Jewels buried in a grave, cigarettes smoked in $100 bills, champagne poured into a bathtub--these perverse, irrational acts are also somehow thrilling. Profane Waste explores the workings of an unacknowledged taboo: the taboo against willful dissipation. Dana Hoey, an acclaimed photographer appearing here in her first book, presents a series of 30 haunting images that are at once ultra-real and uncanny. Bestselling biographer and social critic Gretchen Rubin uses lucid analysis and explosive examples--the actions of Rauschenberg, Jesus, Ivan Boesky, Thoreau and Goebbels, among others--to demonstrate the power of the title concept. Together, Hoey's photographs and Rubin's provocative arguments create a shock of recognition: they lay bare intentions that stand outside the conventional goals of acquisition and accumulation.

Text by: Gretchen Rubin