MADreads

History is in the smallest details

November 19th, 2007 Sarah - Alicia Ashman

One of the hottest nonfiction genres in years past (at both the library and in bookstores) has been the “microhistory”: the “study of the past on a very small scale.”  Librarians often call these books “one-word wonders” because that’s the format their titles usually adopt: Salt, by Mark Kurlansky.  Coal, by Barbara Freese.  Rats, by Robert Sullivan.

One of the masters of the form is Henry Petroski, whose titles The Pencil, The Book on the Bookshelf, and The Evolution of Useful Things were all well-reviewed and accessible books about history, technology, and design.  But with his new book, The Toothpick: Technology and Culture, at least one critic is claiming Petroski has gone too far.

That critic is Joe Queenan, who, in the New York Times Book Review, tells Petroski that “this thing about things has gone far enough, Mr. Petroski.  Knock it off.”  Other reviews, while kinder, seem to focus more on the toothpick itself, and have very little to say about the book.

So has anyone read this title?  Is it just another harmless microhistory, or does it really signal the life of culture as we know it, as Queenan seems to think it has?

Entry Filed under: Nonfiction