Object Lessons is a series of short beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of
ordinary things. Recipe reveals the surprising lessons that recipes teach in addition to the
obvious instructions on how to prepare a dish or perform a process. These include lessons in
hospitality friendship community family and ethnic heritage tradition nutrition precision
and order invention and improvisation feasting and famine survival and seduction and love. A
recipe is a signature as individual as the cook's fingerprint a passport to travel the world
without leaving the kitchen a lifeline for people in hunger and in want and always a means to
expand one's worldview if not waistline. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an
essay series in The Atlantic.
