To remain unconsumed by consumer society -- this was the goal, pursued through a world of subtle and practical means, that beckoned throughout the first volume of The Practice of Everyday Life. The second volume of the work delves even deeper than did the first into the subtle tactics of resistance and private practices that make living a subversive art. Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol develop a social history of "making do" based on microhistories that move from the private sphere (of dwelling, cooking, and homemaking) to the public (the experience of living in a neighborhood).A series of interviews -- mostly with women -- allows us to follow the subjects' individual routines, composed of the habits, constraints, and inventive strategies by which the speakers negotiate daily life. Through these accounts the speakers, "ordinary" people all, are revealed to be anything but passive consumers. Amid these experiences and voices, the ephemeral inventions of the "obscure heroes" of the everyday, we watch the art of making do become the art of living.This long-awaited second volume of de Certeau's masterwork, updated and revised in this first English edition, completes the picture begun in volume 1, drawing to the last detail the collective practices that define the texture, substance, and importance of the everyday.

米歇爾·德·塞托，法國哲學傢和曆史學傢，緻力於研究宗教曆史，著有作品《神秘寓言》等，對曆史、認識論、精神分析法以及宗教在現代社會中的地位等領域，他都有所涉獵並進行瞭廣泛的思考。

呂斯·賈爾，研究文藝復興時期科學、哲學以及知識分子階層的曆史學傢，巴黎曆史研究中心的研究員、該中心科學曆史實驗室副主任，美國加利福尼亞大學聖地亞哥分校曆史係客座教授。她還曾和米歇爾·德·塞托等閤著有《曆史、神學和政治》。

皮埃爾·梅約爾，曾任職於文化部，任教於巴黎八大歐洲研究學院和勃艮第大學。寫過多篇文章描述年輕人的生活，發錶於各大雜誌。

冷碧瑩，畢業於南京大學法語係，現為上海大學法語講師，一直緻力於法國社科類作品的翻譯。