Shadows: Unlocking Their Secrets, from Plato to Our Time

In this original, wide-ranging, and endlessly thought-provoking work of popular nonfiction, a leading science writer uncovers the pervasive presence of shadows in our world.

For Plato, shadows were the symbol of our limitations. For Galileo, they knocked the Earth from the center of the cosmos. They are a source of fear and a symbol of ignorance, and they loom large in art and design, mythology and folklore, physics and metaphysics, and architecture and urban planning. From shadows puppets and the psychology of shadows to the role of shadows in astronomy and the influence of shadows on the architectural profiles of our cities, Roberto Casati awakens our fascination in this tour-de-force of investigation and imagination.

Roberto Casati was born in Milan in 1961. A research director at the Centre National de la Réchérche Scientifique, he lives in Paris and works at the Institut Nicod, a laboratory of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and of the École Normale. He studies the cognition of strange things—images, colors, sounds, places, holes—and shadows. With Achille Varzi he is the author of Holes and Other Superficialities and Parts and Places.

Abigail Asher (translator) is an editor of art history and other nonfiction books. She has lived and worked in publishing in Italy; she now lives and works in New York City. This is her first book-length translation.