material culture

Offers insight into consumption in America and the pitfalls of a system that promotes obsolescence and replacing versus repairing consumer goods, revealing contributing economic theories while calling for environmentally responsible changes.

Discusses the history of civilization by using 100 objects from the Mummy of Hornedjitef and the Olduvai stone chopping tool, to the credit card and the solar-powered lamp and charger to illustrate the changes in human history.

A collection of short essays that comment on the rapid obsolescence of objects, ideas, and behaviors and human response to change. Subjects include landlines, video stores, wristwatches, and newspapers.

A chronicle of the author's search for the origins of a newspaper, a glass, and the coffee placed on her cafe table--a quest that led her to Ruth Lamp, a worker at an Anchor Hocking factory in Ohio, Brent Boyd, a lumberjack from Plumweseep, Canada, and Basilio Salinas, a man who tends coffee trees in Pluma Hidalgo, Mexico.

Photographs and interviews reveal different aspects of the lives of women in twenty countries throughout the world.

Uses objects the Americans have saved through the centuries and stories they have passed along to chronicle the production of cloth in early America.

Traces the history of Britain's expansion from 1750 to 1850 and examines the Egyptian and Indian artifacts that reveal crucial information about the period.

Presents a narrative nonfiction that examines the human impact upon the earth and how it would respond without the pressure of human presence.