The Right Hand and the Left Hand of History: A Special Issue of Laterality [Hardcover]

Left-handers have been described as a people without a history . This special issue provides scholarly analyses of aspects of asymmetry in history, from the Renaissance to the 20th Century.

• Lauren Harris presents three studies describing:

• An 1811 American child-care manual for parents fearing, lest their children should be left-handed ;
• Manuals on swordsmanship from the Renaissance onwards describing the accepted minority of left-handed swordsmen, a minority that still dominates the Olympics;
• The enigmatic bias whereby parents use their left arm to carry babies;

• Janet Snowman and Stephen Christman present two papers on left-handed musical geniuses:

• William Crotch, the self-taught, 18th Century, musical prodigy, whose unconventional left-handed playing styles stimulate many questions about the asymmetries of stringed instruments;
• Jimi Hendrix, the 20th Century, left-handed, guitarist of whom Robert Krieger said, & he was just so different. He just came from such a left-field place.

• Chris McManus, Richard Rawles, James Moore and Matthew Freegard describe an early BBC TV programme presented in 1953 by Jacob Bronowski on right and left-handedness. In an early example of viewer participation, 6000 people sent postcards describing their handedness and also their perceptions of a mystery picture , that was the duck-rabbit figure from Wittgensteins recently published Philosophical Investigations.
• Chris McManus and Janet Snowman describe A left-handed compliment, a newly discovlÓG