{"product_id":"on-parchment-bruce-holsinger-9780300260212","title":"On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age","description":"\u003cb\u003eA sweeping exploration of the shaping role of animal skins in written culture and human imagination over three millennia \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Richly detailed and illustrated. . . . An engaging exploration of book history.\"--\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e For centuries, premodern societies recorded and preserved much of their written cultures on parchment: the rendered skins of sheep, cows, goats, camels, deer, gazelles, and other creatures. These remains make up a significant portion of the era's surviving historical record. In a study spanning three millennia and twenty languages, Bruce Holsinger explores this animal archive as it shaped the inheritance of the Euro-Mediterranean world, from the leather rolls of ancient Egypt to the Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Holsinger discusses the making of parchment past and present, the nature of the medium as a biomolecular record of faunal life and environmental history, the knotty question of \"uterine vellum,\" and the imaginative role of parchment in the works of St. Augustine, William Shakespeare, and a range of Jewish rabbinic writers of the medieval era. Closely informed by the handicraft of contemporary makers, painters, and sculptors, the book draws on a vast array of sources--codices and scrolls, documents and ephemera, works of craft and art--that speak to the vitality of parchment across epochs and continents. At the center of \u003ci\u003eOn Parchment\u003c\/i\u003e is the vexed relationship of human beings to the myriad slaughtered beasts whose remains make up this vast record: a relationship of dominion and compassion, of brutality and empathy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Bruce Holsinger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0300260210\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780300260212\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Yale University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/21\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 448\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 2.91lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.06h x 7.17w x 1.34d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 01\/01\/2023","brand":"Bruce Holsinger","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44080004038911,"sku":"9780300260212","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_de9fa72a-76d8-4222-9858-e19fca543c76.jpg?v=1685484393","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/on-parchment-bruce-holsinger-9780300260212","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}