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The Toothpaste Millionaire
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Why There's Antifreeze in Your Toothpaste: The Chemistry of Household Ingredients
Explaining why antifreeze is a component of toothpaste and how salt works in shampoo, this fascinating handbook delves into the chemistry of everyday household products. Decoding more than 150 cryptic ingredients, the guide explains each component's structural formula, offers synonymous names, and describes its common uses. This informative resource can serve curious readers as a basic primer to commercial chemistry or as an indexed reference for specific compounds found on a product label. Grouped according to type, these chemical descriptions will dissolve common misunderstandings and help make consumers more product savvy. .
Price: $10.37
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Dr. Johnson's London: Coffee-Houses and Climbing Boys, Medicine, Toothpaste and Gin, Poverty and Press-Gangs, Freakshows and Female Education
The practical realities of everyday life are rarely described in history books. To remedy this, and to satisfy her own curiosity about the lives of our ancestors, Liza Picard immersed herself in contemporary sources - diaries and journals, almanacs and newspapers, government papers and reports, advice books and memoirs - to examine the substance of life in mid-18th century London. The fascinating result of her research, Dr. Johnson's London introduces the reader to every facet of that period: from houses and gardens to transport and traffic; from occupations and work to pleasure and amusements; from health and medicine to sex, food, and fashion. Stops along the way focus on education, etiquette, public executions as popular entertainment, and a melange of other historical curiosities. This book spans the period from 1740 to 1770-very much the city of Dr. Johnson, who published his great Dictionary in 1755. It starts when the gin craze was gaining ground and ends just before America ceased being a colony. In its enthralling review of an exhilarating era, Dr. Johnson's London brilliantly records the strangeness and individuality of the past--and continually reminds us of parallels with the present day. .
Price: $11.43
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Toothpaste for Dinner
Toothpaste for Dinner offers a sarcastic but honest portrayal of modern existence The characters, barely more than stick figures, provide a blank slate on which readers can impose their own experiences and frustrations. Everyone has a coworker who regales them with tales of weekend drunkenness, or swings by their cubicle every day with an insipid joke. We want to tell our boss that nobody cares about the antics of her craaaazy cats, or that despite his idea that he's the "office clown," everyone hates the IT guy. We never say these things aloud, but we want to. And the indignities of modern life go well beyond the office. We all know the frustration of standing in line behind someone having a much-too-personal mobile-phone conversation, or the problem of deciding whether an article of clothing is ironically hip or just plain stupid. But then there's Drew, in his internet fiefdom, saying the things we can't, pondering the confusing, annoying and just plain weird, and making us feel a bit less alone..
Price: $0.04
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The Toothpaste of Immortality: Self-Construction in the Consumer Age (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)
This lively and insightful account reveals the profound ways in which everyday acts and artifacts of consumer civilization shape our sense of self. Elemér Hankiss shows how human beings act simultaneously in two plays. On the "trivial" surface of their everyday lives they work, make money, raise children, build houses, and do a lot of other things. At the same time, they also act in the "existential" drama of their lives -- even if they are not aware of doing so. They construct and reconstruct their selves each day by striving for authenticity, the intense experience of being, dignity, meaning, and the hope of immortality. Hankiss explores this interaction between the trivial and existential, in the process unfolding its context in "consumer civilization." This concept is brilliantly illustrated in a section entitled "the toothpaste of immortality": "If we watch enough commercials, we believe that this or that special brand of toothpaste preserves our teeth, and -- per metonymiam -- ourselves, young and beautiful indefinitely. And then, for a fleeting moment, there, in our bathrooms, we experience the sweet and melancholy illusion that we may stay young and beautiful forever; that we may defeat mortality; we may defeat decay and death." First published to great success in Hungarian, this entertaining and compelling book reveals surprising insights into the challenges and possibilities of self-fulfillment. .
Price: $14.88
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