Matt Cook

Exploring more than seventy-five well-known paradoxes in mathematics, philosophy, physics, and the social sciences showing how reason and logic can dispel the illusion of contradiction. Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind, Matt Cook and a few collaborators dive deeply into more than 75 paradoxes in mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the social sciences. As each paradox is discussed and resolved, Cook helps readers discover the meaning of knowledge and the proper formation of concepts—and how reason can dispel the illusion of contradiction. The journey begins with “a most ingenious paradox” from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Readers will then travel from Ancient Greece to cutting-edge laboratories, encounter infinity and its different sizes, and discover mathematical impossibilities inherent in elections. They will tackle conundrums in probability, induction, geometry, and game theory; perform “supertasks”; build apparent perpetual motion machines; meet twins living in different millennia; explore the strange quantum world—and much more.

75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy

Sleight of Mind

Matt Cook explores the relationship between London and homosexuality from 1885 to 1914, years marked by intensification in concern about male-male relationships and also by the emergence of an embryonic homosexual rights movement. Cook combines his coverage of London's homosexual subculture and various major and minor scandals with a detailed examination of representations in the press, science and literature. This conjunction of approaches distinguishes this study from other works and provides new insight into the development of ideas about homosexuality during the period.

London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914

Queer Domesticities is about the ways in which queer men have made, experienced and described their homes in London. It is about how they did those things in relation to trenchant stereotypes which cast them as either sissy home boys or domestic outlaws, and in relation also to the immediate pressing contexts of the places they lived through choice or force of circumstance. Matt Cook's book takes queer history indoors and shows additional ways in which queer men orientated their sense of themselves – behind closed doors and apart from the more public bars, clubs, cruising grounds, courtrooms, and protest and pride marches that have more often drawn our attention. In this way it casts in historical perspective the new interest in the home lives and styles of gay men which has come with legal change on civil partnerships, gay marriage and adoption and with TV and media depictions of gay men with particular domestic flair. The book rests on oral histories and unpublished diaries of relatively unknown men and on reassessments of famous and infamous figures, including artists Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts, architect and romantic socialist C.R.Ashbee, early reformer George Ives, interior designer Oliver Ford, writer and editor J.R.Ackerley, 'stately homo' Quentin Crisp, playwright Joe Orton and film-maker Derek Jarman.

Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London

Queer Domesticities

Life on Other Planets

When his professor at Stanford disappears and a extortionist code-named "Viking" threatens to destroy a cruise ship in order to get his hands on a private warfare technology, doctoral student Austin Hardy must team up with his professor's icy and secretive daughter, Victoria Clare.

Sabotage

Introduces and surveys the ways in which historians and others have researched and written about the lesbian, gay and 'queer' past.

Writing Queer History

Robert Mills

Harry Cocks

Randolph Trumbach

A narrative history of man-on-man sex and love from the Anglo Saxon period to the present day, this book explores some of the key issues of homosexuality.

Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages

A Gay History of Britain

Jennifer V. Evans

"Through a series of urban case studies, Queer Cities, Queer Cultures examines the articulation of particular subcultures and forms of expression with the broader stories we tell about postwar Europe and particular watershed moments. It considers queer life in the selected cities in relation to the advent and end of Cold War polarization, and considers the degree to which the iconic events of 1945, 1968, and 1989 influenced the social and sexual climate of the ensuing decades. It raises questions about the form and structure of the 1960s sexual revolution, and forces us to think about how we define sexual liberalization and where, how and on whose terms it occurs. The book also explores the role of America in shaping particular forms of subculture; the significance of changes in legal codes; modes of queer consumption and displays of community; the difficult fit of queer (as opposed to gay and lesbian) politics in liberal democracies; the challenge of AIDS; and the arrival of the Internet"--

Europe Since 1945

Queer Cities, Queer Cultures

Poetry. "The thing about Matt's writing, 'poetry' if you will, is that it's funny. Not 'funny for poetry' but straight up funny. And thoughtful. And human."—David Cross "Matt Cook sings the unsung—the restaurant supply store, the backs of paintings—while teasing our unexamined lives. His poems point to our emotional slippage, revealing the Spanish Cement Mixer to be much more than the Spanish Cement Mixer. You're all like 'Nuh uh' and these poems are all like 'Uh huh.'"—Sommer Browning

Proving Nothing to Anyone

The first narrative history of its kind since 1970, A Gay History of Britain tells the extraordinary history of male-male sex and love in Britain, in all its diversity, from the Middle Ages to the present.

How city-specific identities and subcultures tap into wider European conceptions of lesbian, gay and queer culture.

Poetry. IRKSOME PARTICULARS is a collection of clever, inviting prose poems. Easy to read, and expansive in the mind, this is a book to keep handy for re-reading and sharing.

Irksome Particulars

Victor Buchli

Andrew Gorman-Murray

Rosie Cox

Queering the Interior problematizes the familiar space of 'home'. It deploys a queer lens to view domestic interiors and conventions and uncovers some of the complexities of homemaking for queer people. Each of the book's six sections focuses on a different room or space inside the home. The journey starts with entryways, and continues through kitchens, living spaces, bedrooms, bathrooms, and finally, closets and studies. In each case up to three specialists bring their disciplinary expertise and queer perspectives to bear. The result is a fascinating collection of essays by scholars from literary studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, history and art history. The contributors use historical and sociological case studies; spatial, art and literary analyses; interviews; and experimental visual approaches to deliver fresh, detailed and grounded perspectives on the home and its queer dimensions. A highly creative approach to the analysis of domestic spaces, Queering the Interior makes an important contribution to the fields of gender studies, social and cultural history, cultural studies, design, architecture, anthropology, sociology, and cultural geography.

Queering the Interior

Queer Cities, Queer Cultures examines the formation and make-up of urban subcultures and situates them against the stories we typically tell about Europe and its watershed moments in the post 1945 period. The book considers the degree to which the iconic events of 1945, 1968 and 1989 influenced the social and sexual climate of the ensuing decades, raising questions about the form and structure of the 1960s sexual revolution, and forcing us to think about how we define sexual liberalization - and where, how and on whose terms it occurs. An international team of authors explores the role of America in shaping particular forms of subculture; the significance of changes in legal codes; differing modes of queer consumption and displays of community; the difficult fit of queer (as opposed to gay and lesbian) politics in liberal democracies; the importance of mobility and immigration in modulating queer urban life; the challenge of AIDS; and the arrival of the internet. By exploring the queer histories of cities from Istanbul to Helsinki and Moscow to Madrid, Queer Cities, Queer Cultures makes a significant contribution to our understanding of urban history, European history and the history of gender and sexuality.

Matt Cook

Books

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