Time and place

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Dates are invented things. Nothing in nature decrees that today is today. But for millennia humans have divided time into portions, and given those portions names which are shared widely across cultures, creating a common agreement on the date. This convention is useful in practical ways: we can make arrangements and can communicate time elapsed or time ahead. But it's more than practical: the calendar makes a certain kind of truth and establishes that today is today. As calendars and almanacs developed, art from their specific time and place was naturally incorporated. Alexandra Harris has drawn together some of the most beautiful work that has gone into almanacs, from the eight century onwards, bringing in everything from Benedictine calendars to Old Moore's Almanack. In this beautiful, fully illustrated book Harris shows us that calendars drew on the traditions associated with every month and that despite wonderful variations, calendars are held together by a common will to pin down that most elusive subject: time itself