To help make sense of our world, we often rely on systems of twos – comparisons, contrasts, contradictions, polarities and dualities. We’ve got male and female, Democrats and Republicans, salt and pepper, up and down, light and dark, full and empty, hard and soft. In his new Book of Twos, Joseph Amato reflects on how we use twos to take the world apart and put it together. He considers twos in nature, language, myth, religion, philosophy, history, art, politics and other disciplines.
Amato is a retired history professor at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall. He writes about intellectual and cultural history as well as local and regional history. His previous books, Dust: A History of the Small and Invisible, On Foot: A History of Walking and Surfaces: A History, are about understanding place and the transformation of everyday life. The Book of Twos is a continuation of that line of inquiry.
During a Dakota Midday interview, Amato said that through his years of teaching, writing, reading, thinking, analyzing and observing, he kept finding twos in everything.