A History of the World in 100 Objects

Based on the BBC podcast of the same name, this is a highly accessible, often surprising and endlessly fascinating collection of short essays on items from the British Museum's collection. From prehistoric chopping tools to a 21st-century credit card, the items curated here are both familiar and strange, and invariably have more to teach us than we might at first expect.

I shared several extracts over the course of a year with a class of Grade 12 History students, and the discussions that ensued were deeply engaged, lively, and thought-provoking.

I love adoption, but sometimes I don’t have the energy to read a whole treatise on the subject.

This book is about 100 historical objects, from the Rosetta Stone that helped linguists unlock Egyptian scripts to a throne built out of weapons arising in Mozambique from an African civil war. They span millions of years and six continents, and each object has its own significance.

I love this book because it felt like 100 smaller adoption and conflict stories wrapped into one small package, and I could read one at a time. One of my fondest memories of my daughter… show more.