<DIV><DIV>What possesses someone to save every scrap of paper that&#8217;s ever come into his home? What compulsions drive a woman like Irene, whose hoarding cost her her marriage? Or Ralph, whose imagined uses for castoff items like leaky old buckets almost lost him his house? </DIV><DIV>&nbsp;</DIV><DIV>Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were the first to study hoarding when they began their work a decade ago; they expected to find a few sufferers but ended up treating hundreds of patients and fielding thousands of calls from the families of others. Now they explore the compulsion through a series of compelling case studies in the vein of Oliver Sacks. With vivid portraits that show us the traits by which you can identify a hoarder&#8212;piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, houses that can be navigated only by following small paths called goat trails, vast piles of paper that the hoarders &#8220;churn&#8221; but never discard, even collections of animals and garbage&#8212;Frost and Steketee illuminate the pull that possessions exert on all of us. Whether we&#8217;re savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, very few of us&nbsp;are in fact free of the impulses that drive hoarders to the extremes in which they live. </DIV><DIV>&nbsp;</DIV><DIV>For all&nbsp;of us&nbsp;with complicated relationships to our things, <I>Stuff</I> answers the question of what happens when our stuff starts to own us. <BR></DIV></DIV>