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Microhistories Offer History Up Close and Personal

April 19th, 2007 Tana

Have you ever wondered what’s in the dust on your bookshelves?  Or what you’d do without your morning coffee?  Microhistories study history on a small scale - history seen through the lens of a single village (Montaillou) or a commodity (coffee) or a disease (the flu).  The best microhistories offer insights on the culture of their time.  We’ve developed a list of microhistories, including the following titles:

• Bananas: An American History by Virginia Scott Jenkins
• Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic by Gina Kolata
• The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson
• One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw by Witold Rybczynski
• Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan
• The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter by Hannah Holmes
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
• Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed our World by Mark Pendergrast
• Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty by Robert D. Friedel

Entry Filed under: New Materials, Research Resources