Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places

By Barbara Hodgson

Book Overview

Those who wish to understand a city's history visit museums, but Barbara Hodgson prefers a different approach. She explores the streets, bookstores, and markets, where a city reveals its most private self, displaying the contents of its attics and trash bins. Back alleys, obscure cemeteries, and hidden courtyards also offer up surprising finds and capture the essence of the city. Covering a wide cultural and physical geography from Brussels to Marrakech and Damascus to Portland, Trading in Memories follows Barbara Hodgson's travels through markets and other repositories of material culture around the world. The book looks deep into history through such objects as chandeliers left by French expatriates fleeing Shanghai in 1937 and glass lantern slides and stereoscope cards from around the world that attest to the human impulse for wanderlust, free or forced. This sumptuous book presents a wonderful visual and textual record of the true life and character of a place.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1553651995
• ISBN13: 9781553651994
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Greystone Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Random Collector's Treasure Trove

This book is so much fun; especially for those who love to loiter in dusty shop corners looking for mementos from the past...If Ephemera is your middle name, this book is for you. Ms. Hodgson takes you through years of her wanderings in world capitals and byways looking for whatever takes her fancy...things which might include old picture albumns, theater and sports stickers and tickets from the early 1900s or earlier, old containers and other cast off treasures. The only problem with this is that it's too short...More books like this, please!

Delightful

This little book is almost a treasure trove in itself. The author discusses her penchant for finding all manner of interesting bits and pieces, much of it discarded, in flea markets, bazaars, fetes and even rubbish bins on her travels throughout the world. The book itslelf is beautifully bound and reproduced, with gorgeous illustrations of bits and pieces and observations. I especially liked the chapter which tells of the punishments meted out to people who attempt to acquire a "Danger Landmines" sign in the Falklands. But a small criticism - this would have made a wonderful, much longer book. We have only a taste of the author's penchant for the odd and discarded - I would have liked many more tales. I'll have to satisfy myself with wondering what her house looks like!