Abstract

From spoons to bullets to sterling coins, silver permeates our everyday culture and language. For millennia we’ve used it to buy what we need, adorn our bodies, or trumpet our social status, and likewise it’s been useful to vanquish werewolves, vampires, and even our own smelly socks.  This book captures all of these facets of silver and more, telling the fascinating story of one of our most hardworking precious metals.
           
As Lindsay Shen shows, while always valued for its beauty and rarity—used to bolster dowries and pay armies alike—silver today is also exploited for its chemistry and can be found in everything from the clothes we wear to the electronics we use to the medical devices that save our lives. Born in the supernovae of stars and buried deep in the earth, it has been mined by many different societies, traded throughout the world, and been the source of wars and the downfall of empires. It is also a metal of pure reflection, a shining symbol of purity. Featuring many glistening illustrations of silver in nature, art, jewelry, film, advertising, and popular culture, this is a superb overview of a metal both precious and useful, one with a rich and eventful history.
“Shen has the passion, turn of phrase, and international expertise to write a book about the history of humanity’s use of silver and how it has impacted languages, cultures, science, economics, and politics. While most people are familiar with silver coins, jewelry, tableware, and bullets, Shen also uncovers the use of silver in medicines, electronics, medical devices, and modern clothing. Even though silver has always symbolized purity, Shen firmly elucidates that its acquisition and processing involved wars, slavery, and environmental destruction. Recommended.” — R. S. Wexelbaum, Saint Cloud State University, Choice
Lindsay Shen is the Director of Art Collections at Chapman University in California. She is the author of Knowledge is Pleasure.