Synopsis
In Brilliant, award-winning author Jane Brox offers a sweeping history of our transformative relationship with light—from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future—and reveals that the surprising, complex story of our illumination is also the story of our modern selves.
Just five hundred years ago almost everyone lived at the mercy of the dark, yet today so much of life as we know it—our long evening hours, our flexible working days, our feelings of safety at night—depends upon cheap, abundant light. Brox not only examines the social and environmental implications of this remarkable transformation, she tells a compelling story imbued with human voices, startling insights, and timely questions about how the light of the future will shape our lives.
The New York Times - Elizabeth Royte
Ruminative and curious, Brox excels at discussing the cultural and psychological changes wrought by more and better light, from the self-reliance of lanterns to our eventual dependence on coal-gas and then electric utilities…Brilliant is an intriguing investigation of a state of being—well lighted—that we take utterly for granted.