If You Like ... Micro-histories
Microhistories are complete popular histories of a particular subject in one volume. They are like a complete semester course in 350 or 400 pages. Much more fun than school but just as educational.
Try some of the books and authors listed below.
- The Big Oyster : History of the Half Shell
- by Mark Kulanksy
- Before New York City was the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster. This narrative sweeps readers from the island hunting ground of the Lenape Indians to the death of the oyster beds and the rise of America's environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to Manhattan's Gilded Age dining chambers.
- Chocolate : a Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
- by Mort Rosenblum.
- Chocolate, long considered the "elixir of the gods," is just about everyone's drug of choice. The preferred gift of Valentine's Day, it triggers the same brain responses as falling in love. And it's better for you than red wine. Mort Rosenblum delves into the mysteries of cacao: its history, its legends and lore, the processes that make chocolate, and, along the way, the dark side of the chocolate trade.
- Guns, Germs, and Steel : the Fates of Human Societies
- by Jared Diamond
- Diamond (geography, U. of California at Los Angeles) seeks the root answers to why European societies (and their American offspring) became the dominant powers on Earth in terms of wealth and power.
- Home : a Short History of an Idea
- by Witold Rybczynski
- In a loosely configured essay, Rybczynski (Architecture, McGill Univ.) discusses the idea of comfort and the Western cultural attitudes that have shaped it since the end of the middle ages. Rather than dealing with the technical aspects of architecture, he reviews such cultural variables as intimacy and privacy, domesticity, ease, and ideas about light, air, and efficiency as they have changed over time.
- Krakatoa : the Day the World Exploded : August 27, 1883
- by Simon Winchester
- The 19th-century eruption of a Javanese volcano, that still has global repercussions in both historical and scientific contexts, is portrayed. The book includes maps and other illustrations.
- Longitude : the True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
- by Dava Sobel
- The engrossing story of John Harrison's (1693-1776) 40-year obsession with the "the longitude problem" which resulted in what is known today as the chronometer, a tool that finally made accurate ocean navigation possible.
- The Root of Wild Madder : Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet
- by Brian Murphy
- From the remote villages of Afghanistan and Iran, down the ancient trade routes travelled for centuries, to the bazaars of Tehran and the markets of the Western world, every Persian carpet has a story to tell. Part travelogue and part exploration into the enduring mysteries of Persian carpets.
- The Time Lord : the Remarkable Canadian Who Missed His Train and Changed the World
- by Clark Blaise
- This is the biography of an idea, and the remarkable story of the man who created-and then convinced the world to adopt-a unified standard for telling time. Today we take the accurate telling of time across the world for granted. Yet little more than a hundred years ago, people even in neighbouring towns lived by different time schedules: noon was simply whenever the sun happened to be overhead.
- Windswept : the Story of Wind and Weather
- by Marq de Villiers
- We watched in awe as 26 tropical storms, 14 of them hurricanes, battered the eastern coast of the US. Insuring we do not forget, de Villiers reminds us the Greeks placed wind as one of the four pillars of the universe and that many cultures use it to explain crime and madness.
- A World Lit Only by Fire : the Medieval Mind and the Renaissance
- by William Manchester
- European powers were so absorbed in destroying each other and in suppressing peasant revolts and religious reform that they never quite got around to realizing the possibilities of contemporary innovations in public health, civil engineering, and other peaceful pursuits. Instead, theywaged war in faraway lands, created and lost fortunes, and squandered millions of lives.