ruled by men - Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicolas II, and the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Francis Joseph among them - who thought in the chivalric and paternalistic categories of earlier generations, prefering the image of dashing cavalry officers to the prosaic slaughter of the machine gun, and national mythology to political cohesion and democracy.  The eventual scope of the catastrophe often obscures the fact that the great cultural divide in Europe's history lies before 1914.  This book will bring to life the immediacy of the lives and issues of this fascinating and flawed period.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49519312929041,"sku":"GOR005078043","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49647456682257,"sku":"GOR003812183","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52628355875089,"sku":"GOR004319520","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0297852329.jpg?v=1751037883"},{"product_id":"vertigo-years-book-philipp-blom-9780753825983","title":"The Vertigo Years","description":"Europe, early in the twentieth century: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. But did this era vanish in the trenches of the Somme, of Ypres, and of Passchendaele? Look closer and the more this world seems like ours: feminism, democratisation, commercial branding, genetics, consumerism and racism, radioactivity and psychoanalysis are all terms first used during this period. This was a time in which old certainties broke down and many people lost their bearings. At the heart of this vibrant Europe, was a contradiction that would cause its collapse: the new, modern world of mass production, urban life, technological warfare and a rapidly growing working class that was still ruled by men who preferred the image of dashing cavalry officers to the prosaic slaughter of the machine gun, and national mythology to political cohesion and democracy. The eventual scope of the catastrophe often obscures the fact that the great cultural divide in Europe's history lies before 1914. This book brings to life the immediacy of the lives and issues of this fascinating and flawed period.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49521799168273,"sku":"GOR002267795","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728942211345,"sku":"NGR9780753825983","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50338445852945,"sku":"CIN0753825988G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50358224584977,"sku":"CIN0753825988A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50446120583441,"sku":"CIN0753825988VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50614484893969,"sku":"GOR002307509","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0753825988.jpg?v=1750785084"},{"product_id":"nature-s-mutiny-book-philipp-blom-9781509890439","title":"Nature's Mutiny","description":"Europe where the sun dares scarce appear  For freezing meteors and congealed cold.' - Christopher Marlowe   In this innovative and compelling work of environmental history, Philipp Blom chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, a crisis that would transform the entire social and political fabric of Europe.   While hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, by the end of the sixteenth century the temperature plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbours were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and ‘frost fairs’ were erected on a frozen Thames – with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city.   Recounting the deep legacy and sweeping consequences of this ‘Little Ice Age’, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had ineradicably changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, Blom brilliantly shows how they also gave rise to the growth of European cities, the appearance of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment.    A sweeping examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49525296955665,"sku":"GOR010281516","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49735753400593,"sku":"NGR9781509890439","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49777398546705,"sku":"CIN1509890432G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50055681442065,"sku":"CIN1509890432VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50130138956049,"sku":"GOR010854167","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52830039408913,"sku":"GOR011608563","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1509890432.jpg?v=1750957698"},{"product_id":"nature-s-mutiny-book-philipp-blom-9781509890415","title":"Nature's Mutiny","description":"Blom’s hypothesis is forceful, and has the potential to be both frightening and, if you hold it up to the light at just the right angle, a little optimistic. The idea can be put like this: climate change changes everything' John Lanchester, New Yorker   In this innovative and compelling work of environmental history, Philipp Blom chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, a crisis that would transform the entire social and political fabric of Europe.   While hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, by the end of the sixteenth century the temperature plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbours were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and ‘frost fairs’ were erected on a frozen Thames – with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city.   Recounting the deep legacy and sweeping consequences of this ‘Little Ice Age’, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had ineradicably changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, Blom brilliantly shows how they also gave rise to the growth of European cities, the appearance of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment.    A sweeping examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49537108017425,"sku":"GOR009819952","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49732297785617,"sku":"NGR9781509890415","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50985464037649,"sku":"GOR010332991","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51771862352145,"sku":"GOR014396946","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1509890416.jpg?v=1751406496"},{"product_id":"wines-of-austria-book-philipp-blom-9780571195336","title":"The Wines of Austria","description":"A recent and renewed interest in Austrian wines has seen them beginning to appear on the lists of serious wine merchants. This book looks at the history of Austrian wines from ea rly Austrian wine culture to the recent explosion of experimentation, investment and innovation. The reader is introduced to the main wine-growing areas, their landscape and the wines they produce. For each region the author list the top growers, whose wines are representative of the best in Austria. He explores these estates and their wine-makers in fascinating detail and includes some of his own wine recommendations.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49571125592337,"sku":"GOR002031318","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49654174646545,"sku":"GOR006583017","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49786748731665,"sku":"CIN0571195334G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51700509540625,"sku":"CIN0571195334A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571195334.jpg?v=1750782832"},{"product_id":"wicked-company-book-philipp-blom-9780465014538","title":"A Wicked Company","description":"The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbachs Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history.  Holbachs house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  In A Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes of this exceptional group of friends.  All brilliant minds, full of wit, courage, and insight, their thinking created a different and radical French Enlightenment based on atheism, passion, reason, and truly humanist thinking.  A startlingly relevant work of narrative history, A Wicked Company forces us to confront with new eyes the foundational debates about modern society and its future.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49572414783761,"sku":"GOR007148629","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50354703368465,"sku":"CIN0465014534G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51189974466833,"sku":"CIN0465014534VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0465014534.jpg?v=1751135710"},{"product_id":"fracture-book-philipp-blom-9780857892218","title":"Fracture","description":"When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: the old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.   In Fracture, critically acclaimed historian Philipp Blom argues that in the aftermath of the First World War, citizens of the West directed their energies inwards, launching into hedonistic, aesthetic and intellectual adventures of self-discovery. It was a period of both bitter disillusionment and visionary progress. From Surrealism to Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West; from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to theoretical physics, and from Art Deco to Jazz and the Charleston dance, artists, scientists and philosophers grappled with the question of how to live and what to believe in a broken age.   Morbid symptoms emerged simultaneously from the decay of the First World War: progress and innovation were everywhere met with increasing racism and xenophobia. America closed its borders to European refugees and turned away from the desperate poverty caused by the Great Depression. On both sides of the Atlantic, disenchanted voters flocked to Communism and fascism, forming political parties based on violence and revenge that presaged the horror of a new World War.   Vividly recreating this era of unparalleled ambition, artistry and innovation, Blom captures the seismic shifts that defined the interwar period and continue to shape our world today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49576053244177,"sku":"GOR009011224","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730294350097,"sku":"NGR9780857892218","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50468089921809,"sku":"GOR013789479","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50624616857873,"sku":"GOR011487950","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51601022714129,"sku":"CIN0857892215G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857892215.jpg?v=1759231217"},{"product_id":"wicked-company-book-philipp-blom-9780297858188","title":"Wicked Company","description":"Imagine the world's most brilliant and charismatic people around one dinner table, the greatest philosophers, novelists, scientists, actors and political activists - and imagine them joking one moment and then immersed in intense discussion broken by bursts of laughter.  Imagine also that this astonishing company was defined not only by who is at the table, but by what they say: opinions radical enough to land them all in prison. The decade-long flourishing, in the 1760s, of friendship and radical philosophy in Baron Holbach's Paris salon is a seminal moment in Western history, a moment of astonishing radicalism in European thought, so uncompromising and bold that its vision has still not be fully realised.  Frequented by a group of men and women who were united by their love of intellectual freedom, by their contempt for the conventional and often by the danger of persecution into which they put themselves, Holbach's house became the epicentre of freethinking, a place like no other in eighteenth-century Europe.  The guests would talk until deep into the night, dreaming up a bold, new way of doing things, of thinking about the world and about society - a way we have come to call modernity. The book focuses on the early life of four young men, two philosophers (Hume and Rousseau) and two philosophes (Didenot and Holbach) as they set out with a mixture of desperation and optimism to travel and study.  Philipp Blom's new book dazzlingly combines biography with the history of ideas and the birth of modernism.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49580970639633,"sku":"GOR004247687","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49590737895697,"sku":"GOR010824164","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49611682316561,"sku":"GOR009314263","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0297858181.jpg?v=1751101877"},{"product_id":"vertigo-years-book-philipp-blom-9780465020294","title":"The Vertigo Years","description":"Europe, 1900-1914: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The major topics of the day: terrorism, globalization, immigration, consumerism, the collapse of moral values, and the rivalry of superpowers. The twentieth century was not born in the trenches of the Somme or Passchendaele,but rather in the fifteen vertiginous years preceding World War I. In this short span of time, a new world order was emerging in ultimately tragic contradiction to the old. These were the years in which the political and personal repercussions of the Industrial Revolution were felt worldwide: Cities grew like never before as people fled the countryside and their traditional identities science created new possibilities as well as nightmares education changed the outlook of millions of people mass-produced items transformed daily life industrial labourers demanded a share of political power and women sought to change their place in society,as well as the very fabric of sexual relations. From the tremendous hope for a new century embodied in the 1900 World's Fair in Paris to the shattering assassination of a Habsburg archduke in Sarajevo in 1914, historian Philipp Blom chronicles this extraordinary epoch year by year. Prime Ministers and peasants, anarchists and actresses, scientists and psychopaths intermingle on the stage of a new century in this portrait of an opulent, unstable age on the brink of disaster. Beautifully written and replete with deftly told anecdotes,  The Vertigo Years  brings the wonders, horrors, and fears of the early twentieth century vividly to life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49581028868369,"sku":"GOR011086908","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50354930974993,"sku":"CIN0465020291A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50354933793041,"sku":"CIN0465020291G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50802389909777,"sku":"NGR9780465020294","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51002609860881,"sku":"NIN9780465020294","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51373288325393,"sku":"CIN0465020291VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0465020291.jpg?v=1750741031"},{"product_id":"encyclopedie-book-philipp-blom-9780007149469","title":"Encyclopedie","description":"The story of one of the most revolutionary books in history  the Encyclopedie and the young men who risked everything to write it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49585150198033,"sku":"GOR004734895","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49590481715473,"sku":"GOR001501897","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50505825124625,"sku":"GOR011387906","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007149468.jpg?v=1751388498"},{"product_id":"wicked-company-book-philipp-blom-9781780220109","title":"Wicked Company","description":"Dazzling recreation of the world of radical free-thinkers in 18th-century France  From the 1750s to the 1770s, the Paris salon of Baron d'Holbach was an epicenter of debate, intellectual daring and revolutionary ideas, uniting around one table vivid personalities from Denis Diderot, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, the radical ex-priest Guillaume Raynal, the Italian Count Beccaria and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who later turned against his friends.  It was a moment of astonishing racicalism in European thought, so uncompromising and bold that it was viciously opposed by rival philosophers such as Voltaire and the turncoat Rousseau, and finally suppressed by Robespierre and his Revolutionary henchmen.   In Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes and characters of this exceptional group of friends and brings to life their startling ideas, largely forgotten by historians. Brilliant minds full of wit, courage and humanity, their thinking created a different and radical French Enlightenment based on atheism, passion, empathy and a compellingly insightful perspective on society. Their ideas force us to confront the debates about our own society and its future with new eyes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49609531654417,"sku":"GOR013325058","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733430739217,"sku":"NGR9781780220109","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49850489438481,"sku":"GOR005749964","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53032740913425,"sku":"GOR008152072","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B0092HZCMS.jpg?v=1751215797"},{"product_id":"vertigo-years-book-philipp-blom-9780465011162","title":"The Vertigo Years","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49612586746129,"sku":"GOR007360361","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49655459938577,"sku":"GOR013450812","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49984895058193,"sku":"CIN0465011160G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51877629853969,"sku":"CIN0465011160VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53482379510033,"sku":"CIN0465011160A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0465011160.jpg?v=1751198159"},{"product_id":"to-have-and-to-hold-book-philipp-blom-9780713994766","title":"To Have and to Hold","description":"Collecting is one of the most common pastimes, and can often become a passion bordering on the obsessive. Our familiarity with the pursuit, however, obscures the questions at its heart: why do people amass things that have no use? What drives them to spend time and money getting hold of a single stamp, an unusual beermat, or a rare doll, only to put it in a folder or on a shelf? Why do we feel the need to possess these items, and why is it not enough to know that they exist in a museum, or somewhere else? In this book, Philip Blom delves into the history of the collecting passion and explores it through a series of interlinked portraits, stories and discoveries, each characteristic of a period. What emerges is the story of a human quest more intimately linked with our primal needs than many would have thought possible. Investigating the history of collecting from the Renaissance to our day, Blom shows a multiplicity of worlds: the scientific cabinets of the 15th century and an Italian scholar employed as dragon slayer; the \"Ark\" of the Tradescants and a friend's betrayal; Emperor Rudolf II's Prague collection as \"practised alchemy\"; the macabre art of Dr. Frederik Ruysch, first among embalmers; and the over-flowing menagerie of Sir Hans Sloane's curiosities, later to become the foundation of the British Museum. He also discusses the strange fate of Angelo Soliman, a black man at the Habsburg court who was stuffed and exhibited with wild animals; explores the rise of scientific collecting and classification, and parallel to it, the explosion of collecting as the private passion of hundreds of thousands; and introduces Robert Opie, whose collection of half a million items of household packaging now fills his home in London and two overflowing warehouses in Gloucestershire besides. Out of this glittering diversity of material Blom distils the themes underlying this seemingly elusive pursuit; conquest and possession, and the awareness of our own mortality. The instinct to collect, he says, is rooted in our very being: \"Saving the world, or a world, preserving history or genius, saintliness or innocence, touching something beyond our random existence is a labour of love, a constant ritual, one face of the desire to be authentic, to be human\".","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49660967878929,"sku":"GOR003229134","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49789902291217,"sku":"GOR001478291","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0713994762.jpg?v=1751327579"},{"product_id":"twilight-of-the-romanovs-book-philipp-blom-9780500516683","title":"Twilight of the Romanovs","description":"Twilight of the Romanovs opens a door onto the world of pre-revolutionary Russia in original photographs taken during the last decades of Romanov rule. 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Recounting the deep legacy and far-ranging consequences of this “Little Ice Age,” acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had suddenly, but ineradicably, changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, they gave rise to the growth of European cities, the emergence of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. 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Over wine-soaked dinner parties, the finest intellectuals of the Western world,figures such as Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, Horace Walpole, and Benjamin Franklin,matched wits and scandalized one another with their own ever-more-provocative ideas. Writers of genius all, full of wit and courage (but also personal contradictions, doubts, conflicts of conscience, and their fair share of open arguments and love affairs), this group of friends embodied an astonishing radicalism in European thought, so uncompromising and bold that its bracing, liberating, humanist vision has still not been fully realized. 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Shell shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: the old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.In  Fracture , critically acclaimed historian Philipp Blom argues that in the aftermath of World War I, citizens of the West directed their energies inwards, launching into hedonistic, aesthetic, and intellectual adventures of self-discovery. It was a period of both bitter disillusionment and visionary progress. From Surrealism to Oswald Spengler's  The Decline of the West  from Fritz Lang's  Metropolis  to theoretical physics, and from Art Deco to Jazz and the Charleston dance, artists, scientists, and philosophers grappled with the question of how to live and what to believe in a broken age. 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On both sides of the Atlantic, disenchanted voters flocked to Communism and fascism, forming political parties based on violence and revenge that presaged the horror of a new World War.Vividly recreating this era of unparalleled ambition, artistry, and innovation, Blom captures the seismic shifts that defined the interwar period and continue to shape our world today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50478250983697,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50478251245841,"sku":"CIN0465022499G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51694468137233,"sku":"CIN0465022499VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52950353051921,"sku":"CIN0465022499A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0465022499.jpg?v=1751292587"},{"product_id":"subjugate-the-earth-book-philipp-blom-9781509561322","title":"Subjugate the Earth","description":"Subjugate the Earth traces the biography of a strange idea: the idea that human beings can subdue nature and rule over it. Born in Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilization, the idea of subjugating the Earth was included in the Bible, reached Europe through Christianity, and spread to the entire world through colonialism. 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