PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Randy Malamud, Regents' Professor of English at Georgia State University, has written eleven books including Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity, The Importance of Elsewhere: The Globalist Humanist Tourist, and Email.
Examining all things floral from paintings, fashion and pressed flowers to decorative church hats and flower power, this generously illustrated book takes cuttings from one aspect of the human urge to tame and curate nature. * Apollo * Strange Bright Blooms will convince you that flowers don't just stand there looking pretty. Malamud makes intriguing arguments that flowers not only attract but directly interact with us. While their beauty has inspired great art, blooms have likewise been repurposed as symbols of sexism and racism. Poisonous in warfare, flowers also have been signs of peaceful revolution. Like an unexpected delivery of flowers, this book is a surprise and a delight. -- Marcia Reiss, author of Lily and Apple' Malamud's new book explores our endless attraction to cut flowers as a 'shortcut to beauty' but also as a medium in which to explore all manner of concerns around love and war, class and race, life and death. Who would have thought that Marie Osmond's paper roses, Jeff Koons's tulips, Mae Reeves's hats, T. S. Eliot's sleeping dahlias, and Banksy's Flower Bomber (among many, many other wonderful blooms) would combine to make such a fabulous arrangement? -- Kasia Boddy, author of Geranium and Blooming Flowers
