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Biblio File

Specifics

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Back in the summer of 2005, Jake Gyllenhaal was quoted as saying:

I am reading a booked called SALT: A WORLD HISTORY, and it's all about salt.
I have a weird fascination with specifics. I like the idea of learning a lot about one thing. And salt is something you take for granted.
You think it's just something on your table. But it has a huge, long history. Wars were started over it.

This celebrity factoid stuck with me because it seemed like a very librarian conceit to be drawn to books about isolated subjects that, as he says, most people take for granted. I am also drawn to books like this, so I wanted to create a booklist of books about specific things and/or with one-word titles. Unsurprisingly, many of these have graced NYPL’s Books to Remember from years past. Movies have long been shortening their titles to evoke this dedication to minimalism, yet something about having such a myopic view of the world continues to have an appeal. Interestingly, many of these books focus on foodstuffs, perhaps in deference to the trend toward simple meals.

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky

The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History by Katherine Ashenburg (BTR 2007) Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen (BTR 2006)

This one is a little different, but it does inspire strong reactions in people…

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan (BTR 2004

Tom Zoellner’s new book Uranium continues our theme. His previous, The Heartless Stone focused on diamonds. After getting dumped by his fiancée, he goes on a personal quest to find where the diamond he purchased came from, visiting Africa, Canada, Japan and other countries in the process.

History of the spice trade books: http://www.theepicentre.com/Spices/spicehistorybooks.html

Coffee history books:

Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast

God in a Cup by Michaele Weissman

More history of coffee books: http://www.jimseven.com/2006/08/18/recommended-coffee-reading/

Tea, of course, has also inspired many books about its cultural history and trading and has just as many devotees as coffee does.

Lastly, a one-word nonfiction book that doesn’t really fit, but that brings us back to the notion of celebrity that began this post.

Flapper by Joshua Zeitz

The subtitle “A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern” pretty much sums it up. Zeitz chronicles the evolution of the flapper from the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writings to the cinema with Clara Bow and Louise Brooks. His approach is refreshing, detailing the escapades of a young and wild Zelda Fitzgerald and comparing the changing morals from the Victorian age to the rise of industrialization and spread of fashion.

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Here's another one for you:

Here's another one for you: Dan Koeppel's <em>Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World</em>.

One Word

One Word Wonders....Micro-histories, that is what this sub-genre of history is called. Back in 2005, I happen to be listening to NPR and librarian Nancy Pearl who was being interviewed by Steve Inskeep, shed light on this burgeoning history that singlehandedly seem to be started by Kurlansky with Cod and Salt. Now the publishers have learned that micro histories are a marketing niche, accessible to many readers, not just academnics and places like Barnes & Noble have whole tables devoted to them. I enjoy micro-histories as well as the big heavy histories, but am happy now everyone can enjoy them too. below is a link to the NPR segment http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4556632

Thanks for the added

Thanks for the added suggestions and links! I was sure that this particular Zeitgeist was not lost on the publishing and library communities, and was indeed a trend. It's nice to have confirmation that it seemed to have started with Kurlansky. I also enjoy Nancy Pearl's book lists.

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