Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about
the hidden lives of ordinary things.
No matter how much you fight against it, dust pervades everything. It
gathers in even layers, adapting to the contours of things and marking
the passage of time. In itself, it is also a gathering place, a random
community of what has been and what is yet to be, a catalog of traces
and a set of promises: dead skin cells and plant pollen, hair and paper
fibers, not to mention dust mites who make it their home. And so, dust
blurs the boundaries between the living and the dead, plant and animal
matter, the inside and the outside, you and the world ("for dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return"). This book treats one of the most
mundane and familiar phenomena, showing how it can provide a key to
thinking about existence, community, and justice today.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The
Atlantic.