The Common Things

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.

“[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.

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 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.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a few closely related families established a utopian community in Canada’s smallest province. Known officially as B. Compton Limited but described by a journalist in 1935 as "Prince Edward Island’s unique ‘brotherly love’ community," this utopia owed its longevity to the cohesion provided by its communal organization, dense kin ties, and long-held millenarianism – and to a decidedly pragmatic approach to business. All Things in Common demonstrates how "un-utopian" such a community could be while problematizing the contention that the inevitable end of all utopian experiments is a full-blown dystopia. Beginning with a compelling backstory and locating the Compton community in the historiography of North American utopias, the author goes on to explore the community’s business endeavours, its religious, familial, and transgressive aspects, and its brief period of international fame before assessing the factors that led to its dissolution in 1947. Providing a strong narrative framework, All Things in Common draws on rich family and archival records and diverse secondary sources, concluding with a consideration of the community’s legacy for its alumni and their descendants.

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.

This vivid, engrossing book reveals the fascinating stories behind the objects in your world, what you wear, what you eat, what entertains you, and more. Discover the history behind the world's tallest skyscrapers, find out when people first started drinking caffeine and why it wakes us up, and learn how GPS came to be. For those who loved the first installment of An Uncommon History of Common Things come even more short entries illustrated by full color photos. These incorporate quirky anecdotes about the history of everyday objects, including the personalities and pitfalls along the path to innovation and unusual facts behind things we frequently see and use. Smart, surprising, and informative, this book is the ultimate resource for history and trivia buffs alike. Dive into these entertaining pages and let your curiosity to run wild!