Book Description
The deceptively simple supermarket choice echoed in the title symbolizes the dilemma of a society on a collision course with the planet's life-support systems. Do we clearcut forests, process pulp, and bleach it with chlorine to make paper bags? Or do we make a pact with demon hydrocarbon, refining ancient sunlight into handy plastics? About half the total volume of America's municipal solid waste is packaging--at least 300 pounds per person each year--and the "upstream" costs in energy and resources used to make packaging are even more alarming.
In this fascinating look at the world of packaging, writer Daniel Imhoff and photographer/designer Roberto Carra give consumers, product designers, and policymakers the information we need to take steps toward a more sustainable future. They delve into the histories and life cycles of packaging materials and look at the countless ways that packaged goods shape our culture. Using case studies, they explore the positive trends that are changing packaging, including producer responsibility and "take-back" laws being enacted in Europe; the eco-design movement; plant-based plastics; labeling to disclose the ecological and social impacts of products; and producing and consuming locally and in bulk versus the wasteful global exchange of single-serving containers. Carra's remarkable color photographs illustrate both the important functions of packaging and its many unintended consequences around the globe.
Despite recent advances, the packaging problem keeps growing, Imhoff warns. Real solutions must incorporate new (or rediscovered) ways of producing, distributing, packaging, consuming, reusing, and reprocessing products and materials. As consumers, there's much we can do, and Paper or Plastic offers a checklist for consumer action, along with resources for information on products, programs, and policy options. It's one book that is truly worth the recycled paper it's printed on.
Customer Reviews:
Book review of Paper or Plastic by Scott Carlson.......2007-06-25
There are environmental causes that stir the emotions--the plight of whales and baby seals, the fate of redwoods, or the metastasis of suburbia. But Daniel Imhoff would point out that the most pervasive and fastest-growing environmental problem is so commonplace it's invisible: packaging. Styrofoam containers from a fast-food meal, the anti-theft blister packaging that encapsulates retail electronics, or the common aluminum can and plastic bottle are all part of a waste stream that composes some 300 pounds of garbage per person per year, headed straight from the shelf to the landfill.
Apparently mindful of the fact you can read only so much about polystyrene peanuts and polyethylene bottles, Imhoff has organized his book into punchy little essays, short case studies, and colorful charts that survey the extent of the packaging problem, along with a range of solutions that some companies are trying.
Imhoff points out that packaging is increasingly the product itself--a method corporations use to market feelings of familiarity, uniformity, or purity. To illustrate, he would have you consider evolution of the egg: It is nature's perfect packaged food source, with its container, the shell, being durable yet entirely biodegradable. For years, eggs came in molded paper pulp. Now the most expensive of them frequently come in molded plastic trays, derived from petroleum products. (Nature's Promise, which markets eco-friendly eggs, requests on its tray that you recycle the plastic packaging, even though few municipalities take such containers.) And lately eggs come as pre-scrambled "pasteurized real egg product," in capped cartons at premium prices--far removed from the simple egg. The packaging will be with us decades, maybe eons, after the egg has been cracked, scrambled, and eaten.
As its title implies, packaging choices for environmentalists are dilemmas, with few simple solutions: Would you rather bag your groceries in the products of clear-cut forests or petroleum? He holds up companies such as Aveda, the Minneapolis-based cosmetics company, as pioneers. Aveda worked to eliminate toxic or less-recyclable plastics from its packaging line, and strove for 100 percent recycled plastics in its containers, risking profit margins in the process. Other companies are experimenting with novel products, such as biodegradable plastics.
But even these are merely "less bad" solutions in a world full of packaging waste. Imhoff concedes that packaging offers a good deal of convenience and that making upright choices involves giving up some of that convenience. He recommends carrying a mug and a reusable water bottle, eating in instead of getting takeout, buying in bulk (which reduces packaging waste), buying from local farmers and farmers' markets, and toting around cloth bags. When the cashier asks the question in the book's title, Imhoff suggests, hand over a cloth bag and say, "Neither."
I would recommend this book........2007-01-11
This book is excellent and a very easy read. It does a great job of breaking down the different products and their impact on the environment. There are great examples of companies that are doing their part to help reduce the negative impact on the environment.
Well-organized and informative.......2006-07-06
If every person in America understood the energy, chemicals, natural resources and money that went into creating packages, it's likely our consumption habits would dramatically change. Imhoff does a great job of detailing the hazards and challenges of packaging, without being preachy - he lets the statistics and facts tell the story. This book informs, amazes, and startles the reader.
Overwhelming statistics that will shock you into action.......2006-04-10
I really liked this book for telling me about things that I haden't thought of before, although I thought myself to be an evironmentally aware person. Some of the statistics are breathtaking. Facts are supported by visuals and an attractive layout. As a general reader with no specific education in the environmental science field, it was a bit dry for me at times, but well worth the read. I made lasting changes in my every day life due to the book, and can't get the statistics about plastic bottles and only small amounts of the actually recyclables making it to a "next life" beyond the garbage dump out of my head. Quite life changing.
Amazon.com
Weighing in at 750-plus pages, Adrian Johns's sturdy tome is several books in one. At one level, it is a close study of print culture in early modern England, a time of civil war in which social and civic relations were being remade from the mores of feudal monarchy to a politics approximating modern democracy. In this transformation, the printing press was an essential vehicle for empowering the common people, and control over the publishing industry was contested among several parties--the government, authors, booksellers, the printers themselves. At another level, Johns's book is a study of the role of printing in the formation of scientific knowledge, a means whereby scientific discoveries could be widely circulated and codified. At another, it is a contribution to the sociology of communication, concentrating on changes in English society thanks to the press, through which a literate but remarkably isolated people who, an 18th-century writer observed, knew no more of the city and countryside outside their immediate neighborhood than they did of France or Russia, could become aware of the larger world--often over the objections of power-makers like Sir Francis Bacon, who urged that the people not be given access to information that did not immediately concern them.
Johns's book is dense with facts and quotations from the contemporary literature, but his prose is lightened by keen observation and telling anecdotes. (In one, Benjamin Franklin tried to make his way across Europe as a journeyman printer but grew so disgusted at the copious drinking of his fellow tradesmen that he switched careers, an accident that would change the course of history.) The Nature of the Book will be especially useful to those now tracking the communications revolution of the late 20th century, in which new technologies are once again changing power relations and supplanting old media. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
In The Nature of the Book, a tour de force of cultural history, Adrian Johns constructs an entirely original and vivid picture of print culture and its many arenas—commercial, intellectual, political, and individual.
"A compelling exposition of how authors, printers, booksellers and readers competed for power over the printed page. . . . The richness of Mr. Johns's book lies in the splendid detail he has collected to describe the world of books in the first two centuries after the printing press arrived in England."—Alberto Manguel, Washington Times
"[A] mammoth and stimulating account of the place of print in the history of knowledge. . . . Johns has written a tremendously learned primer."—D. Graham Burnett, New Republic
"A detailed, engrossing, and genuinely eye-opening account of the formative stages of the print culture. . . . This is scholarship at its best."—Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor
"The most lucid and persuasive account of the new kind of knowledge produced by print. . . . A work to rank alongside McLuhan."—John Sutherland, The Independent
"Entertainingly written. . . . The most comprehensive account available . . . well documented and engaging."—Ian Maclean, Times Literary Supplement
Customer Reviews:
mistitled.......2002-03-21
Adrian Johns tells us much less about the nature of the book than about the origins of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge, the physical conditions in which books were printed and distributed, and the architecture of the Royal Stationers Hall. These subjects are lovingly treated with, as another reviewer noted, Johns's prolix style -- not only could the book have shaved a third of its length were the language pared down even slightly, but there could easily have been 3 very interesting books made of this one, and none of them would have borne the title 'The Nature of the Book.'
Johns's ostensible purpose in tying all these themes together is to attack Elizabeth Eisenstein's theory that fixity is an inherent effect of the advent of print culture; however his argument isn't supported by the evidence he so ponderously provides. He does not in fact compare print culture with manuscript culture, as an earlier reviewer stated; and without this comparison it's hard to say Eisenstein's theory suffers any damage as a result of Johns's book. His point is merely that fixity (of authorship, edition, form) was a problem for authors and printers in seventeenth century London, one that the Royal Society and the Company of Stationers both worked to solve; if anything, this rather supports Eisenstein's theory, since her point is that prior to the printing press the very notion of 'fixity' was impossible to imagine, nevermind realize.
Despite the fact that the book is mistitled and its unifying argument is not especially choate, it does contain a wealth of interesting information about the gritty physicality of printing in seventeenth century London, and its later chapters are excellent intellectual/scientific history. I only wish the editors at the University of Chicago Press, whom Johns praises so highly in his acknowledgements, had been a bit tougher with the manuscript.
Why do we trust books?.......2001-10-09
We uncritically accept that a book which says it has been written by so-and-so an author is, in fact, an accurate representation of that particular author's ideas. We believe that a book claiming to be published by such-and-such a publisher on this-or-that date has, in truth, come from that claimed publisher on that given date.
Most historians of the printed word have considered our acceptance of these claims as a pre-destined result of the factory-like uniformity of print. A printed page can be exactly reproduced over and over again through printing, and this consistency lead the reading public to trust the claimed provenance of a printed materials in comparison to manuscripts.
Adrian Johns' "Nature of the Book" disputes the inevitability of a trusted print culture. It did not arise as a mechanistic result of the printing process. Rather, Johns' argues that it was the individual and collective efforts of printers, booksellers, authors, and others who successes and failures prepared Western society to accept a print culture based on propriety and trust.
Focusing on the Stationers' Guild of London in the mid-to-late 1600s and the British Royal Society of the early-to-mid 1700s, Johns highlights critical conflicts, collusions, competitions, cooperations, and crises which directly contributed to the trusted print culture we share today. Johns is an historian of science and he uses the development of experimental philosophy as championed by the Royal Society as a prime example of how diverse interest groups struggled with the dilemma of trusting books the printed word.
In nine carefully focused chapters covering over 600 pages, the author builds his case that there was nothing inevitable about how our print culture evolved. The corollaries to our modern struggles over the veracity of electronic media are obvious. Western society has been in this position before and Johns does a wonderful job of telling the tale. If history is going to repeat itself, it will ultimately be the meatware rather than the hardware which defines the trustworthiness of our electronic information culture.
Different.......2001-01-24
(I used this book in a graduate seminar on early modern printed books at the Newberry Library. It's worth delving into if you are seriously interested in the subject.)
Overturning Elizabeth Eisenstein and Marshal McLuhan, Johns argues that the emergence of print technology did not stabilize and thus give authority to texts -- on the contrary, print culture could be even messier than manuscript culture. Authority and fixity were attributes and values that had to be constructed and ascribed to printed texts over a substantial period of time.
The book reads like it is the product of a gang of Umberto Ecos--avoiding a grand narrative of 17th century English print culture, Johns describes famous and marginal characters as well as their physical milieu with incredible detail. If this doesn't fascinate you, it will at least inform you with a more concrete grasp of the subject than one normally receives from academics.
On the other hand, the length of the book can become tedious and its argument elusive. Avoiding a grand, teleological narrative is one thing; losing sight of your thesis is another. But if you don't mind working with this book in interpreting a ton of data and fascinating events, you will find it a rewarding read.
disappointing.......2001-01-08
I bought this in the expectation of something a bit like Haskell's 'History and its Images': an examination of the ways that people have come to terms with books and other printed materials in the past, and the ways that it differs from what we do today. And I believe that that is also what Johns wanted to write, and maybe even believes he has written. Unfortunately, he hasn't: early modern readers never really get a look in, and in spite of (or even because of?) more than 600 pages of main text, he fails ever to get to the point. In essence, this is not really a book, so much as large pile of stuff - it is as if, having done all his research, he could not bear to throw anything away.
Thus, for instance, we get to learn a great deal about the finer social points of the printers/publishers guild in London, even about who should pay for dinner. But this information is on a scale, and left in a state, where it is more interesting to someone researching a novel set in a printing workshop in England in the middle of the seventeen century, than to someone wondering what, in 1650, was going through the head of someone settling down with a newly acquired book.
Similarly, we learn a great about the publishing arrangements and politics of the Royal Society, and in particular about the 'Philosophical Transactions', as a lead up to a description of the bust-up between Christiaan Huygens and Robert Hooke over the invention of the spring escapement watch movement (David Landes' account, in 'Revolution in Time', which I would have thought definitive, and fairly well known - it is certainly more concise, and much clearer about the technical issues of who may or may not have been in the right, and to what extent - is not cited in the bibliography). But again this chapter leads nowhere, except to a conclusion about how the virtues of the Royal Society and the Philosophical Transactions, and the model of science they embodied, were not 'obvious' to contemporaries. This would be an interesting point to argue (it is certainly one with which I would be fascinated to engage). It might well be possible to build a case that a society that included Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and many similar others among its members, corresponded regularly with the most learned men in the rest of Europe, and published a journal where articles were admitted for publication only after review by members, had no obvious virtues as a clearing house for scientific information in comparision to, e.g., a journal that solicited materials to be dropped of at a specified coffee house, but I'm afraid Johns is going to have to work a bit harder if I am to accept such a claim seriously as an argument rather than as wishful thinking. (He even admits that all competitors to the Philosophical Transactions took it as a model, and also that most of them failed completely and almost immediately, though he does not discuss in satisfactory detail why).
This book does, however, convince me that there is a fascinating book to be written on the relationship between readers and texts in early modern Europe, a book that follows up properly on a sentence that tantalized me in the introduction: 'It seems that nobody in 1660's Europe built an air-pump sucessfully by relying solely on Boyle's textual description of the engine. Some we know, tried; all, we think, failed.' There is also the book that is actually to be found at the core of this one: a monograph on the the issues an author in early modern Europe had to deal with in getting a book published, and securing credit for his ideas. Such a monograph would be the result of throwing away the stuff about, for instance, who paid for dinner at Stationers Hall, and tightening up the text and the supporting materials (Johns - who, in passing, accuses technical philosophers of 'canting speech' - has a pompously prolix style: rewritten, the text could easily, among other things, lose a quarter of its length).
Revisit every assumption you brought to the act of reading.......1998-11-28
This rich study asks the reader to revisit every assumption s/he brings to the act of reading a book. Provides a sound history of the process of book publishing, revealing what a wonder it is that books actually manage to be published. A wonderful account of the history of intellectual property, copyright, authors' claims, and the rise of print culture in Europe (particularly England) during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. All in all, an enlightening read.
Amazon.com
Since ancient times, humans have sought ways to preserve the ephemeral beauty of nature. The centuries-old technique of nature printing yields some of the most exquisite results, appearing something like a cross between pressed-flower pictures and rubber-stamped designs. And the process itself somewhat resembles a hybrid of the two crafts: plant materials are gathered and pressed for a few minutes, then inked and covered with a sheet of paper or fabric to transfer the image. Unlike pressed-flower pictures, which require relatively flat blossoms, nature prints can utilize more extravagant blooms like roses and carnations, which can be printed without pressing. Other natural materials also work: fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, leaves, seashells, feathers, even fish and spiderwebs.
Laura Donnelly Bethmann provides solid background on the basics of the technique, as well as an interesting history of the craft. She explains how to gather and prepare specimens, offers a variety of printing methods, and discusses design principles. The final chapter comprises about a dozen simple projects, including gift-wrap, notecards, and T-shirts. Bethmann's own nature prints as well as those of several other artists are scattered throughout the pages; one wishes that more of these lovely, delicate artworks were more prominently featured in this otherwise worthwhile book. --Amy Handy
Book Description
Nature printing, or recreating images from the natural world, is a direct, inexpensive process with possibilities as varied as nature itself. Apply ink or paint to leaves, flowers, herbs, or fruit and print life-sized images onto paper, fabric, and other surfaces to create captivating works of art.
In full-color, simple instructions, NATURE PRINTING covers tools, techniques, and tips for dozens of beautiful projects, including printed fabric for curtains, pillows, linens, quilts, and clothing; stationery, cards, and invitations; nature journals; and more. The book includes instructions for decorative finishes and frames, and it offers nature printing projects for children.
Customer Reviews:
I've Been Had.......2006-03-17
I purchased 2 books on nature printing...NATURE PRINTING WITH HERBS,FRUIT AND FLOWERS and NATURE PRINTING 30 PROJECTS ETC.
Silly me, I thought these were 2 different books but alas they are the same exact book page for page printed under different titles.Isn't there some kind of protection for customers concerning that...don't get me wrong I love the books but I wasted money...one would have been enough!
Elizabeth F. Broberg
This is the book I've been looking for!.......2000-07-12
Do you love nature? Do you have an artisic urge? Do you think creating art is difficult or expensive? If you love nature and want to bring it to your fabrics, walls, note cards, etc. then this book would surely delight you! The Victorians loved "capturing" nature in all its innocence, beauty, and comfort. They created so many wonderful collections, decorations, etc. This wonderful addition to the craft world shows the nature lover how to use nature to enhance the tranquility of your home or surroundings. The author shows you how to use an endless bounty from the natural world plus a few printing inks and paints to illustrate your world with the panorama of nature. The techniques within this volume are so enchanting yet simple enough for children to to accomplish as well. A wonderful way to enoy summer days!
Great for rubber stampers & paper artists, inspirational.......2000-05-03
This is a must have book for anyone who collects plants and other nature items. It is also a great find for rubber stampers and other paper artists. The book is in full-color and has many illustrations.
The book starts out with a brief history of nature printing. It then details collecting, transporting, and pressing a wide variety of plants. Then paper & materials for printing and the printing process itself are discussed.
Specialized techniques for printing objects such as spider webs, shells, feathers, gyotaku (fish rubbing), Taku-ga (rubbing picture), bubble printing & cyanotype are demonstrated as well. All the instructions are easy to follow.
There are also many wonderful projects including fabric painting, wall printing & note cards. The resource guide is a nice bonus. This inexpensive craft is easy enough a child, yet rewarding for adults.
What a way to capture nature!!.......1999-09-07
This is the most amazing book! I love nature and wanted to find a way to tie that love into an art form. This is definitely THE book for my purposes. Very detailed and inspiring with wonderful instructions and visual examples. I can't wait to take my next watercolor class and try these techniques on my work!
My favorite Storey title!.......1999-04-25
Nature Printing is an enormously inspiring book. After reading it I grabbed paints, paper, and children and headed out into the backyard. We had a great time being creative and finding plants and bits of nature that had, until then, gone unnoticed. Some of the prints we created were surprisingly beautiful. It was a great learning experience and a whole lot of fun!
Product Description
Ever since (and well before) Godine published her first book, A Farmer's Alphabet in 1981, Mary Azarian has been hard at work cutting soft pine in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Last year she was awarded what she richly deserves: the Caldecott Medal. This retrospective volume is not intended to illustrate a particular story, but to display the full range of her abilities, and it is arranged (as seems logical to us) according to the seasons she celebrates in her art. In all, we have reproduced fifty of her hand-colored woodcuts in full color and an equal number in black and white. The book is large format because that is the way she works and that's what does her work justice. The text, written by her friend Lilias Hart, discusses not only her work, but also what life is like in the rigorous reaches of Northern Vermont.
It would be unfortunate if Mary's acheivement was relegated to the realm of "illustration." She is not an "illustrator" but an artist who works in wood, in a technique that has been all but forgotten by modern practitioners. She does it as well as anyone of her generation, and this ambitious, oversize book will show the full amplitude and genius of her work.
Customer Reviews:
woodcut art.......2007-07-30
Azarian has a wonderful "primitive" style that belies her technical mastery of woodblock printmaking. A feast for the eyes. Book itself is well made.
Book Description
There’s no greater source of creative inspiration than the living palette of the natural world. From the Ogden Nature Center, a 127-acre wildlife sanctuary and educational foundation in Ogden, Utah, comes a collection of inventive ideas for using nature’s bounty to produce beautiful prints. By applying ink or paint to such materials as leaves, flowers, and bark, then transferring the image to paper, fabric, or another medium, you can make marvelously unique designs. There are some 30 projects in all, including Leaf-Printed Gift Wrap and Etched Glassware, accompanied by full-color photographs and explanatory text. Techniques include direct printing, gyotaku (Japanese fish rubbing), imprinting, hammer printing, and collage. Special tips on using color and printing on fabric, pottery, or glassware assure excellent results.
Book Description
850 images for use by graphic artists, craftspeople, and other hobbyists depict a wide selection of attractive, nature-related subjects: animals of all types, including fish, amphibians and dinosaurs; exotic birds, waterfowl and other avian species; roses, wildflowers and much more. Eye-catching spots can be easily reduced or enlarged to suit any decorative need.
Average customer rating:
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John Hamilton
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ASIN: 1591975433 |
Books:
- Pokemon Diamond & Pearl: Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides)
- Prairie Children And Their Quilts: 14 Little Projects That Honor the Pioneer Spirit
- Presentations: A Passion for Gift Wrapping
- Professional Painted Finishes: A Guide to the Art and Business of Decorative Painting (Whitney Library of Design)
- Professional Pattern Grading for Women's, Men's, and Children's Apparel
- Quick and Clever Handmade Cards (Quick and Clever)
- Quilts in a Material World: Selections from the Winterthur Collection
- Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel
- Reading Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques
- Reflow Soldering Processes and Troubleshooting: SMT, BGA, CSP and Flip Chip Technologies
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