Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, USA. They are the author of 16 books, including Being Ecological (2018) and Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), and 200 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com @the_eco_thought

A poetic journey through the key objects that have shaped the author's life and philosophies.

The author has planned a TV programme with the BBC around the ideas in the book where they interview famous figures (such as Jeff Bridges and Bjork) about the objects that have shaped their lives

Chapter 0: IntroducingChapter 1: Electric PeanutsChapter 2: Inner BodyworkerChapter 3: Wimbledon Park Station Chapter 4: OsoChapter 5: Arc LightsChapter 6: CPAPChapter 7: AntidepressantsChapter 8: Cowboy CostumeChapter 9: ConcealerChapter 10: Battersea Power Station Chapter 11: ClangersChapter 12: Drum KitChapter 13: Avebury RingChapter 14: The Chicken Acknowledgments

'An old teapot, used daily, can tell me more of my past than anything I recorded of it.' Sylvia Townsend WarnerThere are many ways of telling the story of a life and how we've got to where we are. The questions of why and how we think the way we do continues to preoccupy philosophers. In The Stuff of Life, Timothy Morton chooses the objects that have shaped and punctuated their life to tell the story of who they are and why they might think the way they do. These objects are 'things' in the richest sense. They are beings, non-human beings, that have a presence and a force of their own. From the looming expanse of Battersea Power Station to a packet of anti-depressants and a cowboy suit, Morton explores why 'stuff' matters and the life of these things have so powerfully impinged upon their own. Their realization, through a concealer stick, that they identify as non-binary reveals the strange and wonderful ways that objects can form our worlds.Part memoir, part philosophical exploration of the meaning of a life lived alongside and through other things, Morton asks us to think about the stuff, things, objects and buildings that have formed our realities and who we are and might be.