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Waste

By Dr. Brian Thill
Series: Object Lessons
0.0 (0 reviews)
3.87 goodreads logo

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Check link for latest rating. ( 121 ratings, 24 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Waste explores the multifaceted nature of waste, considering objects not only as refuse but as elements intertwined with time, sentiment, and circumstance. Dr. Brian Thill examines various forms of waste—from nuclear and climate debris to digital detritus and pop-culture rubbish—unpacking our complex emotional and intellectual relationships with what we discard. Part of the Object Lessons series, the book invites readers to rethink their troubled relationship with the decaying world surrounding them.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$2199
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This insightful and beautifully crafted work will appeal to readers interested in environmental issues, cultural studies, and philosophy, as well as those who appreciate thoughtful reflections on everyday objects and their hidden significance.

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"Waste "explores the question: from nuclear waste to digital detritus, what can we learn about ourselves from what we let go to waste?

Waste explores the question: from nuclear waste to digital detritus, what can we learn about ourselves from what we let go to waste?

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Though we try to imagine otherwise, waste is every object, plus time. Whatever else an object is, it’s also waste—or was, or will be. All that is needed is time or a change of sentiment or circumstance. Waste is not merely the field of discarded objects, but the name we give to our troubled relationship with the decaying world outside ourselves.

Waste focuses on those waste objects that most fundamentally shape our lives and also attempts to understand our complicated emotional and intellectual relationships to our own refuse: nuclear waste, climate debris, pop-culture rubbish, digital detritus, and more.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Series: Object Lessons

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  • Bicycle
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle promises to transform our lives and the world we live in, yet its time seems always yet-to-come or long-gone-by. Bicycle by...
    By Dr Jonathan Maskit
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  • Rust
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. It’s happening all the time, all around us. We cover it up. We ignore it. Rust takes on the many meanings of this oxidised substance, showing how technology bleeds into biology and ecology. Jean-Michel Rabaté combines art, science, and autobiography to share his...
    By Professor Jean-Michel Rabaté
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  • Bookshelf
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Every shelf is different, and every bookshelf tells a different story. One bookshelf can creak with character in a bohemian coffee shop, while another can groan with gravitas in the Library of Congress. Bookshelf by writer and historian Lydia Pyne explores these differences...
    By Lydia Pyne
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  • Burger
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The burger, long the All-American meal, is undergoing an identity crisis. From its shifting place in popular culture to efforts by investors such as Bill Gates to create the non-animal burger that can feed the world, the burger’s identity has become as malleable...
    By Carol J. Adams
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  • Cigarette Lighter
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Smokers, survivalists, teenagers, collectors… The cigarette lighter is a charged, complex, yet often entirely disposable object that moves across these various groups of people, acquiring and emitting different meanings while always supplying its primary function, that of ignition. While the lighter may seem...
    By Jack Pendarvis
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  • Earth
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. In Earth, a planetary scientist and a literary humanist explore what happens when we think of the Earth as an object viewable from space. As a “blue marble,” “a blue pale dot,” or, as Chaucer described it, “this litel spot of erthe,” the...
    By Professor Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Profsesor Linda T. Elkins-Tanton
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  • Egg
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This book is about a strange object—strange in part because it is something that we all have been, and that many of us eat. Nicole Walker's Egg relishes in sharp juxtapositions of seemingly fanciful or repellent topics, so that reproductive science and gustatory...
    By Dr. Nicole Walker
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  • Eye Chart
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Desert nomads tested their vision by distinguishing a pair of stars. But we have since created more disquieting ways to test the strength of the eyes. Reading the eye chart is an exercise in failure, since it only gets interesting when you cannot...
    By Professor William Germano
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  • High Heel
    Best Fifteen Books of March 2019, Refinery29Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, Paste Magazine Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Fetishized, demonized, celebrated, and outlawed, the high heel is central to the iconography of modern womanhood. But are high heels good? Are they feminist? What does it mean for a...
    By Summer Brennan
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  • Hood
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. We all wear hoods: the Grim Reaper, Red Riding Hood, torturers, executioners and the executed, athletes, labourers, anarchists, rappers, babies in onesies, and anyone who’s ever grabbed a hoodie on a chilly day. Alison Kinney’s Hood explores the material and symbolic vibrancy of...
    By Alison Kinney
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  • Jet Lag
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Jet lag is a momentary condition resulting from the human body and its inner clock being pitched against the time-leaping effects of modern aviation. But more than that, it is a situation that explains time, technology, and the human body. Jet lag epitomises...
    By Dr. Christopher J. Lee
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  • Mushroom
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. They are the things we step on without noticing and the largest organisms on Earth. They are symbols of inexplicable growth and excruciating misery. They are grouped with plants, but they behave more like animals. In their inscrutability, mushrooms are wondrous organisms. The...
    By Dr. Sara Rich
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Critically acclaimed authors praise Waste for its intellectual depth and engaging exploration of a misunderstood subject. Jeff VanderMeer calls it "fascinating, thought-provoking, and necessary," highlighting its lasting impact on readers. Leslie Jamison describes the book as a vigorous and heartfelt investigation into discarded objects, reading it "in one sitting, spellbound." Alexander Chee commends the book as a profound meditation on how waste reflects both personal and societal fates, revealing unexpected treasures.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781628924367

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 05 November 2015

Country: United States

Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic

Illustration: 20 b/w images

Audience: Tertiary education

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 14.0mm

Width: 118.0mm

Height: 164.0mm

Weight: 145g

Pages: 152

Collections

Dr. Brian Thill Education & Reference Non-Fiction Philosophy & Psychology Philosophy & Stoicism Series: Object Lessons

About the Author

Brian Thill is Professor of English at Golden West College, USA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Jacobin, Mediations, 3:AM Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.

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