Actually the title of one of my favorite George Harrison songs. A light tune with a serious message.

But there is a slightly more serious anthropological bent here in this weeks choice of giveaway. As we have, perhaps, sufficiently distanced ourselves from the indulgences of the holiday season, and the world economy helps give us pause , this book gives us all a chance to look at a global sense of material goods.
Material World: A Global Family Portrait

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A beautiful volume shot by 16 photographers, of families around the world and their possessions. Or lack thereof.

Some of the details:

from the Amazon site:

“In honor of the United Nations-sponsored International Year of the Family in 1994, award-winning photojournalist Peter Menzel brought together 16 of the world’s leading photographers to create a visual portrait of life in 30 nations. Material World tackles its wide subject by zooming in, allowing one household to represent an entire nation. Photographers spent one week living with a “statistically average” family in each country, learning about their work, their attitudes toward their possessions, and their hopes for the future. Then a “big picture” shot of the family was taken outside the dwelling, surrounded by all their (many or few) material goods.
The book provides sidebars offering statistics and a brief history for each country, as well as personal notes from the photographers about their experiences. But it is the “big pictures” that tell most of the story. In one, a British family pauses before a meal of tea and crumpets under a cloudy sky. In another, wary Bosnians sit beside mattresses used as sniper barricades. A Malian family composed of a husband, his two wives, and their children rests before a few cooking and washing implements in golden afternoon light. Material World is a lesson in economics and geography, reminding us of the world’s inequities, but also of humanity’s common threads. An engrossing, enlightening book. –Maria Dolan”

Quite honestly, what you are seeing in the giveaways recently are books from our library, and gear that we use.
These are the gifts we give all of our friends.

The details will be in the NEWSLETTER this week, and yes, once again we will send a copy to one winner in North America and one winner from anywhere else in the world. You do have to be signed up for the NEWSLETTER to win, though. Don’t worry. It’s REAL easy.

Sure, as we examine the concept of material possessions, this book is not an indictment but a cultural examination.

And our cup is nearly full, so we love to share. Kinda what it’s all about.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Weekly Giveaway. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.