This text addresses the question of how dinosaurs moved from natural extinction to pop culture resurrection, exploring the animal's place in our lives and the source of its popular appeal. In tracing the cultural family tree of the dinosaur there is discovered a creature of striking flexibility, linked to dragons and mammoths, skyscrapers and steam engines, cowboys and Indians. Here the dinosaur becomes a cultural symbol whose plurality of meaning and often contradictory nature is emblematic of modern society itself. As a scientific entity, the dinosaur endured a near-eclipse for over a century, but as an image it is enjoying its widest circulation. The text suggests it endures because it is uniquely malleable, a figure of both innovation and obsolescence, massive power and pathetic failure - the totem animal of modernity.
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First Sentence
IMAGINE A DISTANT FUTURE in which the iron law of Darwinian necessity has taken effect, and human life has vanished from the earth. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
IMAGINE A DISTANT FUTURE in which the iron law of Darwinian necessity has taken effect, and human life has vanished from the earth. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
I loved Mitchell's playful way of using visual evidence from our culture--cartoons, book covers, installation art, children's toys, film clips--to show us something profound about ourselves. Some of the controversy over this book might have to do with a resistance to demystifying our obsession with dinosaurs--a resistance that would entirely support Mitchell's thesis.
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Read and find out. In this engaging book, cultural critic and historian WJT Mitchell will convince even the most skeptical reader that dinosaurs are amongst us, around us, in us--a thriving cultural icon of our time. Mitchell has written this book to include the reader beyond the academy. Consequently, it is "popular" writing at its finest: learned, witty, sophisticated. Ignore those sour reviews in the NYT, and read.
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
The dinosaur continues to evolve- and for now it's alive and well as this compelling look at dinosaur images artfully affirms. Just as Rudolph Zallinger's sweeping mural, reproduced in Chapter 31, "synthesizes the understanding of dinosaurs in the modern period", Mitchell's comprehensive and insightful book brings together myriad representations of the dinosaur and offers fascinating contexts in which to explore the role of this imagery in the 20th century. From aliens to The Far Side, from Thomas Jefferson to Indiana Jones, the author suggests this familiar cultural icon depicts life as we both wish it and fear it to be. The evolving image of the dinosaur has much to teach the modern reader, and this stunning book is its greatest visual aid.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
An epigraph
Nobody, it's been said, ever learns anything, and if ever a book proved the thesis it's this one. What is hard to understand about this book for the average reader is that though... Read more
Published on 2 Sep 1999
3.0 out of 5 stars
More speculation than honest research
I admit, I'm a dinophile. Well, actually a paleo-phile since I'm interested in all aspects of paleontology. Read more
Published on 3 Aug 1999
1.0 out of 5 stars
Loathsome
This book is the worst of postmodern popular criticism--well, not the worst. The author is fairly comprehensible, unlike many of his colleagues. Read more
Published on 23 Feb 1999
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, inspiring
This gorgeous book is like a coffee-table book you can actually read! It's fun, engaging, and even silly at times, yet the overall experience is even more satisfying than watching... Read more
Published on 14 Jan 1999
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