Microhistories

Microhistory focuses on a single specific place, person, or event, and uses that to explore larger historical themes. Try these microhistories out!
Updated September 19, 2022
Unbound Librarians
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Salt: A World History
Mark Kurlansky
Paper Book
Homer called salt a divine substance. Plato described it as especially dear to the gods. Today we take salt for granted, a common, inexpensive substance that seasons food or clears ice from roads, a word used casually in expressions ("salt of the earth," take it with a grain of salt") without...
The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer
Mukherjee, Siddhartha.
Paper Book
Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, adapted as a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is "an extraordinary achievement" (The New Yorker)--a magnificent,...
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
Mark Kurlansky
Paper Book
The codfish. Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies and livelihoods have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it. To the millions it has sustained, it has been a treasure more precious than...
A history of the world in 6 glasses
Standage, Tom.
Paper Book
From beer to Coca-Cola, the six drinks that have helped shape human history. Throughout human history. certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course...
The Evolution of Useful Things
Henry Petroski
Paper Book
Only Henry Petroski, author of The Pencil, could make one never pick up a paper clip again without being overcome with feelings of awe and reverence. In his new book the author examines a host of techno-trivia questions -- how the fork got its tines, why Scotch tape is called that, how the paper...
Consider the fork : a history of how we cook and eat
Wilson, Bee.
Paper Book
Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson's secret history of kitchens, showing how new technologies--from the fork to the microwave and beyond--have fundamentally shaped how and what we eat "Like having a long dinner table discussion with a fascinating friend.... A pure joy...
Empire of cotton : a global history
Beckert, Sven.
Paper Book
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality to the world economy, and its making and remaking of global...
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World
Mark Pendergrast
Ebook
The definitive history of the world's most popular drug.Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade,...
Paper : paging through history
Kurlansky, Mark
Paper Book
Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations,...
Coal a human history
Freese, Barbara
CD
The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock has altered the course of history. Prized as "the best stone in Britain" by Roman invaders who carved jewelry out of it, coal has transformed societies, powered navies, fueled economies, and expanded frontiers. It made China a...
Banana : the fate of the fruit that changed the world
Koeppel, Dan.
Digital file
To most people, a banana is a banana: a simple yellow fruit. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In others parts of the world, bananas are what keep millions of people alive. But for all its ubiquity, the banana is surprisingly mysterious; nobody knows how bananas evolved or...
The dirt on clean : an unsanitized history
Ashenburg, Katherine.
Paper Book
The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, scraping the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the aristocratic Frenchman in the...
Rain : a natural and cultural history
Barnett, Cynthia
Paper Book
Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive.   It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's Rain <...
The golden thread : how fabric changed history
St. Clair, Kassia
Paper Book
From colorful 30,000-year-old threads found on the floor of a Georgian cave to the Indian calicoes that sparked the Industrial Revolution, The Golden Thread weaves an illuminating story of human ingenuity. Design journalist Kassia St. Clair guides us through the technological advancements and...
Land : how the hunger for ownership shaped the modern world
Winchester, Simon
Paper Book
"In many ways, Land combines bits and pieces of many of Winchester's previous books into a satisfying, globe-trotting whole. . . . Winchester is, once again, a consummate guide."--Boston Globe The author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and ...
The mosquito : a human history of our deadliest predator
Winegard, Timothy C.
Paper Book
**The instant New York Times bestseller.** *An international bestseller.* "Hugely impressive, a major work."--NPR A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing...
Nine pints : a journey through the money, medicine, and mysteries of blood
George, Rose
Paper Book
An eye-opening exploration of blood, the lifegiving substance with the power of taboo, the value of diamonds and the promise of breakthrough science Blood carries life, yet the sight of it makes people faint. It is a waste product and a commodity pricier than oil. It can save...
Stoned : jewelry, obsession, and how desire shapes the world
Raden, Aja
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As entertaining as it is incisive, Stoned is a raucous journey through the history of human desire for what is rare, and therefore precious. What makes a stone a jewel? What makes a jewel priceless? And why do we covet beautiful things? In this brilliant...
Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World
Catherine E. McKinley
Ebook
For almost five millennia, in every culture and in every major religion, indigo-a blue pigment obtained from the small green leaf of a parasitic shrub through a complex process that even scientists still regard as mysterious-has been at the center of turbulent human encounters. ...
Butter : a rich history
Khosrova, Elaine
Paper Book
"Edifying from every point of view--historical, cultural, and culinary." --David Tanis, author of A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes   It's a culinary catalyst, an agent of change, a gastronomic rock star. Ubiquitous in the world's most fabulous...
Sugar : a bittersweet history
Abbott, Elizabeth.
Paper Book
No Marketing Blurb
Champagne : how the world's most glamorous wine triumphed over war and hard times
Kladstrup, Petie.
Ebook
The sparkling wine's untold dramatic history, from the thirteenth century to two world wars and the twenty-first century, by the bestselling authors of Wine and War. "The blood history of Champagne has been told before, but not in such a breezy, easygoing volume. Good...
Crude : the story of oil
Shah, Sonia.
Paper Book
The story of the black gold that ellipsed King Coal as the world's number one resource - oil. Oil decisively won the Great War, propelled the West from the Industrial Revolution to the Plastic Age and has figured prominently in the power politics of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries. Shah...
The age of wood : our most useful material and the construction of civilization
Ennos, A. R.
Paper Book
A groundbreaking examination of the role that wood and trees have played in our global ecosystem--including human evolution and the rise and fall of empires--in the bestselling tradition of Yuval Harari's Sapiens and Mark Kurlansky's Salt. As the dominant species on...
Drunk : how we sipped, danced, and stumbled our way to civilization
Slingerland, Edward G.
Paper Book
An "entertaining and enlightening" deep dive into the alcohol-soaked origins of civilization--and the evolutionary roots of humanity's appetite for intoxication (Daniel E. Lieberman, author of Exercised). While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history...
About time : a history of civilization in twelve clocks
Rooney, David
Paper Book
For thousands of years, people of all cultures have made and used clocks, from the city sundials of ancient Rome to the medieval water clocks of imperial China, hourglasses fomenting revolution in the Middle Ages, the Stock Exchange clock of Amsterdam in 1611, Enlightenment observatories in India...
Candy : a century of panic and pleasure
Kawash, Samira
Paper Book
For most Americans, candy is an uneasy pleasure, eaten with side helpings of guilt and worry. Yet candy accounts for only 6 percent of the added sugar in the American diet. And at least it's honest about what it is--a processed food, eaten for pleasure, with no particular nutritional benefit. So...
Plucked : a history of hair removal
Herzig, Rebecca M.
Paper Book
Uncovers the history of hair removal practices and sheds light on the prolific culture of beauty From the clamshell razors and homemade lye depilatories used in colonial America to the diode lasers and prescription pharmaceuticals available today, Americans have used a...
Meet me by the fountain : an inside history of the mall
Lange, Alexandra
Paper Book
Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards "A smart and accessible cultural history." -Los Angeles Times "A fantastic examination of what became the mall . . . envision[ing] a more meaningful public afterlife for our shopping centers."-...
The joy of sweat : the strange science of perspiration
Everts, Sarah
Paper Book
Sweating may be one of our weirdest biological functions, but it's also one of our most vital and least understood. In The Joy of Sweat, Sarah Everts delves into its role in the body-and in human history. Why is sweat salty? Why do we sweat when stressed? Why do some people produce...
Brolliology : a history of the umbrella in life and literature
Rankine, Marion
Paper Book
A fun, illustrated history of the umbrella's surprising place in life and literature Humans have been making, using, perfecting, and decorating umbrellas for millennia--holding them over the heads of rulers, signalling class distinctions, and exploring their full imaginative...
Delicious : the evolution of flavor and how it made us human
Dunn, Rob
Paper Book
A savory account of how the pursuit of delicious foods shaped human evolution Nature, it has been said, invites us to eat by appetite and rewards by flavor. But what exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others are not? Delicious is a supremely...
Endless forms : the secret world of wasps
Sumner, Seirian
Paper Book
"A book that draws us in to the strange beauty of what we so often run away from." -- Robin Ince, author of The Importance of Being Interested In this eye-opening and entertaining work of popular science in the spirit of The Mosquito, Entangled Life, and The Book of Eels, a...
Ten tomatoes that changed the world : a history
Alexander, William
Paper Book
A WASHINGTON STATE BOOK AWARD FINALIST  New York Times bestselling author William Alexander provides "an entertaining, broad-ranging history of the tomato" (Mark Pendergrast) in this fascinating and erudite microhistory. ...

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