In prose as crystalline as his subject, the author celebrates the versatility and functionality of glass, and explains how a substance known to all but understood by few has been shaped and molded to serve mankind in innumerable ways. Readers will learn how glass has both shaped and been shaped by man's changing relationship to the environment; how it has brought vision to the sight-deprived and to humans beings huddling in the dark; and how glass enters the 21st century yielding an almost unlimited horizon of possiblities. With grace, charm and authority, Glass delves into history, invention, manufacturing, fine art, and the myriad faces and forms of this protean substance. Whether visiting the flamboyant glass artist Dale Chihuly, dissecting the creation of a twenty-ton telescopic mirror, sampling the history of Tiffany's magnificent lamps, or watching the design and construction of the greenhouses of Kew Gardens, this book treats its readers to a multifaceted vision of a material eternally destiend to die a violent death, and to be constantly reborn in a relentlessly changing world.