Jedediah Purdy calls For Common Things his "letter of love for the world's possibilities." Indeed, these pages--which garnered a flurry of attention among readers and in the media--constitute a passionate and persuasive testament to the value of political, social, and community reengagement. Drawing on a wide range of literary and cultural influences--from the writings of Montaigne and Thoreau to the recent popularity of empty entertainment and breathless chroniclers of the technological age--Purdy raises potent questions about our stewardship of civic values. Most important, Purdy offers us an engaging, honest, and bracing reminder of what is crucial to the healing and betterment of society, and impels us to consider all that we hold in common.

Pop culture fans and trivia lovers will delight in National Geographic’s highly browsable, freewheeling compendium of customs, notions and inventions that reflect human ingenuity throughout history. Dip into any page and discover extraordinary hidden details in the everyday that will inform, amuse, astonish, and surprise. From hand tools to holidays to weapons to washing machines, this book features hundreds of colorful illustrations, timelines, sidebars, and more as it explores just about every subject under the sun. Who knew that indoor plumbing has been around for 4,600 years, but punctuation, capital letters, and the handy spaces between written words only date back to the Dark Ages? Or that ancient soldiers baked a kind of pizza on their shields— when they weren’t busy flying kites to frighten their foes?

“[A] perfectly orchestrated girl-who-cried-wolf thriller.”—The New York Times Book Review A dark, utterly compulsive novel about what happens when the warped imagination of a teenage girl turns into reality… When fifteen-year-old Yasmin—obese, obsessive and deemed a freak by her peers—sees a sinister man watching Alice Taylor from the school fence, she becomes convinced he’s planning to take her. After all, who wouldn’t want the popular and perfect Alice? Then Yasmin realizes if she can find out who he is before he acts, she’ll be the only one who can tell the police, save Alice and become Alice’s heroine. But as Yasmin discovers more about this man, her affections begin to shift. Perhaps she was wrong about him. Perhaps she doesn’t need Alice after all… And then Alice vanishes.

A cultural catalog of everyday things rapidly turning into rarities—from landlines to laugh tracks. So many things have disappeared from our day-to-day world, or are on the verge of vanishing. Some we may already think of as ancient relics, like typewriters (and their accompanying bottles of correction fluid). Others seem like they were here just yesterday, like boom boxes and CDs. We may feel fond nostalgia for certain items of yore: encyclopedias, newspapers, lighthouses. Other items, like MSG, not so much. But as the pace of change keeps accelerating, it’s worth taking a moment to mark the passing of the objects of our lives, from passbooks and pay phones to secretaries and skate keys. And to reflect on certain endangered phenomena that may be worth trying to hold on to—like privacy, or cash. This thoughtful alphabetized compendium invites us to take a look at the many things, ideas, and behaviors that have gone the way of the subway token—and to reflect on what is ephemeral, and what is truly timeless.

A bilingual collection of 25 newly translated odes by the century's greatest Spanish-language poet, each accompanied by a pair of exquisite pencil drawings. From bread and soap to a bed and a box of tea, the "odes to common things" collected here conjure up the essence of their subjects clearly and wondrously. 50 b&w illustrations.

All Things in Common gets behind the "communism of the apostles" passages in Acts 2:42-47 and 4:32-37, using the anthropological categories of "social relationship" espoused by David Graeber and other anthropologists. Looking at sources ranging from the Qumran scrolls to the North African apologist Tertullian to the Roman satirist Lucian, All Things in Common reconstructs the economic practices of the early Christians and argues that what is described in Acts 2:42-47 and 4:32-37 is a long-term, widespread set of practices that were taken seriously by the early Christians, and that differentiated them significantly from the wider world. This book takes into account Judean and Hellenistic parallels to the early Christian community of goods, as well as the socioeconomic context from which it came, and traces its origins back to the very teachings of Jesus and his declaration of the Jubilee. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in Christian history, and especially the socioeconomic aspects of early Christianity, as well as anyone interested in Christian ethics and New Testament studies. It would also be of interest to anyone interested in possible alternatives to the ideology of capitalism.