Through The Looking Glasses

'Everything was made for a purpose; everything is necessary for the fulfilment of that purpose . Observe that noses have been made for spectacles ; therefore we have spectacles' from Voltaire's Candide With the broad appeal of books by the likes of Mark Kurlansky, Bill Bryson and Simon Garfield, Travis Elborough uses a single, life-changing object to tell a much bigger story. Using personal observation, memoir, reportage, science, social history and cultural criticism , the book moves chronologically through the story of spectacles. The historical scope is wide, ranging from early theories about how the eye worked and theological and philosophical arguments about the limits of perception by Greek thinkers and Arab scholars, through to the ingeniousness of Italian glassmakers in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. There are appearances by the great and the good bespectacled men and women of yesteryear, running the gamut from the fictional Clark Kent in Superman to the authors Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, and Angela Carter, and including such actors and musicians such as Buddy Holly, Michael Caine, Dizzy Gillespie and John Lennon, and their lorgnettes, monocles, Pince-nez, horn-rims, tortoise-shell 'Oxfords' and Ray Ban aviator shades. Through the Looking Glasses is about vision and the need for humanity to see clearly and where the impulse to improve of our eyesight has led us. The society of the spectacle may finally be upon us . . . but how much of it do we really see?