Up Close and Personal - Microhistories

Ever been so interested in a topic that you wished you could put it under a microscope and see it in splendid detail? Microhistories let you do just that. They're adventures through every aspect of a subject letting you understand it from the inside out. History buffs and curious readers alike will relish these technicolour portraits.

Updated July 8, 2026
S
Saskatchewan Information & Library Services Consortium Regina Public Library
This is your list in printable form. Simply print this page using your browser's print command.

Up Close and Personal - Microhistories

Ever been so interested in a topic that you wished you could put it under a microscope and see it in splendid detail? Microhistories let you do just that. They're adventures through every aspect of a subject letting you understand it from the inside out. History buffs and curious readers alike will relish these technicolour portraits.

Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Barbieland : The Unauthorized History
Hitt, Tarpley.
Paper Book
"Highbrow, brilliant." --New York magazine "A rollicking tale of how Mattel spied, copied, and stole its way to market dominance, then fought with military intensity to compel us to buy more and more." --The New York Times The...
Beaverland : How One Weird Rodent Made America
Philip, Leila.
Paper Book
An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver--the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.  From award-winning writer Leila Philip, Beaverland is a masterful work of narrative science writing,...
The Book-Makers : A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives
Smyth, Adam.
Paper Book
The five-hundred-year history of printed books, told through the people who created them. "Smyth breathes both books-as-objects and their creators back into life." --Financial Times An Economist Book of the Year Books...
The Breath of the Gods : The History and Future of the Wind
Winchester, Simon.
Paper Book
"As our climate changes, the force of the wind is set to grow. By looking to the past and the future, Winchester examines the twinned possibilities alive in this bluster: the power of the wind to tear our world apart and its ability to help us travel farther and do more." --...
Eager : the surprising, secret life of beavers and why they matter
Goldfarb, Ben (Environmental journalist)
Paper Book
WINNER of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Washington Post "50 Notable Works of Nonfiction" Science News "Favorite Science Books of 2018" Booklist "Top Ten Science/Technology Book of 2018" "A marvelously humor-laced page-turner about the...
Frostbite : How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves
Twilley, Nicola.
Paper Book
Winner of the James Beard Award for Literary Writing "Engrossing...hard to put down." -- The New York Times Book Review "Frostbite is a perfectly executed cold fusion of science, history, and literary verve . . . as a fellow nonfiction writer, I bow down....
The Genius Bat : The Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal
Yovel, Yossi.
Paper Book
"[A] wonderful book." --Nature "A mind-opening adventure." --Natural History An awe-inspiring tour of bat world by the world's leading expert With nearly 1500 species, bats account for more than twenty percent of...
Hands of time : a watchmaker's history
Struthers, Rebecca
Paper Book
"A hugely entertaining achievement." -Esquire "An engaging survey through a period of intellectual history that reveals as much about people who wear watches as the objects on their wrists." - Wall Street Journal "As impeccably crafted and precisely...
Milk! : a 10,000-year food fracas
Kurlansky, Mark
Paper Book
Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the bestselling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic, and culinary story of milk and all things dairy--with recipes throughout. According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a...
Pockets : an intimate history of how we keep things close
Carlson, Hannah (Historian)
Paper Book
Who gets pockets, and why? It's a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men's clothes have so many pockets and women's so few? And why are the pockets on women's clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a...
The professor and the madman : a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford dictionary
Winchester, Simon
Paper Book
"A narrative full of suspense, pathos and humor. . . . In this elegant book [Winchester] has created a vivid parable, in the spirit of Nabokov and Borges. There is much truth to be drawn from it, about Victorian pride, the relation between language and the world, and the fine line between sanity...
The rise and fall of the dinosaurs : a new history of a lost world
Brusatte, Stephen
Paper Book
"THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY," hails Scientific American: A thrilling new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists. "A masterpiece of science writing." --Washington Post A New York Times Bestseller * Goodreads Choice Awards ...
Salt : a world history
Kurlansky, Mark
Paper Book
"Kurlansky finds the world in a grain of salt." - New York Times Book Review An unlikely world history from the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World Best-selling author Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common...
Whack Job : A History of Axe Murder
James, Rachel McCarthy.
Paper Book
A brilliant and bloody examination of the axe's foundational role in human history, from prehistoric violence, to war and executions, to newspaper headlines and popular culture. For as long as the axe has been in our hands, we have used it to kill. Much...
Find this list online

https://librarian.syndetics.com/syndeticsunbound/lp/776.1139/list/8247

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.