Hans den Hartog Jager

Jennifer Allen

Maria Roosen

For over 2000 years, book burners have laid their torches to millions of books condemned as heretical, blasphemous, immoral, obscene, subversive or seditious. Books have been reduced to ashes in church yards, college yards, school furnaces, public squares and city streets. The goals of the book burners have been to extirpate history, to intimidate and stamp out opposition, to create solidarity, and to cleanse society of controversial ideas. Too often, book burning foreshadows violence against those who originated or shared the ideas.This work provides a detailed account of actual book burning worldwide over the past 2000 years. The book burners are identified, along with the works they set aflame. The study examines the metaphoric language that "justified" the destruction; characterizing the books as "tares," "pestilence," "plagues," "cancers," and "poison" is central to the control the burners hope to exercise. Also considered is the primeval pull of the book burning ritual, which in its simplicity leads to the destruction of ideas and the uniformity of thought associated with totalitarianism.

Maria's

Hanne Hagenaars

Dutch artist Maria Roosen loves magic. Not so much witchcraft as the small everyday wonders--like the way a drop of oil in a puddle of water suddenly reflects the world in 1,000 colors. Glass is one of Roosen's primary materials, and she is best known for her little glass carrots; her glass eyes; her glass penises dangling from a cord, somehow at once sweet and sorrowful, and calling to mind the work of Eva Hesse or Louise Bourgeois. Roosen also makes big white papier-mbchi spheres that she gives to her friends, asking them to make alter-ego faces on them and to wear them over their heads, or to share them with others at public events. In this sturdy accordion-folded book we are introduced to Maria's friends--in their masks--via a series of photographic portraits, while Hanne Hagenaars tells us about their adventures.

Maria Roosen

Books

Your next favorite book is out there