University - A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood

A sweeping history of the buildings and materials that have shaped nine centuries of university life, from parchments and silk robes to glass atriums and sprawling parking lots. We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher principles. Yet when we remember our own college experiences, what springs to mind are not just lofty concepts but also material realities: cramped dorm rooms and musty library stacks, gothic towers and freshly mowed quads. The University puts such seemingly inconsequential details at the center of the institution's 900-year history. Constructing each chapter around an emblematic material--straw, stone, flesh, blood, silk, paper, iron, and concrete--William Whyte traces the intimate connections between the university's shifting physical form and its evolving social and cultural meanings.