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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Fog, a cloud that touches the ground, marks the fuzzy and shifting boundary of just how much (or little) we are willing to tolerate the natural world. Viewed from beyond the fog line, it is picturesque, the stuff of postcards and viral videos; yet from within it is a menace, responsible for travel delays and accidents-including the deadliest airline disaster in history-and is a vessel of terror and contagion. Stephen Spark's Fog traces the brief history of fog from the mid-19th century, when Oscar Wilde claimed that fog was invented, to the 21st-century Pacific coast, where scientists believe fog may be going extinct, to reveal a history of our conflicting desires to eliminate and appreciate fog. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
List of contents
1. The Birth of Fog
2. Some Views of Fog
3. The Aesthetics of Fog
4. Homichlophobia: On the Fear of Fog
5. Clearing the Fog
6. The Uses of Fog: Scientific Advances
7. The Death of Fog: On Fog Extinction
Index
About the author
Stephen Sparks is a Book Buyer at Green Apple Books (Publishers Weekly’s 2014 Bookstore of the Year) in San Francisco, CA, USA. He has published essays in Tin House, the Paris Review Daily, Numero Cinq, and 3:AM Magazine. He also contributes regularly to the Literary Hub and is an editor at the popular tumblr, Writers No One Reads.
Summary
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Fog, a cloud that touches the ground, marks the fuzzy and shifting boundary of just how much (or little) we are willing to tolerate the natural world. Viewed from beyond the fog line, it is picturesque, the stuff of postcards and viral videos; yet from within it is a menace, responsible for travel delays and accidents—including the deadliest airline disaster in history—and is a vessel of terror and contagion. Stephen Spark's Fog traces the brief history of fog from the mid-19th century, when Oscar Wilde claimed that fog was invented, to the 21st-century Pacific coast, where scientists believe fog may be going extinct, to reveal a history of our conflicting desires to eliminate and appreciate fog.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Foreword
Shows how our uneasy relationship with fog—in all its spookiness, menace, and obscurity—embodies much of our anxiety about our ability to control the natural world.
