Magnet

Object Lessons

by Eva K. Barbarossa, Christopher Schaberg (Series Editor), Ian Bogost (Series Editor)

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

For over two thousand years magnets have inspired tales of myth, magic, exploration, science, and art. From the physical to the metaphorical, our language is littered with magnetic magnetic personalities, animal magnetism, mesmerism, and magnetic attraction. We take them for granted yet magnets are essential to our existence--as important as gravity--and to our survival on this planet and in this universe.

Eva Barbarossa's Magnet weaves together stories of ancient and modern wonders, of discovery and creation, of madness and desire, of beauty and awe, taking us from the spectacle of the aurora borealis to the disastrous searches for the North Pole.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic .

Genres: Nonfiction

136 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2019

Reviews

[David McArthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun introduction to a mysterious commonplace. I think the author could have used an editor though as there were many basic errors in tense and number. It felt like a shoddy translation. I was nonplussed when I saw that was not the case. Anyway, I will look for other books in this series.