Uncommon Life of Common Objects

Click here for a sample book chapter (PDF file).

Author Akiko Busch devotes a chapter to each of 12 common objects, and discusses her and others’ experiences that give everyday things their significance. Through her examination of: a video camera, a cellular phone, a vegetable peeler, a snowboard, a baby carriage, a chair, a refrigerator, a mailbox, a medicine cabinet, a cereal box, a backpack, and a desk, Busch illuminates the social and personal issues that shape our lives and the ownership of our things. Lovingly illustrated, always touching, sometimes nostalgic, and often hilarious, The Uncommon Life of Common Objects, is a topical reader that is at once a personal manifesto, a look at how design influences and responds to our changing lives, and a study of society and its values and the infusion of meaning into inanimate objects.

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