A Brief History of Stuff - Science Museum ***

Ever since A Brief History of Time there have been regular outbursts of brief histories in popular science writing (even though A Brief History of Infinity should perhaps have been the end of it). The latest such offering features stuff.

It's a neat topic for the illustrated Dorling Kindersley style with a total of 50 articles, typically four to six pages long on subjects ranging from electric taxis to hot water bottles via the likes of roller skates, PCs and scissors. Strictly it's about objects rather than stuff (which I would think of as concerning material science) - but I suspect calling them objects would be too close to the history of the world in 100 objects. Most of the items here are everyday, with a mix of high and low tech. This includes an odd mix of the very general (plastic and tinned food, for instance) and the strangely specific such as the Rover safety bicycle, the AXBT microphone and the Kenwood A700 (no, me neither).

With the bewildering array of authors (see below), there isn't really a consistent style to the articles - it's a collection rather than a book. Some stick pretty much to the topic - so, for instance, the A700 (it's a food mixer, it turns out) is almost entirely about that specific model of Kenwood Chef, where, for instance, the article on the iPod spends most of its time delving into phonographs, gramophones, cassettes, CDs and streaming, only briefly dealing with the technicalities of the iPod.

One oddity about this book is that neither the cover nor the copyright page (which lists people like the copy editor and proofreader) mentions who actually wrote any part of it other than the introduction. I was starting to wonder if the whole thing was AI generated - but tucked away at the back is a contributors' page, listing the one to three articles written by each individual. It's a long list, hence presumably the names missing from elsewhere.

Overall, although interesting, it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Many of the articles read rather like extended museum labels - a bit too worthy to be enjoyable. Although most of the objects stimulate curiosity, and the eclectic nature of the collection should have made it decidedly moreish, I felt it was quite hard going to plough through. The foreword is by Nihal Arthanayake, host of the Brief History of Stuff podcast, and I couldn't help but feel that this material would work better in that chatty audible format than on the printed page, however nice it is to have some visuals to go with the words.

Hardback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune ) underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...

John and Mary Gribbin - Five Way Interview

Mary and John Gribbin are bestselling authors and science writers. As a pair, they have written several science books, including Being Human, Fire on Earth, major biographies of Richard Feynman and Robert Hooke plus Edmond Halley , and the 'in 90 minutes' series of biographies. Mary is a previous winner of the TES Junior Information Book Award and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex. John’s title Six Impossible Things was shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize and he is also a Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex. Their latest book is Against the Odds . Why this book? We enjoy writing biographies of scientists, which gives us particular scope to collaborate, with Mary rooting out the biographical background and John focussing on the science (although neither role is exclusive). We hadn't done one for a while, and particularly wanted to highlight a female scientist this time. But we had great troubl...

Search This Blog