Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life #[nn]

This 2011 publication from Profile Books takes a fascinatingly offbeat look at the grime and mess woven into human existence, framed by a cover that pairs baroque grandeur with unsettling wit. A cherubic figure hovers within an ornate green-tinted heart, while a serpentine dragon writhes below amid swirling clouds — the tension between celestial beauty and earthly filth rendered in richly engraved imagery. It's a striking visual promise that the pages within will treat "dirt" as something far more complex than a simple nuisance.