Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Pause and look around: you will see that you are surrounded by glass. It reflects and refracts light through your windows; it encircles a glowing filament above you; it's in a mirror hanging on the wall; it lies shattered in a dented corner of an iPhone-you're drinking water out of a pint glass. Taking up a most common object, rarely considered because assumed to be transparent, John Garrison draws evocative connections between historical depictions of glass and emerging visions that see it as holding a unique promise for new forms of interaction. Grounded in everyday examples, this book offers a series of surprising insights into how we increasingly find ourselves living in a world made of glass.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

John S. Garrison is the author of seven books, including Glass (Bloomsbury, 2015) and The Pleasures of Memory in Shakespeare (2024). In 2021, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

Preface
"A Day Made of Glass"
Macbeth
Minority Report
Microscopic Vision
Telescopic Vision
Earrings and Landscapes
Photography
Shakespeare's Sonnets
"Heart of Glass"
Sea Glass
Google Glass
Trademark
Microsoft HoloLens
Strange Days
A Glass, Darkly
Surfaces
"A World of Glass"
Postscript: What's in My Pocket?
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index