Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
This book is about a strange object-strange in part because it is something that we all have been, and that many of us eat. Nicole Walker's Egg relishes in sharp juxtapositions of seemingly fanciful or repellent topics, so that reproductive science and gustatory habits are considered alongside one another, and personal narrative and broad swaths of natural history jostle, like yolk and albumen. Mapping curious eggs across times, scales, and spaces, Egg draws together surprising perspectives on this common object-egg as food, as art object, as metaphor and feminist symbol, as cultural icon.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Part I
Why Break the Things We Love the Most
Better Eggs and Lettuce
Weird Eggs
Fragile as Eggs
Walking on Eggshells
Part II
Grades and Weights
Can You Compost Egg Shells?
Rotten Eggs
Can You Eat a Robin's Egg?
Nest Egg
Eggshells Grow like Crystals
What Do Turkey Vulture Eggs Look Like?
The Sex Lives of Fish
What is the Worst Thing You Can Do to An Egg?
Can You Cook an Egg in a Solar Oven?
Planets
Spoon-Race
Mohawk
Cage Free Eggs
Chicken
Index