TV

<p>Object Lessons is a series of short beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. <p/>Once upon a time the news was only 15 minutes long and middle-class families huddled around a tiny black-and-white screen TV dinners on their laps awaiting weekly sitcoms that depicted an all-white world in which mom wore pearls and heels as she baked endless pies. If this seems a distant past that's a measure of just how much TV has changed-and changed us. <p/>Weaving together personal memoir social and political history and reflecting on key moments in the history of news broadcasting and prime time entertainment Susan Bordo opens up the 75-year-old time-capsule that is TV and illustrates what a constant companion and dominant cultural force television has been for good and for bad in carrying us from the McCarthy hearings and <i>The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet</i> to <i>Mad Men</i> <i>Killing Eve</i> and the emergence of our first reality TV president. <p/>Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in <i>The Atlantic</i>.</p>