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Microhistories take a deep dive on a small or narrow topic. Be it a narrow timeframe, event, object or idea, microhistories are a fascinating social or cultural view that often provide a wider window and context to larger history.
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One Summer: America, 1927
Bill Bryson - Doubleday; 1st edition
Format: Hardcover
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A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy BookA GoodReads Reader's ChoiceIn One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life.The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth... |
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White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf
Aaron Bobrow-Strain - Beacon Press
Format: Hardcover
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How did white bread, once an icon of American progress, become “white trash”? In this lively history of bakers, dietary crusaders, and social reformers, Aaron Bobrow-Strain shows us that what we think about the humble, puffy loaf says a lot about who we are and what we want... |
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Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay - Ballantine Books
Format: Book
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In this vivid and captivating journey through the colors of an artist's palette, Victoria Finlay takes us on an enthralling adventure around the world and through the ages, illuminating how the colors we choose to value have determined the history of culture itself.How did the most precious... |
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On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks
Simon Garfield - Gotham; 1st Edition, 1st Printing edition
Format: Hardcover
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Cartography enthusiasts rejoice the bestselling author of Just My Type reveals the fascinating relationship between man and map Simon Garfields Just My Type illuminated the world of fonts and made everyone take a stand on Comic Sans and care about kerning Now Garfield takes on a subject... |
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Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing
Melissa Mohr - Oxford University Press
Format: Book
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Almost everyone swears, or worries about not swearing, from the two year-old who has just discovered the power of potty mouth to the grandma who wonders why every other word she hears is obscene. Whether they express anger or exhilaration, are meant to insult or to commend, swear words... |
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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee - Scribner; 1 edition
Format: Hardcover
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The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.... |
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Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food
Jon Krampner - Columbia University Press
Format: Hardcover
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More than Mom's apple pie, peanut butter is the all-American food. With its rich, roasted-peanut aroma and flavor; caramel hue; and gooey, consoling texture, peanut butter is an enduring favorite, found in the pantries of at least 75 percent of American kitchens. Americans eat more... |
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For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History
Sarah Rose - Viking Adult; 1st Printing edition
Format: Hardcover
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A dramatic historical narrative of the man who stole the secret of tea from China In 1848, the British East India Company, having lost its monopoly on the tea trade, engaged Robert Fortune, a Scottish gardener, botanist, and plant hunter, to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China... |
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Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat
Bee Wilson - Basic Books; 1ST edition
Format: Hardcover
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Since prehistory, humans have braved sharp knives, fire, and grindstones to transform raw ingredients into something delicious—or at least edible. Tools shape what we eat, but they have also transformed how we consume, and how we think about, our food. Technology in the kitchen does... |
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1776
David McCullough
Format: Hardcover
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America's beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation's birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake... |
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A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire
Amy Butler Greenfield
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A Perfect Red recounts the colorful history of cochineal, a legendary red dye that was once one of the world's most precious commodities. Treasured by the ancient Mexicans, cochineal was sold in the great Aztec marketplaces, where it attracted the attention of the Spanish conqu |
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Lifted : a cultural history of the elevator
Andreas Bernard - NYU Press
Format: Print book
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Before skyscrapers forever transformed the landscape of the modern metropolis, the conveyance that made them possible had to be created. Invented in New York in the 1850s, the elevator became an urban fact of life on both sides of the Atlantic by the early twentieth century. While it may at first... |
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Salt. A World History
Mark Kurlansky
Format: Book
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In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind.... |
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At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Bill Bryson - Doubleday
Format: Book
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From one of the most beloved authors of our time more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. Houses aren t refuges from history. They are where history ends up. Bill Bryson and his family... |
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Mary Roach - W. W. Norton & Company
Format: Paperback
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Beloved, best-selling science writer Mary Roach's "acutely entertaining, morbidly fascinating" (Susan Adams, Forbes) classic, now with a new epilogue.For two thousand years, cadavers - some willingly, some unwittingly - have been involved in science's boldest strides... |
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