A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See

Eyeglasses have become so commonplace we hardly think about them—unless, of course, we can’t find them. They’re just there. Yet glasses have been controversial throughout history. Oxford scholar Roger Bacon pioneered the science of using lenses to see and then spent years in a miserable medieval prison cell for his hubris, for advocating that he could “fix” God’s creations by improving our eyesight. Even today, people take off their glasses before having their picture taken because they have been taught through generations that wearing glasses is somehow unattractive, despite how necessary they are to most of our daily lives.

A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See is the first book to investigate the experience of wearing glasses and contacts and their role in culture. David King Dunaway encourages readers to take a look at how they literally see the world by exploring everything from the history of deficient eyesight and how glasses are made, to the stigma surrounding them and the future of augmented and virtual reality glasses. He illustrates how glasses have shaped, and continue to shape, who we are and who we are becoming. Interwoven with this exploration is Dunaway’s own experience of spending a risky—and surprisingly lonely—week without his glasses, which he has used since childhood and needs to cross the street, and for which he now has a newfound appreciation.