Vinyl records. Board games. Paperback books. Cameras. A philosopher dives into the analog world to show what it can offer us and say about our values.

Packed with first-person anecdotes, hand-drawn illustrations and extensive erudition, Darren Hudson Hick takes us through the pleasure of board games and jigsaw puzzles and inside the values of materiality, care, and agency. Hick moves from pinball machines and first editions to meditative cleaning and pottery to introduces us to key ideas in philosophy of art, everyday aesthetics, virtue theory, and care ethics alongside findings from psychology, anthropology and sociology.

What accounts for the resurgence of analog media? Why are we buying all this stuff? Hick approaches these questions by drawing on personal experience and presenting a pragmatist point of view. He believes what we value in our day-to-day lives tends to be what we value in our moral and political lives. The result is a lively and informed exploration of pop culture that tells us something about ourselves and how we live.

What we see is that touch and craft is the apotheosis of the digital world. By acknowledging the satisfaction of caring for things and hands-on engagement we can take a stand against the rising tide of ease promised by the digital. The Love of Analog is ultimately a celebration of being human.