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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Why do we sign our names? How can a squiggle both enslave and liberate? Signatures often require a witness-as if the scrawl itself is not enough. What other kinds of beliefs and longings justify our signing practices? Signature addresses these questions as it roams from a roundtable on the Greek island of Syros, to a scene of handwriting analysis conducted in an English pub, from a wedding in Moscow, where guests sign the bride's body, to a San Franciscan tattoo parlor interested in arcane forms. The signature's history encompasses ancient handprints on cave walls, autograph hunters, the branding of slaves, metaphysical poetry, medical malpractice, hip-hop lyrics, legal challenges to electronic signatures, ice cores harvested from Greenland, and tales of forgery and autopens. Part cultural chronicle, part travelogue, Signature pursues the identifying marks made by people, animals, and planetary forces, revealing the stories and fantasies hidden in their signatures.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

The paper studies the editorial practice of Boccaccio in his copies of Dante’s Vita Nuova, through a textual comparison between the two preserved transcriptions and the ones that are only hypothetically referable to his work, thanks to an examination of the varia lectio. What emerged for Vita Nuova from a new comprehensive collatio of the most important witnesses of Boccaccio’s manuscript tradition, put together with what is known about the other Dante’s works copied by Boccaccio himself (lyrics and Commedia), seem to converge in the hypothesis, already suggested by Michele Barbi, that around the interpositus b3 it is quite recognizable a third “authorial edition”, originally conceived like the other two, and perhaps currently surviving in the manuscript Riccardiano 1035.

Hailed as a “tour de force” by the New York Times, this irresistible novel captures John Lahr's madcap genius Meet Benny Walsh: busboy at the Homestead restaurant in New York City by day, compulsive autograph hunter by night. Known for going to extraordinary lengths for a much-coveted signature, Benny is also tangled up with an actress and fellow autograph hound named Gloria, and drawn into an embittered battle with his archenemy, a headwaiter with a grudge. Lahr's acclaimed debut novel captures one wild week in Benny's life. It is an introduction to a brilliantly drawn and determined character who will stay with you long after the final page.