Copy 2 forms part of the David A. Hanson Collection of the History of Photomechanical Reproduction.

The 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.

When first opened to the public in 1853, New York's Crystal Palace created a sensation. Those who had seen London's Crystal Palace, the structure it was openly intended to emulate, argued that America's copy far surpassed it. Built in what is today Bryant Park, a four-acre site between 40th and 42nd Streets, the colossus of glass and steel indeed seemed poised to displace the British original in worldwide fame. Walt Whitman pronounced it "unsurpassed anywhere for beauty." Young Samuel Clemens--not yet Mark Twain--called it a "perfect fairy palace." Many perceived it as putting America, still in the thrall of European culture, on the map. "To us on this side of the water," wrote newspaperman Horace Greely, who had also visited London's Crystal Palace, "it was original." Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edwin G. Burrows offers the tale of what was proclaimed the country's "finest building." Centerpiece of the 1853 World's Fair, the New York Crystal Palace, like its London counterpart, was intended to display the country's latest technological achievements--as well as a few dubious cultural artifacts. But its primary function was simply to be seen and admired by the crowds that thronged to it; its very existence caused patriotic breasts to swell. And then suddenly it was gone. On October 5, 1858, merely five years after its construction, the Crystal Palace caught fire. Despite frantic attempts to save it, the magnificent dome was engulfed and within thirty minutes the entire structure reduced to a heap of smoldering debris, through which for days afterward bereft New Yorkers picked for mementos. With sumptuous images and lively storytelling The Finest Building in America brings back to life an extraordinary monument, one that briefly but wholeheartedly captured the imagination of a country, giving form to its dreams and ambitions, and then vanishing from view.

Of all the revolutionary changes brought about by the industrial age perhaps the most extraordinary and far-reaching was the transformation of light. Scientists described its hidden laws to the public for the first time. Artists found radical ways of depicting it. Inventors found new ways of making it. The lives of ordinary people changed forever as streets, shops, theaters, and their own homes were brilliantly illuminated, first by gas, and then, even more dazzlingly, by electricity. The story is told here for the first time in its entirety. The book describes the inventions still with us, like electric light, the microscope, and photography, as well as arcane reminders of a vanished world, such as the heliostat, the lithophane, and the magic lantern. It portrays a revolution in the arts: Caspar David Friedrich depicting twilight, the Impressionists conjuring up sunlight. And it debates the changing symbolism of light: the meaning of the Enlightenment, the light of God' truth, the nightmarish light of the furnace by night. Above all, it delineates the changing lives of people. Setting masterpieces of painting alongside contemporary scientific instruments, theater paraphernalia, and domestic articles, Light! captures the history of human perception, understanding, and ingenuity.