1000 Extra/Ordinary Objects

Dirt cupcake mix, as American as apple pie. Nipple lightener from Japan. Tick juice, indispensable in Venezuela for black magic love rituals. Sunglasses from Zimbabwe with shades cut from plastic juice bottles and no lenses. Korean disposable straw sandals made especially for mourners and corpses. Is this stuff cool or what? But wait--there's more. Flip through this book in search of international weirdness, and it's a pretty sure bet you'll wind up absorbing some sobering information about sex, death, destruction, poverty, and the arrogant ways of multinationals. Under the guise of an ultrahip consumer's guide to the world's nifty stuff--divided into sections labeled "Food," "Fashion," "Animals," "Body," "Soul" and "Leisure"-- 1000 Extra/Ordinary Objects is a subversive crusader for human rights and ecological awareness.

Sure, you can find out how to buy your very own Dom Perignon-flavored sorbet or a CD of "Music for Healthy Pets." But you'll also stumble upon objects like the cute little bright green Russian-made PFM-1 antipersonnel mine, "a favorite toy of generations of Afghan children" punished for their curiosity by a double whammy of liquid explosive and tiny blades. On other pages, seemingly innocuous objects--like the sweetly lumpy doll couples made of tree bark by Elliot Chitungu of Zimbabwe--turn out to have a bitter subtext. (Chitungu, who is gay, makes all his couples heterosexual; in his country, homosexuality is a criminal offense.) Other objects are examples of savvy recycling, like the paper made in Malawi from elephant dung and recycled cardboard.

With straightforward descriptions in both English and French, unblinking photographs of young people modeling even the most outré objects, and a Yellow Pages that includes information about little-known charitable organizations worldwide, this is a fun book with a heart of gold. --Cathy Curtis