I make no apologies for the fact that I feature a lot of titles from Profile Books in my Daily Bookshots, but the fact is, their covers are so photogenic. Take the recently released Time by Eva Hoffman. The cover (the creation of Dan Mogford) is simple yet profound. A solitary silhouetted dandelion in the act of dispersing its seeds, perfectly encapsulating the passing of time.
But of course a book isn’t just about the cover. It’s about the content too (especially when you’re a ‘proper’ reader like you and me 
). And I’ve got to say that the content of this book looks to be utterly intriguing. Intriguing because Eva Hoffman looks at a resource that affects and directs all of us, and it’s a resource which book bloggers always seem to have a distinct lack of. That right folks, a big clue in the title – TIME. Here’s the cover blurb (and it’s a long one):
Time has always been the great Given, a fact of existence which cannot be denied or wished away; but the character of lived time is changing dramatically. Medical advances extend our longevity, while digital devices compress time into ever briefer units. We can now exist in several time-zones at once, but we suffer from endemic shortages of time. We are working longer hours and blurring the distinctions between labour and leisure. For many, in an inversion of the old adage, time has become more valuable than money.
How do such developments affect our societies and our selves? What impact do the hyper-fast technologies – computers, video games, and instant communications – have on our capacity for concentration and reflection? The last decades have witnessed the rise of multi-tasking accidents and time-fragmenting emotional disorders. As we examine physiology and consciousness on ever microscopic levels, what are we learning about the processes and patterns of time in our minds and bodies? Is there such a thing as natural human temporality, beyond which we venture at our peril?
In this radical exploration of life’s most ineffable element, spanning fields from biology and culture to psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Eva Hoffman asks: are we coming to the end of time as we have known it?
OK a lengthy blurb I know, and not a particularly enthralling one, but putting aside any notion of complexity, I think that Time may well be an absorbing read. I’ll let you know myself in the near(ish) future.
Profile Books | September 2009 | £10.99 | HARDBACK | 224 PP | ISBN: 9781846680380
About Rob