Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about
the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The shipping container is all around: whizzing by on the highway,
trundling past on rails, unloading behind a big box store even as you
shop there, clanking on the docks just out of sight.... 90% of the goods
and materials that move around the globe do so in shipping containers.
It is an absolutely ubiquitous object, even if most of us have no
direct contact with it. But what is this thing? Where has it been, and
where is it going? Craig Martin's book illuminates the "development of
containerization"--including design history, standardization,
aesthetics, and a surprising speculative discussion of the futurity of
shipping containers.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The
Atlantic.