By Minutiae Books I am referring to books focusing in on an in-depth analysis of one small topic in life, and proceeding to give its history and discuss its impact. Examples would be Cod or Salt, both by Mark Kurlansky.
I enjoy these types of books immensely – if they are well written and entertaining they can be a great painless way to learn a lot of history & are usually stranger than fiction.
My favorite is called Mauve – How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World
By Simon Garfield. Trust me on this. It’s a fascinating book.
The discussion was on Morning Edition this morning (where I heard an astronomer say he wanted to see a “full frontal” photo of a planet outside our solar system. What a great turn of phrase.)
So have you all read any of these sorts of books? Have any to recommend?
Are you thinking about “The Emperors of Chocolate”?
I adore this genre. You can’t even mention it without noting “Longitude” by Dava Sobel (about the invention of the ship’s chronometer). Also I like “Isaac’s Storm” (can’t remember author) about the 1900 Galveston Hurricane.
Some other faves
-Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
-Jell-o: A Biography by Carolyn Wyman
The works of Henry Petroski, including The Evoution of Useful Things (staplers, paperclips, forks), The Book on the Bookshelf (how did books come to me made and stored the way they are?), and my own personal fave, The Pencil (the pencil).
-Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast which is all about the history of Coffee and quite interesting.
On the to-read list:
-For God, Country and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast (corporate & social history of coke)
I’ve hawked both of these on this board before, but they’re worth it:
The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story by Janet Gleeson, about the development of porcelain in Europe. Did you know porcelain was once so valuable that an army was once traded for it, a war fought about it, and the whereabouts of a single lying alchemist was a source of international strife?
The Beatles: Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn. The book that only an insider could write. Everybody else could only make educated guesses, but this guy got to go inside Abbey Road and research everything. This book is the repository of the most in-depth, factually correct information on everything recorded by The Beatles during their career - how, when, where, what time of day, how many takes, which takes were used in which release…everything. And more!
As a gardener, I really enjoyed Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire, in which he discusses the cultivation of apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes, and how these plants have influenced and been influenced by human, well, desires – for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. Fascinating stuff, even if you’re not a gardener!
It’s out of print, but Life on Man, by Theodore Rosebury, is a gem. It’s about a rather yucky subject: bacteria and parasites and other critters that live on and in human beings. But Rosebury is such a great writer that he turns this into fascinating reading.
Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer is one of these books for me. Squicked me out majorly at times, but it was worth the ride. It’s about the parasites – natch – that live on and in every living creature on the planet, including ourselves.
Salt: A World History (previously mentioned above) was very engrossing, highly recommended!
I saw a documentary on the history of New York City’s water system the other day, that seems like a story that would be very interesting…anyone know if there are any books on this subject?
Professor Henry Petroski of Duke University is famous for his easy-to-read texts on the history of engineering. One of the best about minutiae is the History of the Pencil. Also, even though it borrows a chapter from the pencil book, I also enjoyed The evolution of useful things, which has several chapters about things like how we got to today’s shape for the paperclip, the fork… you get the idea.
