Silk : A History in Three Metamorphoses - Aarathi Prasad

Silk

A History in Three Metamorphoses

By: Aarathi Prasad

Paperback | 19 November 2024

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $24.99

$24.50

or 4 interest-free payments of $6.13 with

Available for Backorder. We will order this from our supplier however there isn't a current ETA.

There is not just one story of silk. In silk is science, history and mythology. In silk is the future.Aarathi Prasad’s Silk is a gorgeous new history weaving together the story of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia.

Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global history, natural history, and future of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia.

For silk, prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its potential. As the technologies it has inspired – from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms – continue to be developed in laboratories around the world, they are now also beginning to offer a desperately needed, sustainable alternative to the plastics choking our planet.

Prasad's Silk is a cultural and biological history from the origins and ancient routes of silk to the biologists who learned the secrets of silk-producing animals, manipulating the habitats and physiologies of moths, spiders and molluscs. Because there is more than one silk, there is more than one story of silk. More than one road, more than one people who discovered it, and wove its threads.

From the moths of China, Indonesia and India to the spiders of South America and Madagascar, to the silk-producing molluscs of the Mediterranean, Silk is a book rich in the passionate connections made by women and men of science to the diversity of the animal world. It is an intoxicating mix of biography, intellectual history and science writing that brings to life the human obsession with silk.

More in Asian History

The Battle of Long Tan - Peter FitzSimons

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
Cactus Pear For My Beloved : A Family Story from Gaza - Samah Sabawi
The Shortest History of Japan - Lesley Downer

RRP $27.99

$11.25

60%
OFF
The Golden Road : How Ancient India Transformed the World - William Dalrymple
World History : From the Ancient World to the Information Age - DK
Wild Swans : Three Daughters Of China - Jung Chang

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Chickenhawk - Robert Mason

Paperback

RRP $22.99

$21.90

Genghis Khan : And the Making of the Modern World - Jack Weatherford
Tokyo Vice : A Western Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan - Jake Adelstein
Political Violence in Turkey, 1975-1980 : The State at Stake - Benjamin Gourisse
Reframing India in World History - Lavanya Vemsani