Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The shipping container is all around: whizzing by on the highway, trundling past on rails, unloading behind a big box store even as you shop there, clanking on the docks just out of sight¿. 90% of the goods and materials that move around the globe do so in shipping containers. It is an absolutely ubiquitous object, even if most of us have no <i>direct </i>contact with it. But what is this thing? Where has it been, and where is it going? Craig Martin¿s book illuminates the ¿development of containerization¿¿including design history, standardization, aesthetics, and a surprising speculative discussion of the futurity of shipping containers.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in <i>The Atlantic.</i>