Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Jet lag is a momentary condition resulting from the human body and its inner clock being pitched against the time-leaping effects of modern aviation. But more than that, it is a situation that explains time, technology, and the human body. Jet lag epitomizes the accelerated world we live in. It makes the speed and discomfort of globalization tangible on a personal level.

Tracing physiological, temporal, technological, and cultural meanings, Christopher J. Lee’s Jet Lag ponders our intrinsic human limits in the face of modern innovation, revealing the latent costs of global cosmopolitanism today.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.