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A funny, lyrical, illuminating book on the rich and little known history of the humble sock, its various incarnations throughout the world, and on what socks teach us about the frailty and awkwardness of the human body.

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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Who ponders the sock? This common object is something people tug on and take off daily with hardly a thought. Unraveling the garment´s history, construction, and use, Kim Adrian´s Sock reintroduces us to our own bodies- vulnerable, bipedal, and flawed.

Sock reminds us that extraordinary secrets live in mundane material realities, and shows how this floppy, often smelly, sometimes holey piece of clothing, whether machine-made or hand-knit, can also serve as an anatomy lesson, a physics primer, a love letter, a weapon, a fetish, and a fashion statement.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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Introduction
1. Socks & Evolution
2. Socks & Desire 3. Socks & Industry
Coda: Instructions for Darning a Sock
Notes
Index

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Kim Adrian´s Sock is the darndest thing. Witty and sly, written with the highest tactile precision, it is at the same time stacked with erudite asides and unexpected perspectives. Adrian reminds us where the ground lies and how we move upon it-and what miraculous things we have encasing our feet as we do so. Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age

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Kim Adrian is an award-winning writer based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Agni, the Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, the New England Review, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of a P.E.N. New England Discover Award, and Artist´s Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, three Pushcart Prize nominations, and a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers´ Conference. Her most recent book is The 27th Letter of the Alphabet.

Kim Adrian is the author of the memoir The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet and the editor of The Shell Game: An Anthology of "Hermit Crab" Essays. She is a Visiting Lecturer in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University.

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