"[Glass] distills the essence of a substance that offers itself as something to be looked through, giving a shine to its contents, and as something that occupies our view, as something we have to take note of and interact with." --Julian Yates, Los Angeles Review of Books

"[A] book that can be read in a fascinated hour, but will influence your reading and your looking for the next month." --Times Literary Supplement

"This brilliant book takes us through the looking glass, allowing us to see an everyday material in a whole new light. Glass, no matter how transparent it may seem, is always coated with many layers of meaning. In this scintillating account, John Garrison shows how the cultural framing of glass has repeatedly opened windows to other worlds, from the microscopic depths to the far reaches of the cosmos, from the imagined futures of science fiction to the bizarro-worlds of our own bathroom mirrors." --Colin Milburn, Professor of English and Science and Technology Studies, University of California Davis, USA