
Books in brief: A history of plaster; Einstein for the general reader; influencers’ literary antecedents
Fragility: A History of Plaster by Alain Corbin (Polity, £12.99) If we now live in the Digital Age, should we think of the first half of the 19th century as the Plaster Age? Alain Corbin, emeritus professor of history at the University of Paris I, thinks …