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.

米歇尔·德·塞托，法国哲学家和历史学家，致力于研究宗教历史，著有作品《神秘寓言》等，对历史、认识论、精神分析法以及宗教在现代社会中的地位等领域，他都有所涉猎并进行了广泛的思考。

吕斯·贾尔，研究文艺复兴时期科学、哲学以及知识分子阶层的历史学家，巴黎历史研究中心的研究员、该中心科学历史实验室副主任，美国加利福尼亚大学圣地亚哥分校历史系客座教授。她还曾和米歇尔·德·塞托等合著有《历史、神学和政治》。

皮埃尔·梅约尔，曾任职于文化部，任教于巴黎八大欧洲研究学院和勃艮第大学。写过多篇文章描述年轻人的生活，发表于各大杂志。

冷碧莹，毕业于南京大学法语系，现为上海大学法语讲师，一直致力于法国社科类作品的翻译。