Sunday, March 9, 2008

WARNING: HE MAY BE CORRECT: ...Iceland is one of the world's largest exporters of processed aluminum, aluminum brought us to the Moon and wraps us in safety as we cruise the stratosphere. Americans use 800 quadrillion aluminum cans per hour while the poorest children on Earth are deprived of even a dream of bauxite. In a new history of this most critical of metals...

Look, I enjoyed Mark Kurlansky's thin little text Cod as much as the next guy. Mrs. Earthling also liked his book Salt. But there are now single-subject histories of Oysters, Spice, the Potato, Cotton, Citrus, dyes (Blue and Red), flavors (Vanilla and Chocolate), the Toothpick, Tea and Coffee, the Zipper, the Condom, the Vibrator, the Mirror, Coal, the Banana, and Salmon. Indeed, there are now so many that it took me three attempts to find an object about which there was no history in order that I might mock the genre. Instapundit notes a new one about the sunflower, the need for the oil of which was, the author suggests, the reason Hitler invaded Russia.

Are any of these books any good? Is this any way to write history? And, while you are at it, what single-object history do we need but for which the market and the publishing industry not yet been sufficiently entreated?

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