Venetians Invented Everything with Meredith Small

The Athenaeum was established in 1814 as a subscription library, at a time when the free public library system did not exist and collections of books, available for reading or research, were still mostly limited to institutions, schools or colleges.The Athenaeum of Philadelphia nurtures curiosity in members and neighbors, strengthening community through learning and discourse.The Athenaeum of Philadelphia is one of 16 membership libraries that collaborate through the Membership Libraries Group. Some, like the Charleston (est. 1748), New York Society (est. 1754), and Newport (est. 1741) libraries, date from the 18th Century.

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Meredith Small is the author of Inventing the World; Venice and the Transformation of Western Culture (Dec, 2020)

Anthropologist and Science Journalist Meredith F. Small has turned her scholarly talents to the city of Venice and constructed and researched a list of over 200 inventions (ideas as well as objects) that happened in Venice over its 1,200-year history. Over many long visits in the city she heard, read, and stumbled across these many firsts, eventually coming to the conclusion that Venice had invented much of our modern age. Inventing the World presents these inventions not in chronological order, but by subject, emphasizing how Venice impacted modern day global exploration and trade, finance and money, health care, leisure time, and the written word. 
Venetians invented, for example, government bonds, public banks, global currency, quarantine, the thermometer and body scale, the blood pressure device, evidence-based medicine, public street lighting, child labor laws, the paperback book, the semicolon and common, public casinos, the regatta, and tiramisu among so many others. These inventions are set in a narrative that uses the past to connect to the present, and that story is imbued with the scholars, physicians, inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs, civil servants, publishers, scholars and writers who are the Venetian faces behind the great palazzi.
 During this presentation, Dr. Small will touch on why humans are so compelled to invent, and what, in particular, made Venice such a hotbed of invention. She will also explain that the Venetian pattern of creativity continues today as the city rises to reinvent itself once again as a place for invention with an emphasis on sustainability and creativity. 
About the author:Meredith F. Small is a writer, Professor Emerita at Cornell University, and Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Pennsylvania. 

Dr. Small’s current book is on Venetian inventions, Inventing the World; Venice and the Transformation of Western Culture, published in December, 2020 from Pegasus Books .

She received a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from the University of California, Davis, and spent several years studying the behavior of macaque monkeys in captivity and in the wild. Although trained as a primate behaviorist, Small is now most interested how the intersection of biology and culture influences human behavior.

Besides numerous publications in academic journals, Dr. Small is also a science journalist. Her work has appeared in Discover, Natural History, Scientific American, and New Scientist, among many other magazines and newspapers. Small was also a regular commentator for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and for two years she wrote a weekly column, Human Nature, for LiveScience.com She is the author five other books including Female Choices, What’s Love Got to Do With it? The Evolution of Human Mating, Our Babies, Ourselves; How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent, Kids, and The Culture of Our Discontent; Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness. 

Dr. Small received the Anthropology in Media Award from the American Anthropological Association, and her work has been chosen twice for The Best Science and Nature Writing volumes from Houghton-Mifflin. She is Weiss Presidential Fellow for excellence in teaching at Cornell University and has been also honored with the Russell Award for Teaching and an Outstanding Educator Award from the Merrill Presidential Scholar Program at Cornell.
Purchase a copy of the book from <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/12358/9781643135380" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Bookshop.org</a>Zoom information will be sent to the email address used during registration the day of the event.

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Venetians Invented Everything with Meredith Small

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Venetians Invented Everything with Meredith Small

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