Stand Up Straight!

Our bodies are not fixed; they change over time. They vary with alterations in diet, exercise and illness, and shift as we age. Our attitudes to bodies, and especially to posture – how people hold themselves, how they move – are also fluid. Our stance and gait are interpreted as healthy or ill, able or disabled, elegant or slovenly, beautiful or ugly. In Stand Up Straight!: A History of Posture Sander L. Gilman probes these shifting concepts of posture to show how society views who we are and what we are able to do by how our bodies appear.

From Neanderthal man to modern humans, Gilman shows how we have used our understanding of posture to define who we are – and who we are not. The book traverses theology and anthropology, medicine and politics, and ranges from discarded ideas of race to the most modern ideas of disability, and from theories of dance to concepts of national identity. Interweaving the history of posture with our developing knowledge of anatomy and cultural history, and fully illustrated with an array of striking images, Stand Up Straight! is the first comprehensive history of the upright body at rest and in movement.