Generously illustrated, and richly woven with personal memoir, Pitchers of American Life is a survey of pitchers, jugs, and drinking vessels, tracing their role as representative art and collective tool.

Today, when many of our possessions are no longer tools that make us feel more human but less so, it is important to take stock of an everyday manufacture that does humanize us. The use and reuse of a communal tool can broaden our awareness of collective cultural dialogues, our sense of kinship, and our sense of the mystical sensation of coziness.

Each of the 12 communal drinking vessels examined, from Ancestral Pueblo ceramic to Colonial Boston silver, and from a Victorian-era "saloon" jug to a Machine Age punchbowl, is interpreted as a prism of collective meaning, and negotiated as a distinct "time capsule".

Readers are encouraged to become archaeologists of their own everyday possessions, as Shales blends his interpretations with a personal excavation of his own family heirlooms of plastic and chipped earthenware.