Egg

Description

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. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Dear egg, Why we break the things we love the most Rotten eggs The egg came first Experiment with eggs by making a hollandaise in the time of global warming How to cook a planet Spoons The glue that holds us together All the eggs in Israel All the eggs in Ukraine All the eggs in Korea All the eggs in China Eggs in Utah Mohawk So many eggs, one small basket Which came first? Chicken porn can help you make up your mind about eggs Breaking a few eggs Blue planet, blue omelet Humpty Dumpty, revised Do eggs bring skunks? Would you eat a red speckled egg? The incredible, edible egg What is a cloaca? A million-year-old egg A lot of pressure on one egg Sidewalk cooking eggs A science fair every year The sex lives of fish “The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell”—Zora Neale Hurston Recipe for an already-cracked egg Notes The egg came first How to cook a planet All the eggs in Israel So many eggs, one small basket Which came first? Chicken porn can help you make up your mind about eggs Blue planet, blue omelet What is a cloaca? “The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell”—Zora Neale Hurston Index