Concrete and Plastic

Kylie Crane's fascinating new book traces two of the most pervasive and pertinent materials of modernity: plastic and concrete ... What the book [makes] clear is that to study such diffractions of plastic and/with concrete is a particularly apt way to come to terms with modernity both in its cultural expressions and its naturecultural repercussions in the Anthropocene. * Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies * This book performs an exciting update to methods in material culture studies, bridging these to concerns raised by the new materialists. It offers brilliant overviews of the qualities of plastic and concrete as objects in flow, and it develops these accounts of modern materiality in a delightfully eclectic array of readings. * Caren Irr, Kevy and Hortense Kellerman Endowed Chair in the Humanities, Brandeis University, USA * Marvelously eclectic… a theoretically sophisticated academic book focused on “the capacity of materials to form relations across spatial and temporal dimensions""… a work attuned to heartening possibilities; to alternative futures. * Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik * While Concrete and Plastic is not solely a history book, it makes a significant contribution to historical scholarship by examining materials through the lenses of environmental justice, decay, and the entanglement of bodies, substances, and infrastructures. Crane emphasizes the afterlife of materials - their toxicity, longevity, and cultural presence—adding urgency to debates on sustainability and extractive economies. * Technology & Culture *