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Nappi

A Brief History of Curious Things

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In Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, the protagonist is tasked to find illustrations for a book on the history of metals with a focus on the curious rather than just the cold facts. I would buy this book in a heartbeat, if only it existed. This is why I am asking for suggestions on non-fiction that is interesting, informative and entertaining.

I remember enjoying Stephen Hawking's A Short History of Time when I read it long time ago. Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything was okay, though its scope was clearly too large and, so I have understood, there were plenty of factual errors. A Long History of Electricity (there might be a pattern here) by a Finnish professor Ismo Lindell was an excellent read, especially since it deals so closely with the subject of my studies. In all the books, the "stories" are told, more or less, through individuals and mostly in chronological order (of discovery), which makes for a very pleasant and human reading experience.

Speaking of humans, I also recently read Alan Weisman's The World Without Us. It had its moments but wasn't as well organized as the others and I often found it quite dull.

So anyway, any subject will do, though I'm likely to skip A Colorful History of Tiffany Glass and will almost definitely not read one dedicated to war or economy. Feel free to suggest those too, however, as someone else might be interested. Illustrations are considered a plus.

Thanks!

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Last year I really enjoyed Venetian Navigators by Andrea di Robilant, which is about the dubious discoveries in the North Sea of some fourteenth-century Venetian explorers. It's partly an investigation into their warped accounts and maps - how they were interpretted and shunned by scholars over the centuries - and part travel writing as the author attempts to follow in their footsteps and match their accounts to reality. There's a lot of interesting scene setting along the way, I particularly enjoyed the intro on early book publishing in Venice (I just finished my degree in Publishing), and learning about places like the Faroe Islands which I knew nothing about.

I guess that might fit into what you're looking for since it's NF but quite entertaining in that it's lead along by these exaggerated stories.

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Sounds excellent! Thanks! Exactly the sort of stuff I was looking for.

I forgot to mention Kon-Tiki by the great adventurer, and not so great amateur anthropologist/archeologist, Thor Heyerdahl. The book details the raft journey across the Pacific to prove something that apparently never happened. Very entertaining read nevertheless.

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I'd recommend Simon Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem. It's a pretty broard history of mathematics culminating in the solving of Fermat's Last Theorem - it describes the lives of a handful of famous mathematicians rather than focusing on the maths itself. It's rather light but I enjoyed it.

I'm also currently reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan - it's sort of a comanion piece to the television programme he presented of the same name. Sagan has a knack for explaining big ideas and making it read like poetry, I'd strongly recommend this one.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is the other on that springs to mind. Again, Dawkins has a talent for explaining his subject matter in an engaging and simplified fashion without making you feel like you're a six year old. By the author's own admission the book is not technically 100% accurate and some things are glossed over to keep the book relatively simple (and of course it's quite old by now, so it wont be up to date either) but it allows someone who is not an expert to have a glimpse of the beauty of the process of evolution. I found it an engrossing read that genuinely changed the way I looked at the world.

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Related to Raff's post, I recently read and enjoyed The World of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker Who Revolutionized Geography. It's a fascinating look at the history of 16th century exploration and mapmaking.

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