Three hundred years ago, an unprecedented explosion in inexpensive, disposable print--newspapers, pamphlets, informational publications, artistic prints--ushered in a media revolution that forever changed our relationship to information. One unusually perceptive man, an obscure Dutch/British still life painter named Edward Collier, understood the full significance of these momentous changes and embedded in his work secret warnings about the inescapable slippages between author and print, meaning and text, viewer and canvas, perception and reality. Working around 1700, Collier has been neglected, even forgotten, precisely because his secret messages have never been noticed, let alone understood. Until now. In Mr. Collier's Letter Racks, Dror Wahrman recovers the tale of an extraordinary illusionist artist who engaged in a wholly original way with a major transformation of his generation. Wahrman shows how Collier developed a hidden language within his illusionist paintings--replete with minutely coded messages, witty games, intricate allusions, and private jokes--to draw attention to the potential and the pitfalls of this new information age. A remarkably shrewd and prescient commentator on the changes unfolding around him, not least the advent of a new kind of politics following the Glorious Revolution, Collier performed a post-modernist critique of modernity long before the modern age. His trompe l'oeil paintings are filled with seemingly disconnected, enigmatic objects--letters, seals, texts of speeches, magnifying glasses, title pages--and with teasingly significant details that require the viewer to lean in and peer closely. Wahrman does just that, taking on the role of detective/cultural historian to unravel the layers of deceptions contained within Collier's extraordinary paintings. Written with passionate enthusiasm and including more than 70 color illustrations, Mr. Collier's Letter Racks is a spell-binding feat of cultural history, illuminating not only the work of an eccentric genius but the media revolution of his period, the birth of modern politics, and the nature of art itself.

Mr. Collier's Letter Racks: A Tale of Art and Illusion at the Threshold of the Modern Information Age

Arts & Photography

Wahrman, Dror

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Why is the world orderly, and how does this order come to be? Human beings inhabit a multitude of apparently ordered systems―natural, social, political, economic, cognitive, and others―whose origins and purposes are often obscure. In the eighteenth century, older certainties about such orders, rooted in either divine providence or the mechanical operations of nature, began to fall away. In their place arose a new appreciation for the complexity of things, a new recognition of the world’s disorder and randomness, new doubts about simple relations of cause and effect―but with them also a new ability to imagine the world’s orders, whether natural or manmade, as self-organizing. If large systems are left to their own devices, eighteenth-century Europeans increasingly came to believe, order will emerge on its own without any need for external design or direction. In Invisible Hands, Jonathan Sheehan and Dror Wahrman trace the many appearances of the language of self-organization in the eighteenth-century West. Across an array of domains, including religion, society, philosophy, science, politics, economy, and law, they show how and why this way of thinking came into the public view, then grew in prominence and arrived at the threshold of the nineteenth century in versatile, multifarious, and often surprising forms. Offering a new synthesis of intellectual and cultural developments, Invisible Hands is a landmark contribution to the history of the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century culture.

Invisible Hands: Self-Organization and the Eighteenth Century

Literature & Fiction

Sheehan, Jonathan

University of Chicago Press

Review\n“Wide ranging, with substantial discussions of Bayle, Defoe, Locke, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Newton, Pope, Rousseau, and Vico, among others, including some lesser-known figures. . . . Recommended.” 
― Choice\n“A fascinating exploration of the proliferating logics of self-organization across various Enlightenment discourses, ranging from metaphysics and political economy to botany, mathematics, and epistemology.” ― Immanent Frame\n“Even if it was not his original intention, Marx . . . signaled the existence of a manifold phenomenon—economic theology. Recovering its eighteenth-century history demands the same critical rigor that Wahrman and Sheehan so admirably employ in their survey of self-organization.” ― Modern Intellectual History\n“The key concept [of self-organization] develops a broad and enlightening link in the study between such disparate discursive fields as psychology, biology, mathematics and probability theory, political theory, and financial economics. . . . A detailed and thoughtfully structured work.” ― Merkur\n“Jonathan Sheehan is a gifted intellectual historian; Dror Wahrman, an accomplished cultural historian. They have combined their talents and approaches here to achieve one of the richest recent books on the origins of how we moderns reason.” 
― New Rambler\n“The deep research and the breadth of learning on display in Invisible Hands are impressive. . . . Sheehan and Wahrman have done a great service by identifying a central topos and a veritable state of mind in eighteenth-century European life. Not only specialists of the eighteenth century but all historians of science and math, economic historians, and specialists of moral philosophy will reap rewards from this intelligent book.” ― American Historical Review\n“The authors have provided a fascinating view into the growing culture behind the idea of divine order in the eighteenth century.” ― Journal of Interdisciplinary History\n"One senses that one important goal of Invisible Hands is to make the eighteenth century seem like a familiar country. I, at least, came away from the book feeling that enlightenment writers were in important ways like us, with similar questions about apparent patterns in the world, about the relation of the individual subject to those larger patterns, and about the meaning of it all. 
More questions than answers, in fact—another measure of this book’s rich and generative dialogue." ― Politics, Religion, and Ideology\n“Invisible Hands is a landmark piece of work, a brilliant excavation of eighteenth-century patterns of thought. Sheehan and Wahrman demonstrate in a virtuoso manner that eighteenth-century thinkers came to discern the same fundamental quality of self-organization at work in many different systems. The authors often wax lyrical, beautifully so, in their exploration of their topic, and do not shy away from posing questions of profound philosophical import. This book will cause a stir.” -- David A. Bell, Princeton University\n“Sheehan and Wahrman offer exciting insights into the discourses of order and self-organization, which informed such disparate domains as the emerging life sciences, concepts of human cognition, politics, and economics. The reader is skillfully guided on a complex journey of discovery, at times through arcane archives, which are opened up for new and creative uses. Enjoyably witty, this is a most engaging read for anybody interested in the intersections of intellectual and cultural history.” -- Dorothea E. von Mücke, Columbia University\n“Free markets; non-linear systems; chaotic dynamics: our world seems always at the mercy of uncertainty but still mysteriously orderly. Sheehan and Wahrman ingeniously locate the origins of our anxieties about self-organization in the busy, bruising world of the early Enlightenment. Invisible Hands is itself something of a miracle of organization, drawing together the histories of theology and botany, political economy and epistemology, mechanics and medicin

02 Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a radical change occurred in notions of self and personal identity. This was a sudden transformation, says Dror Wahrman, and nothing short of a revolution in the understanding of selfhood and of identity categories including race, gender, and class. In this pathbreaking book, he offers a fundamentally new interpretation of this critical turning point in Western history.Wahrman demonstrates this transformation with a fascinating variety of cultural evidence from eighteenth-century England, from theater to beekeeping, fashion to philosophy, art to travel and translations of the classics. He discusses notions of self in the earlier 1700s—what he terms the ancien regime of identity—that seem bizarre, even incomprehensible, to present-day readers. He then examines how this peculiar world came to an abrupt end, and the far-reaching consequences of that change. This unrecognized cultural revolution, the author argues, set the scene for the array of new departures that signaled the onset of Western modernity.Dror Wahrman is associate professor of history at Indiana University (Bloomington). Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a radical change occurred in notions of self and personal identity. This was a sudden transformation, says Dror Wahrman, and nothing short of a revolution in the understanding of selfhood and of identity categories including race, gender, and class. In this pathbreaking book, he offers a fundamentally new interpretation of this critical turning point in Western history.Wahrman demonstrates this transformation with a fascinating variety of cultural evidence from eighteenth-century England, from theater to beekeeping, fashion to philosophy, art to travel and translations of the classics. He discusses notions of self in the earlier 1700s—what he terms the ancien regime of identity—that seem bizarre, even incomprehensible, to present-day readers. He then examines how this peculiar world came to an abrupt end, and the far-reaching consequences of that change. This unrecognized cultural revolution, the author argues, set the scene for the array of new departures that signaled the onset of Western modernity.Dror Wahrman is associate professor of history at Indiana University (Bloomington).

The Making of the Modern Self

History

Europe

Yale University Press

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a radical change occurred in notions of self and personal identity. This was a sudden transformation, says Dror Wahrman, and nothing short of a revolution in the understanding of selfhood and of identity categories including race, gender, and class. In this pathbreaking book, he offers a fundamentally new interpretation of this critical turning point in Western history. Wahrman demonstrates this transformation with a fascinating variety of cultural evidence from eighteenth-century England, from theater to beekeeping, fashion to philosophy, art to travel and translations of the classics. He discusses notions of self in the earlier 1700s―what he terms the ancien regime of identity―that seem bizarre, even incomprehensible, to present-day readers. He then examines how this peculiar world came to an abrupt end, and the far-reaching consequences of that change. This unrecognized cultural revolution, the author argues, set the scene for the array of new departures that signaled the onset of Western modernity.

The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England

A masterful deciphering of an extraordinary art object, illuminating some of the biggest questions of the eighteenth century\nThe Throne of the Great Mogul (1701–8) is a unique work of European decorative art: an intricate miniature of the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb depicted during the emperor’s birthday celebrations. It was created by the jeweler Johann Melchior Dinglinger in Dresden and purchased by the Saxon prince Augustus the Strong for an enormous sum. Constructed like a theatrical set made of gold, silver, thousands of gemstones, and amazing enamel work, it consists of 164 pieces that together tell a detailed story.\nWhy did Dinglinger invest so much time and effort in making this piece? Why did Augustus, in the midst of a political and financial crisis, purchase it? And why did the jeweler secrete in it messages wholly unrelated to the prince or to the Great Mogul? In answering these questions, Dror Wahrman, while shifting scales from microhistory to global history, opens a window onto major historical themes of the period: the nature of European absolutism, the princely politics of the Holy Roman Empire, the changing meaning of art in the West, the surprising emergence of a cross-continental lexicon of rulership shared across the Eastern Hemisphere, and the enactment in jewels and gold of quirky contemporary theories about the global history of religion.

The Throne of the Great Mogul in Dresden: The Ultimate Artwork of the Baroque

Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780–1840

This book explores the origins of the influential view of modern society that places a "middle class" at its center, as it developed in Britain during the so-called "Industrial Revolution." Using a wider variety of sources and closer methods of textual analysis than previous studies of languages of class, the author develops a nuanced model for the interplay of social reality and social language. He demonstrates that a "middle class"-based language of social description did not simply reflect changes in social structure, but was rather the outcome of political circumstances in a period of radical political change.

Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780-1840

Cambridge University Press

This book explores the origins of the influential view of modern society that places a "middle class" at its center, as it developed in Britain during the so-called "Industrial Revolution." Using a wider variety of sources and closer methods of textual analysis than previous studies of languages of class, the author develops a nuanced model for the interplay of social reality and social language. He demonstrates that a "middle class"-based language of social description did not simply reflect changes in social structure, but was rather the outcome of political circumstances in a period of radical political change.

Jerusalem architecture: Periods and styles : the Jewish quarters and public buildings outside the old city walls 1860-1914

Kroyanker, David

Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wahrman, Dror. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wahrman, Dror

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wahrman, Dror. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Mr. Collier's Letter Racks: A Tale of Art and Illusion at the Threshold of the Modern Information Age

Invisible Hands: Self-Organization and the Eighteenth Century

Invisible Hands: Self-Organization and the Eighteenth Century

The Making of the Modern Self

The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England

The Throne of the Great Mogul in Dresden: The Ultimate Artwork of the Baroque

Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780-1840

Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780–1840

Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780–1840

Jerusalem architecture: Periods and styles : the Jewish quarters and public buildings outside the old city walls 1860-1914