A Guardian Book of the Year
A Prospect Book of the Year
A Financial Times Most Anticipated Book
'A charming, fascinating foray into corners of history ... the perfect book for our golden age of indigestion' Washington Post
'A brilliant new cultural history of the gut' Daily Mail
Have you ever had a gut feeling? Found something hard to stomach? Have you gone belly up under pressure? Did you pull yourself together and show some guts?
The growls and gurgles of our digestive system are a constant reminder of the physical work it does to keep our bodies running. But throughout history, humans have puzzled over how this rowdy organ might influence us in other ways, from our emotional states and mental well-being to the decisions we make and even our sense of self.
Through Ancient Greece and Victorian England, eighteenth-century France and contemporary America, cultural historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a lively tour of all the ways we've tried to make sense of this endlessly fascinating (and sometimes embarrassing) body part. From etiquette guides and diet advice to medieval alchemy and microbiology, she reveals that the gut-brain connection may be a modern obsession, but the question of whether we are ruled by our stomachs is as old as humanity itself.
'A fascinating, erudite and entertaining journey through the gut-brain connection'
TIFFANY WATT SMITH, author of The Book of Human Emotions
'A thrilling and surprising journey into the science and culture of an organ that refuses to be civilised'
PAUL CRADDOCK, author of Spare Parts
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Absolutely delicious * Wall Street Journal * A vivid cultural history of changing metaphorical, political and scientific visions of our guts -- Steven Poole * Guardian * A brilliant new cultural history of the gut * Daily Mail * I loved Rumbles - a fascinating, erudite and entertaining journey through the gut-brain connection that, despite the many claims of modern-day doctors, has fascinated physicians for hundreds of years -- Tiffany Watt Smith, author of THE BOOK OF HUMAN EMOTIONS Fascinating ... a window onto our relationship with the gut as mediated by medicine, literature, politics and language. -- Wendy Moore * TLS * Absorbing, serpentine ... Elsa Richardson has assembled a choice selection of ingredients. * Literary Review * A thrilling and surprising journey into the science and culture of an organ that refuses to be civilised -- Paul Craddock, author of SPARE PARTS Rumbles is more than just an extremely entertaining romp through the history of the gut and all its literary, biomedical, metaphorical, and political permutations. Marshalling a wealth of resources, Richardson offers eye-popping (and sometimes gut-wrenching) insight into how our presumed cutting-edge understanding of the gut is not as new as we might want to believe. Rumbles will persuade you that to listen to the 'rumbles' of our gut is to immerse ourselves in an abiding historical legacy, for better or for worse -- Professor Jean Walton, author of DISSIDENT GUT Rumbles is a charming, compelling compendium of ideas and a fascinating foray into corners of history. Richardson is interested in the gut's workings, but she is also interested in its symbolism, in other words, why we are all sick to our stomachs. Rumbles could not come at a more apt or more dyspeptic moment; its discussion of gut disease as an emblem of modernity leaves readers with much to digest. It is the perfect book for our golden age of indigestion. -- Becca Rothfeld * The Washington Post * Elsa Richardson's Rumbles surveys ideas about our digestive organs, from the suggestion by the Greek physician Galen that the stomach has its own intelligence, through dramatic metaphors of the body politic, and ideas of the intestines as a bustling Victorian kitchen, a delicate garden or an implacable enemy of human progress -- Books of the Year * Guardian * Elsa Richardson's Rumbles also tries to recontextualise the past-and, by extension, the present. Her subject is the gut, a "confederacy of organs" that is often looked down upon in favour of the highfalutin accomplishments of the brain. However, the gut has a rich cultural history that ought to wow - rather than repel - us. Did you know, for instance, the classical physician Galen believed that the human digestive system is what enabled us to have a culture in the first place? -- Books of the Year * Prospect *
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
b/w integrated illustrations
ISBN-13
978-1-78283-826-5 (9781782838265)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Elsa Richardson is an academic at the University of Strathclyde. She holds a Chancellor's Fellowship in the History of Health and Wellbeing at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare. In addition to lecturing in the history of medicine and her own research, she also curates arts and science events for public institutions, including the Wellcome Collection. In 2018, she was named one of ten New Generation Thinkers by BBC Radio 3, BBC Arts, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
