Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit and vision many equated with the space race.
Fifty years later, that vision feels like a nostalgic fantasy, but the lunar rover's legacy paved the way for Mars rovers like Sojourner, Curiosity, and Perseverance. Other rovers have made accessible the world's deepest caves and most remote tundra, extending our exploratory range without risking lives. Still others have been utilized for search and rescue missions or in clean up operations after disasters such as Chernobyl.
For all these achievements, rovers embody not just our potential, but our limits. Examining rovers as they wander our terrestrial and celestial boundaries, we might better comprehend our place, and fate, in this universe.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Stewart Lawrence Sinclair is a writer and journalist based in New York. He has been published in Guernica Magazine, Literary Hub, 3:AM Magazine, The Millions, Avidly: A Channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New Orleans Review, among others. He is the author of Juggling (2023) and is originally from Ventura, California.

PART I
1. Moonscapes
2. Author's Note
3. Moonbeams
4. Splendid Terror
5. California Stars
6. Autopia
7. Drive
8. Barriers
9. Alienation
10. Must Man Explore
11. Head-on Collisions
Intermezzo
12. Moonwalkers
PART II
13. Close Encounters
14. Vital Signs
15. Pathfinders
16. Sojourners
17. Mad Scientists
18. Ruins
19. Deniers
20. Lifeboats
21. Mentor
22. The Rover at the End of the World
23. Eulogy

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index