BOOK DATA: Nicole Starosielski, Media Hot and Cold. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022. $104.95 cloth; $27.95 paperback; 296 pages, 32 illustrations.

Thermostats might appear to be passive objects, benign devices with generic displays and controls, gray media overlooked and tucked away to a side wall. Yet, a thermostat is a control interface to something bigger. By a simple turn of the knob, thermal desires get manifested, an indoor temperature adjusted to our bodies and our machines. Coil fans are switched, supply ducts shut and opened, temperature is held hostage. For some, it is merely metabolic and temporal, occasionally even cultural. For others, it is a form of thermal responsibility: doing their share for the climate crisis. But in this fleeting moment of Fahrenheit (or Celsius) change, a vast infrastructure of electrics and electronics, pipes and ducts, boilers and district heating systems, power plants and yes, even extraction zones,...

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