Object Lessons is a series of short beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of
ordinary things. A cylinder of baked graphite and clay in a wood case the pencil creates as it
is being destroyed. To love a pencil is to use it to sharpen it and to essentially destroy
it. Pencils were used to sketch civilization's greatest works of art. Pencils were there
marking the choices in the earliest democratic elections. Even when used haphazardly to mark
out where a saw's blade should make a cut a pencil is creating. Pencil offers a deep look at
this common almost ubiquitous object. Pencils are a simple device that are deceptively
difficult to manufacture. At a time when many use cellphones as banking branches and
instructors reach students online throughout the world pencil use has not waned with tens of
millions being made and used annually. Carol Beggy sketches out how the lowly pencil is still a
mighty useful tool. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The
Atlantic.
