Dinah Lenney is a member of the core faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars, and the author or editor of four books, including The Object Parade (2014). Her essays and reviews have been published in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post among other publications.

An intimate look at how coffee comforts and inspires and restores-how it works against time, with time, in time, to wake us up, to slow us down, to let us savor, ponder, prepare, reach out, remember, resolve, and dream.

What is coffee as an object? Coffee the bean, or coffee the grounds? Coffee the liquid? In the pot or the cup or the glass? Coffee the taste? Is taste an object? Is smell or color?

Prologue1. The Impossibility of the Task2. My Mother Is Coming, My Mother Is ComingThe Questionnaire3. Coffee-MilkFrom the Coffee Diaries #14. My Emerging PalateA Coffee Story (Third-Hand)5. What We Talk About When We Talk About Coffee (Teresa Was Right)6. Coffee in Brooklyn7. Twenty-Two Hands...A Coffee Story (First-Hand)Rules Shmules (Just a Few, in No Particular Order)These Things About Coffee Are TrueFrom the Coffee Diaries #28. Serious Business9. Shouldn't Coffee Taste Like Coffee?(If You Say So)10. Coffee in Paris11. Extending the Metaphor12. All the Things You Are13. The Power of Suggestion14. One More Prompt15. Am I BlueFrom the Coffee Diaries #316. A Word About TeaA Riddle (Excellent Advertising)From the Coffee Diaries #417. ReunionCoffee and My FatherFrom the Coffee Diaries #5From the Coffee Diaries #618. Coffee and CatastropheFrom the Coffee Diaries #719. Coffee in Echo Park20. Coffee and the JewsCoffee and Dad21. The Widow22. Altered StatesFrom the Coffee Diaries #8From the Coffee Diaries #9From the Coffee Diaries #10EpilogueAcknowledgementsMy Coffee Book Fort (Further Reading)Index

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Coffee--it's the thing that gets us through, and over, and around. The thing--the beverage, the break, the ritual--we choose to slow ourselves down or speed ourselves up. The excuse to pause; the reason to meet; the charge we who drink it allow ourselves in lieu of something stronger or scarier. Coffee goes to lifestyle, and character, and sensibility: where do we buy it, how do we brew it, how strong can we take it, how often, how hot, how cold? How does coffee remind us, stir us, comfort us?But Coffee is about more than coffee: it's a personal history and a promise to self; in her confrontation with the hours (with time--big picture, little picture), Dinah Lenney faces head-on the challenges of growing older and carrying on.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.