Author(s): Jonathan Russell Clark; Christopher Schaberg (Series edited by); Ian Bogost (Series edited by)

Society

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

How did the skateboard go from a menacing fad to an Olympic sport? Writer and skateboarder Jonathan Russell Clark answers this question by going straight to the sources: the skaters, photographers, commentators, and industry insiders who made such an unlikely rise to worldwide juggernaut possible. Skateboarders are their own historians, which means the real history of skating exists not in archives or texts but in a hodgepodge of random and iconic videos, tattered photographs, and, mostly, in the blurry memories of the people who lived through it all. From California beaches to Tokyo 2020, the skateboard has outlasted its critics to form a global community of creativity, camaraderie, and unceasing progression.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Review: This book is super tiny and will fit in the back pocket of some too-big-for-you jeans. . . . If you were the smart kid in your high school English class, read Skateboard. * Jenkem Magazine *
Skateboard is zippy, poetic, and playful, yet grounded in history. And what a fascinating history it is! Clark moves with great and joyful agility between his profiles of pro-skaters and his meditations on the technologies that transformed skateboarding from a hobby into an artform. * Merve Emre, Associate Professor of English, University of Oxford, UK, and contributing writer at The New Yorker *

Contents: Prologue: Memory Screen 1. Since Day One 2. Photosynthesis 3. Video Days 4. Shackle Me Not 5. Beautiful Mutants Epilogue: This Is Skateboarding Acknowledgments Selected Bibliography Index

Author Biography: Jonathan Russell Clark is a writer and critic living in the United States. He is the author of An Oasis of Horror in a Desert of Boredom (2018). His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Vulture, L.A. Times, and numerous others. He has an MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA. He has been a theater critic in Boston, a co-founder of a shadow puppet theater company, and a guitarist in a gypsy jazz band. He has skateboarded for 27 years.