
beautiful and wide-ranging...
…hypnotic…a sumptuous tapestry
A provocative book because, while exploring our relationship to that which we brand as ugly (or beautiful), Gretchen Henderson forces us to reflect on our tastes and fears, our social conventions and our everyday notions of justice. Such a call to attention is always very useful; in our prejudiced age it has become essential. ~ Literary Review
Henderson’s approach is generous and inclusive.

Look no further than the concept’s own history, most recently traced by Gretchen E. Henderson.

Gretchen Henderson ... skates, at an entertainingly high speed, across large swathes of territory, cultural, historical and biological, always fascinating.
~ Times Literary Supplement cover story
Henderson is a staggeringly gifted writer/thinker/visionary/healer and poet and so many other descriptors that escape the mind.
The poetry is ... ethereal and abstract, often profound.

In her wide-ranging and frequently illuminating study, “Ugliness: A Cultural History,” published this month, Gretchen Henderson traces the connections—some obvious, but many not at all—between aesthetic norms and cultural anxieties, from antiquity to the present day.
