Jewels buried in a grave, cigarettes smoked in $100 bills, champagne poured into a bathtub – what explains these seemingly perverse and irrational, yet also thrilling, acts? Profane Waste explores the workings of an unacknowledged taboo: the taboo against willful dissipation, profane waste.

Profane Waste is the product of an extraordinary collaboration. Dana Hoey, an acclaimed photographer, presents a series of haunting images that are at once ultra-real and uncanny. Noted writer Gretchen Rubin uses lucid analysis and explosive examples – actions by Rauschenberg, Jesus, Ivan Boesky, Thoreau and Goebbels, among others – to demonstrate the power of profane waste.

Together, Hoey's photographs and Rubin's provocative argument give the reader a shock of recognition as a category of action – never before explained – becomes comprehensible. Their work lays lay bare intentions that stand outside the conventional goals of acquisition and accumulation.

For more information on Gretchen Rubin, please visit her website at www.gretchenrubin.com.