Mirror, Mirror - A History Of The Human Love Affair With Reflection (Paperback, New Ed)

The fascinating tale of one of the most remarkable inventions in human history and its effects on myth, religion, science, manners, and the arts.. Of all human inventions, the mirror is the one most closely connected to our own consciousness. As our first technology for contemplation of the self, the mirror is arguably as important an invention as the wheel and perhaps even more universal (the Incas, who had mirrors, did not invent wheels). Mirror Mirror is the fascinating story of the mirror's invention, refinement, and use in an astonishing range of human activities-from the bloodthirsty smoking gods of the Toltecs to the fantastic mirrored rooms wealthy Romans created for their orgies, to the mirror's key role in the use and understanding of light. Pendergrast spins tales of the 2,500-year mystery of whether Archimedes and his burning mirror really set faraway Roman ships on fire; the medieval Venetian glassmakers who first discovered the secret of making large, flat mirrors from clear glass, and for whom any attempt to leave their cloistered island was punishable by death; about Isaac Newton, whose experiments with sunlight on mirrors once left him blinded for three days; the