Saturday I was going through some magazines and noted an ad for a book titled Thrift published by Templeton Foundation Press. The price was $34.95. It’s a 9x11 inches, 360 pages, and evidently has a lot of black and white photos. A book of this size with photos can justify a $34.95 price tag, but I feel some incongruence. A $34.95 book that “showcases a beautiful and historic collection of thrift artifacts and memorabilia from around the world”—there’s something about it that would make me uncomfortable to have it on my coffee table. The magazine where I saw the ad was a few months old and when I checked Amazon I was pleased to see the book in paperback at half the price. But I didn’t order it.