Object Lessons

Object Lessons is "an essay and book series about the hidden lives of ordinary things." Each of the essays (2,000 words) and the books (25,000 words) investigate a single object through a variety of approaches that often reveal something unexpected about that object. As stated in the Object Lessons webpage "Each Object Lessons project will start from a specific inspiration: an anthropological query, ecological matter, archeological discovery, historical event, literary passage, personal narrative, philosophical speculation, technological innovation—and from there develop original insights and novel lessons about the object in question."

Essays and Mini Object Lessons

Russell Jacoby "The Object as Subject"

"The Object Lessons series achieves something very close to magic: the books take ordinary—even banal—objects and animate them with a rich history of invention, political struggle, science, and popular mythology. Filled with fascinating details and conveyed in sharp, accessible prose, the books make the everyday world come to life. Be warned: once you've read a few of these, you'll start walking around your house, picking up random objects, and musing aloud: 'I wonder what the story is behind this thing?'"—Steven Johnson, best-selling author of How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World

"They are beautiful: elegant paperbacks, the quality kind, with front and back flaps, not quite pocket-sized but easily transportable, each coming in at under 200 pages, each inspired by an object. … Billed as books about ‘the hidden lives of ordinary things,’ there are 10 so far, and every one a curiosity; not just an object, but a world in and of itself."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"In 1957 the French critic and semiotician Roland Barthes published Mythologies, a groundbreaking series of essays in which he analysed the popular culture of his day, from laundry detergent to the face of Greta Garbo, professional wrestling to the Citroën DS. This series of short books, 'Object Lessons', continues the tradition; subjects already covered include the remote control, driver’s licence, shipping container and drone, with more to come."—Financial Times

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Wikipedia