Gold: Nature and Culture

Description

Gold offers a lively, critical look at the cultural history of the 'noblest' of metals, examining the history of gold broadly across many cultures and time periods: from controversies surrounding its religious use to its place in the history of colonialism to its modern role in science, gold has played so many roles that it is difficult to fasten the metal itself in one's sights.Together, the book and its many images explore perceptions, myths, stories and facts about gold over the centuries and across the world, providing compelling examples from history, art, literature and film and bringing the story up to the present, a time when the anxieties surrounding gold have changed, but the persistent lust for gold continues to produce new moral and physical perils.

Rebecca Zorach is Mary Jane Crowe Professor of Art History at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Her previous books include The Passionate Triangle (2011) and Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (2005). Michael W. Phillips Jr is an independent film-maker, film critic and film programmer.