Devil's Cloth A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric

"THE DEVIL'S CLOTH, despite its apparent quirkiness of subject, belongs to a now venerable tradition of 'new' historical writing in France that began by rejecting the history of events and regimes and has evolved along increasingly radical lines, ambitiously examining the givens of experience itself.Pastoureau's investigation of the stripe's epistemology, ably translated by Jody Gladding, is very much a part of this enterprise. Despite its brevity--a change from the doorstop-sized tomes that many new histories fill--THE DEVIL'S CLOTH gets to the heart of matters like the way we perceive color and pattern, and speculates interestingly on whether these perceptions derive from nature or nurture. As with other histories that sift the past to confirm an observation or theory, there is much to debate here. And while a reader may wish that Pastoureau himself had employed the devil's advocate more often, his playful but learned book will doubtless have an influence. I, for one, will never again see stripes as either innocent or blithe."Pastoureau, Michel is the author of 'Devil's Cloth A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric' with ISBN 9780231123662 and ISBN 0231123663.