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Acknowledgments As is well known, books are actually group projects, in spite of the single or few names that appear on their covers. We felt this collaborative spirit especially at work in the crafting of this book, and so we feel grateful to all the contributors, whose superb essays, openness to the collaborative spirit, productive engagements with feedback, and timeliness helped make this book what it is. We are also grateful to the anonymous readers of a draft for their insights, which drew out the book’s strengths, and to our editors at the MIT Press, Robert Gottlieb and Clay Morgan, who shepherded the book through its publication. As an editing and writing team, though, we feel our main debt of gratitude is to each other. Neither of us had coauthored or coedited anything with anyone before embarking on this project, and we each needed help figuring out the collaborative professional relationship. We feel we did this well with each other’s assistance, and each of us is impressed with and appreciative of how productive our relationship became over time. Not to belabor the garbage metaphor, but even the text that got thrown out was useful and moved us forward. Elizabeth would like to thank her parents, Mark and Pat Mazzolini, and her brother, David Mazzolini, for their support. Nonhuman friends Lola, Maebe, Levon, and Francis provide many pleasurable wastes of time. Most thanks (accompanied by love) go to Chad Lavin for his remarkably unwavering encouragement, patience reading multiple drafts, and inevitably useful insights. Baby Walter arrived during the production of this book, and he’s the best. Stephanie would like to thank the remarkable Cris Mayo, who listened to her talk about garbage every day and helped her see what was worth saving in her own writing and thinking. Peter, Deby, Zak, and Krystina Foote also deserve special mention as well as praise for their eternal wit, graciousness, and love. ...

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