内容简介：
Human beings are surrounded by surfaces: from our skin to faces, to the walls and streets of our homes and cities, to the images, books, and screens of our cultures and civilizations, to the natural world and what we imagine beyond. In this thought-provoking and richly textured book, Joseph A. Amato traces the human relationship with surfaces from the deep history of human evolution, which unfolded across millennia, up to the contemporary world. Fusing his work on Dust and On Foot, he shows how, in the last two centuries, our understanding, creation, control, and manipulation of surfaces has become truly revolutionary—in both scale and volume. With the sweep of grand history matched to existential concerns for the present, he suggests that we have become the surfaces we have made, mastered, and now control, invent, design, and encapsulate our lives. This deeply informed and original narrative, which joins history and anthropology and suggests new routes for epistemology and aesthetics, argues that surfaces are far more than superficial façades of deep inner worlds.
书籍目录：
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction. The Surface Is Where the Action Is
1 • We Are Surfaces and Surfaces Are Us
2 • The Grip and Grasp of Things
3 • Walls and Homes: The Ins and Outs of Life
4 • Decoration and Representation
5 • The Eye and Hand: The Mind and Science of Surfaces
6 • Courts, Gardens, and Mirrors: Seeing and Being Seen
7 • Fresh Faces and New Interfaces: From the Ground Floor Up
8 • Engineering the Small, Designing the Invisible
Conclusion. Encapsulations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Figure Credits
作者简介：
Joseph A. Amato is Emeritus Professor of History at Southwest Minnesota State University. He is the author of Dust (UC Press), On Foot: A History of Walking, Victims and Values: A History and Philosophy of Suffering, Rethinking Home: A Case for Local History (UC Press), and Jacob’s Well: A Case for Family History.
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