In 2020, I published a book about a topic long thought boring: street addresses. But it isn’t, as I found out, boring at all; instead, the rise of street addresses is an immensely important story of identity, race, wealth, and power. I’m not a geographer myself—I’m a lawyer by training—but I am deeply interested in reading fascinating stories about overlooked technologies. The books I've chosen here are just a few that meet this brief.
I thought this book would be a dry, academic chore—it really is all about house numbers, for goodness’ sake—but the Enlightenment story of the rise of house numbers is, in its own way, a brilliant story of the making of modern government.
The author is an Austrian academic, but the book doesn’t read like other academic books—the fact that he found a sometimes thrilling story on this topic felt like a miracle the first time I read it.
House numbers are small things that appear quietly on the walls, gates and porches of our homes and places of work. They seem to have come from nowhere and are now taken for granted in everyday life. But house numbers have their own history - one that is retrieved, assembled and presented here, for the first time, in vivid images from around the world.House numbers started their lives in a grey area between the military, the tax authorities and early police forces. Anton Tantner's engaging, intriguingly quirky book is a chronicle of the house number, from its introduction in European…
This is a book for people who love books. It’s a history of the index, but it’s really a history of information and mankind’s love affair with knowledge. I expected this book to be dense, but Duncan, a brilliant writer, proved me wrong.
Filled with fascinating anecdotes from the 13th century to the present day, this book tells the story of yet another overlooked technology in an engaging and witty way.
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book-it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known…
Bear with me; this is an academic book—but it doesn’t read like one. Instead, it’s a book of stories about how attempts (often well-meaning) to shape modern society have dramatically failed those they intended to help.
Much of the book is about how the government learned to “see” its people and the often disastrous consequences of state intervention. You may have to take the conclusions with a fine grain of salt if you are not as radical as Scott, but I can honestly say that no book has ever changed the way I see the world like this one.
"One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades."-John Gray, New York Times Book Review
"A powerful, and in many insightful, explanation as to why grandiose programs of social reform, not to mention revolution, so often end in tragedy. . . . An important critique of visionary state planning."-Robert Heilbroner, Lingua Franca
Hailed as "a magisterial critique of top-down social planning" by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail-sometimes catastrophically-in grand efforts to engineer their society or their…
I suppose I can’t get over books that tell me how something I’ve never thought about before influences almost every aspect of my life. This book is that book. Who knew about the struggles of containerization and how it makes the modern economy possible?
It’s also the story of the man (and fellow North Carolinian) Malcolm McLean, who brought the idea to life—an idea that, for better or worse, made it possible to stuff our homes and offices with cheap goods produced around the world.
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new…
This is such a different kind of book, and genuinely, one that really should be very boring; how much is there to say about a punctuation mark? But instead, it’s totally winning. The story of the semi-colon, and that of the authors who loved (and hated) it, is a delightful romp through history and literature.
Watson herself is a “reformed grammar fetishist” and approaches her topic with real curiosity while she probes our collective obsession with grammar.
'Fascinating... I loved this book; I really did' David Crystal, Spectator
A biography of a much misunderstood punctuation mark and a call to arms in favour of clear expression and against stifling grammar rules.
Cecelia Watson used to be obsessive about grammar rules. But then she began teaching. And that was when she realized that strict rules aren't always the best way of teaching people how to make words say what they want them to; that they are even, sometimes, best ignored.
One punctuation mark encapsulates this thorny issue more clearly than any other. The semicolon. Hated by Stephen King,…
When most people think about street addresses, they think of parcel deliveries or visitors finding their way. But who numbered the first house, and where, and why? What can addresses tell us about who we are and how we live together?
I look at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr., how ancient Romans found their way, and why Bobby Sands is memorialized in Tehran. I explore why it matters if, like millions of people today, you don't have an address. Full of eye-opening facts, fascinating people, and hidden history, this book shows how addresses are about identity, class, and race. But most of all, they are about power: the power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn't, and why.
I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…
Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation
Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.
First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…
