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As I’m saying this, I can’t help wondering if, by the time you hear this, I won’t be obsolete. Think I’m kidding? I’m not. In her new book, Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By, Anna Jane Grossman reels off a stunning list of devices, equipment and habits that were once everywhere and now are nowhere. This would include body hair, the evening news, long distance charges, housewives, lickable stamps, short basketball shorts and even slide projectors. ANNA JANE GROSSMAN podcast excerpt: "I've written a lot for newspapers and magazines and I certainly worry about them becoming obsolete... In the book everything is written in the past tense. I had a hard time convincing the publisher that it was okay to write about books in the past tense." The disposable society now comes with an encyclopedia—at least it’s an alphabetical look to the past—and its chief historian is . Anna Jane Grossman   •