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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.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
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