New in paperback! Lavishly illustrated in full colour with over 200 fabulous images Covers everything you ever wanted to know about shoes Contains highly accessible chapters on a wide range of topics from the tiny crushing shoes of China and the 23 inch Venetian chopine, to sex and the high heel and the codes of the 'gay shoe' Provides an entertaining history of shoes as well as revealing what our shoes say about us today

At last a work that deals not only with the history of footwear, but also with its cultural significance. This volume helps transform the shoe from a mundane object of everyday use into something of great social and psychological power. MANOLO BLAHNIK Anyone who has ever spent the rent on a pair of impossibly high stilettos, has bought shoes that don't fit, or owns shoes they have never worn, will want to get their hands on this beautiful coffee-table tome. The Times Magazine All of them [the contributors] are engagingly passionate about their particular footwear niche. ... Erotic Connections are everywhere in this book. ... Hardly a stone is left unturned - or unillustrated - in this department. The Times 'Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers' is footwear for thought. This lavishly illustrated collection of essays presents a global history of the humble (and not so humble) shoe as a symbol of style, status, sexuality and desire, from ancient times to the present day. The Remix - supplement to the New York Times An exceptionally beautiful and wide-ranging history of footwear. The Observer [Shoes] is lavishly ... illustrated, and the pages of text are colour-coordinated with the pics, as good accessories should be. The Evening Standard Charting their history, 'Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers, takes a peak at some of the best. Stilettos, wellies, sneakers and boots - they're all included and put in their cultural, historical, political and social contexts, each foot fashion is explained in detail alongside beautifully executed illustrations and photographs. Dazed and Confused With hundreds of stunning photographs, Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers traces the importance of just about every kind of footwear to reveal how fashion has changed over the years. Zoom Fashion Portal [The work] exemplifies the capacity to integrate historical enquiry, empirical investigation, hermeneutical theorizing, and a sense of delight in scholarship Cultural Sociology If you have ever wondered why women are forever in search of, consumed by, in love with, transformed by 'The Perfect Shoe': wonder no longer. Simply read this history of shoes. Then go out and buy some more. STUART WEITZMAN ... moves the shoe definitively from the margins of 'accessory' to the centre of fashion. Long gone are the days of 'having the shoes to match the bag'; this coherent survey of the shoe in all its aspects - historical, cultural and global - reveals footwear as a key to the vicissitudes of fashion and iconic in itself. ELIZABETH WILSON The book tells not only of the history of the shoe industry, but also its cultural significance. 210 colour illustrations and expert authors make this a "coffee table book" of the highest calibre. BuchMarkt

Giorgio Riello is Associate Professor in Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick. He has widely published on fashion, textiles, product innovation and design in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is the author of A Foot in the Past (2006) and co-editor of several volumes including The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives (2010 with P. McNeil). Peter McNeil is Professor of Design History in the School of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney and Foundation Professor of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. Recent publications include The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives, and Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, Renaissance to the Present Day (4 Vols. Berg, 2009).

Introduction. A Long Walk: Shoes, People and Places, Giorgio Riello (London School of Economics, UK) and Peter McNeil (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) STEP 1. A FOOT IN THE PAST 1. Beneath Their Shining Feet: Shoes and Sandals in Classical Greece, Sue Blundell (Birkbeck College, University of London, UK) 2. Sumptuous Shoes: Making and Wearing in Medieval Italy, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (University of Bologna, Italy) 3. Courtly Lady or Courtesan? The Venetian Chopine in the Renaissance, Andrea Vianello (Saint Joseph's College, Maine, USA) 4. Walking the Streets of London and Paris in the Enlightenment, Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello 5. War Wellingtons: Military Footwear in the Age of Empire, Alison Matthews David (Winchester School of Art and University of Southampton, UK) 6. The Perils of Choice: Women's Footwear in Nineteenth-Century America, Nancy Rexford (Independent scholar) STEP 2. ENCOUNTERS AND CULTURAL INTERACTIONS 7. Purity, Pollution and Place in Traditional Japanese Footwear, Martha Chaiklin (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA) 8. Interrogating Africa's Past: Footwear Amongst the Yoruba, Tunde M. Akinwumi (University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria) 9. A Dream of Butterflies? Shoes in Chinese Culture, Paola Zamperini (Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA) STEP 3. SHOES, BODIES AND IDENTITIES 10. Fashioning Masculinity: Men's Footwear and Modernity, Christopher Breward (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK) 11. A Delicate Balance: Women, Power and High Heels, Elizabeth Semmelhack (Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada) 12. Shoes and the Erotic Imagination, Valerie Steele (Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, USA) 13. Sex and Sin: The Magic of Red Shoes, Hilary Davidson (University of Southampton, UK) 14. Beyond the Rainbow: Queer Shoes, Clare Lomas (London College of Fashion, UK), Peter McNeil and Sally Gray (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) STEP 4. REPRESENTATION AND SELF-PRESENTATION 15. Made in Italy: Ferragamo and Twentieth-Century Fashion, Stefania Ricci (Ferragamo Museum, Florence, Italy) 16. Style Through Design: Form and Function, Giovanni Luigi Fontana (University of Padua, Italy) 17. Sole Representation: Shoe Imagery and Twentieth-Century Art, Julia Pine (University of Carleton) 18. Limousines for the Feet: The Rhetoric of Trainers, Alison Gill (University of Western Sydney, Australia) 19. Conclusion. The Male Cinderella: Shoes, Genius and Fantasy, Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello