Conquest Of Mind
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
In the intellectual ferment of nineteenth-century Britain, few movements captured the popular imagination quite so dramatically as phrenology — the science of reading character and mental capacity from the contours of the skull. Conquest of Mind by David de Giustino is a rigorous and absorbing historical study that chronicles the rise and cultural penetration of phrenological thought, tracing how a once-marginal pseudo-science infiltrated the mainstream of Victorian society, touching medicine, education, prison reform, and social policy. De Giustino presents phrenology not as mere quackery but as a revealing lens through which to examine the broader Victorian obsession with classifying, measuring, and ultimately controlling the human mind. With the precision of a scholar and the narrative drive of a storyteller, de Giustino argues that phrenology's remarkable popular success reflects deeper anxieties about class, morality, and the nature of human potential in an age of rapid industrial transformation. His meticulous research illuminates the social networks and entrepreneurial popularisers who spread phrenological doctrine from lecture halls to drawing rooms across Britain. Conquest of Mind stands as an indispensable work in the history of science and Victorian culture, and leaves the reader pondering a timeless question: who, in any era, truly holds the authority to define — and confine — the human mind?
Author: David De Giustino
Format: Hardback
Published: 1975, Croom Helm
Genre: Psychology
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
In the intellectual ferment of nineteenth-century Britain, few movements captured the popular imagination quite so dramatically as phrenology — the science of reading character and mental capacity from the contours of the skull. Conquest of Mind by David de Giustino is a rigorous and absorbing historical study that chronicles the rise and cultural penetration of phrenological thought, tracing how a once-marginal pseudo-science infiltrated the mainstream of Victorian society, touching medicine, education, prison reform, and social policy. De Giustino presents phrenology not as mere quackery but as a revealing lens through which to examine the broader Victorian obsession with classifying, measuring, and ultimately controlling the human mind. With the precision of a scholar and the narrative drive of a storyteller, de Giustino argues that phrenology's remarkable popular success reflects deeper anxieties about class, morality, and the nature of human potential in an age of rapid industrial transformation. His meticulous research illuminates the social networks and entrepreneurial popularisers who spread phrenological doctrine from lecture halls to drawing rooms across Britain. Conquest of Mind stands as an indispensable work in the history of science and Victorian culture, and leaves the reader pondering a timeless question: who, in any era, truly holds the authority to define — and confine — the human mind?