This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is a genre freebie, so I decided to go with a genre I enjoy a lot: microhistory! I’m technically going to use the term somewhat broadly, but the idea is to take a tiny slice of history and zoom in, using analysis of that small aspect to understand bigger themes and trends.

So here we go! Let’s see what I can pull off my shelves.

1. A History of England in 25 Poems, by Catherine Clarke.
   I read this last month, so my review isn’t up yet, but I think it was my first 5-star read of the year. It does a really good job of staying aware of England’s colonial history (including toward Scotland, Wales and Ireland) and picking poems that aren’t the obvious poems everyone would always pick. I highly recommend it: poetry can tell us a lot about history, because it’s written by the people who lived it.
2. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, by Emma Southon.
   This is a book I read quite a while ago, but I think of it very fondly. It digs into Roman society through the lens of what might count as murder — and what was just considered justified. I loved it.
3. The Notebook: A History of Thinking On Paper, by Roland Allen.
   I really loved the way this book rambled around the history of how people use notebooks, from ledgers to ICU diaries. The idea that something that we might take for granted as much as the idea of keeping a notebook has a whole history behind it is very fun to me.
4. The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry, by David Musgrove and Michael Lewis.
   Of course, it isn’t really just the history of the object itself, but the events it depicts, and how the events have been understood in the years since, in part because of the tapestry. I really loved this one, because it makes clear that we aren’t always certain about what happened and why.
5. The British Museum, by James Hamilton.
   The British Museum didn’t just spring into being, it’s a whole institution with a history of its own. I will caveat that this book isn’t a critique of the British Museum; it’s in awe and support of the endeavour, and barely discusses the issues with the British Museum’s practices of cultural theft. But it’s still fascinating to learn about how the building came to be what it is today.
6. Soda and Fizzy Drinks: A Global History, by Judith Levin.
   I’m letting this book stand in for the whole Edible Series, because I could’ve picked out a whole bunch of those. Food tells us a lot about history: how food traditions travel, whether they’re adopted, imposed or absorbed and changed, tells us a lot about contact between different cultures. (So yes, this particular book discusses “coca-colonisation”.) Sometimes with books in this series, I hadn’t really thought about the history and relevance of that particular food at all, so it’s always nice to dig in.
7. Chinese Dress in Detail, by Sau Fong Chan.
   This book isn’t exhaustive, because it’s based on the holdings of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which inherently biases collection of European items. Still, I found it a fascinating introduction, and the author makes sure to be clear that “Chinese” is a bit of an umbrella term, also discussing Uyghur clothing history as well. Like food traditions, fashion reflects the periods it comes from, with influence from other countries as well as industrialisation and the changing needs of the population. The other “Fashion in Detail” books from the V&A are similarly fascinating.
8. The Button Box, by Lynn Knight.
   This was one of the first books I read in this sort of genre: Knight focuses on the buttons she finds in a box of old buttons that has been used and added to by the women of her family, and thus tracks the history of not just fashion, but women’s place in society, technological advances, etc. I reread it semi-recently and didn’t love it as much as I had before, but I still remember it fondly.
9. Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, by Paul Koudounaris.
   Prior to reading this, I knew little to nothing about the catacomb saints. It’s not a tradition that particularly speaks to me, but I was fascinated to learn how the practice of venerating and decorating the bones of (supposed) saints reflected people’s faith. The photography for this volume is absolutely stunning, too. Macabre, but riveting.
10. The Sarpedon Krater: The Life and Afterlife of a Greek Vase, by Nigel Spivey.
    If anything on this list is microhistory, this book’s the one. From a single vase, the scope expands to Renaissance art and modern museum collections (and looting). I didn’t know much about this specific vase before I read it, and I’m not really one for art history so I couldn’t evaluate if it was really as influential as the author says… but I loved the process of learning more about it, and the potential influence it’s had all this time.

I ended up with a “shortlist” of at least ten more books, but let’s stop there, before I get too obsessive about pruning the list. Hopefully it’s a nice spread of options for the way histories of objects or types of objects, or seemingly more transient things like fashion and food, can tell us all kinds of things about history!

I don’t actually save quotations from books very often, so for this we’re reaching for some snippets I remember (or at least half remember, enough to look them up) to see what’s made an impression on me… let’s see what I can rustle up. Some of these I’ve surely posted before (and am posting again because they remain as vital to me as ever), but some are definitely newer.

1. From John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis, because TB remains a terrible and destructive disease that we must all take responsibility for:  
   We cannot address TB only with vaccines and medications. We cannot address it only with comprehensive STP programs. We must also address the root cause of tuberculosis, which is injustice. In a world where everyone can eat, and access healthcare, and be treated humanely, tuberculosis has no chance. Ultimately, we are the cause.
   We must also be the cure.
2. From Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, because Maia’s efforts to be better than what was done to him (without it being easy) make him a wonderful character:
   “In our inmost and secret heart, which you ask us to bare to you, we wish to banish them as we were banished, to a cold and lonely house, in the charge of a man who hated us. And we wish them trapped there as we were trapped.”
   “You consider that unjust, Serenity?”
   “We consider it cruel,” Maia said. “And we do not think that cruelty is ever just.”
3. From Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Heaven Official’s Blessing, because Xie Lian’s strong determination to save whoever he can is something I aspire to:
   “If a day isn’t enough, let it take a month. If a month won’t do, then two months, three months! If I can’t save ten thousand, then I’ll save a thousand. If I can’t save a thousand, then I’ll save a hundred, or ten, or even just one!”
4. From Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Heaven Official’s Blessing, because it struck a chord for me in emphasising choice:
   “I might not be able to decide whether the road is easy or not, but whether I walk it is entirely up to me.”
5. From Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, because this scene is actually really important, and we really do have to know when to say sorry:
   Wei Wuxian strode over with his hands clasped behind his back. “Young man, sometimes in life, there are a few sappy things one must say.”
   “What?” Jin Ling asked.
   “‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’,” Wei Wuxian replied.
   Jin Ling clicked his tongue. “Well, I refuse. What’re you gonna do about it?”
   “There’ll come a day when you’ll say them through tears,” Wei Wuxian said.
   Jin Ling scoffed, and Wei Wuxian suddenly said it himself.
   “I’m sorry.”
6. From Susan Cooper’s Silver on the Tree, because it’s easy to wait for someone else to save us:
   “For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy the world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvelous joy.
   And the world will still be imperfect, because men are imperfect. Good men will still be killed by bad, or sometimes by other good men, and there will still be pain and disease and famine, anger and hate. But if you work and care and are watchful, as we have tried to be for you, then in the long run the worse will never, ever, triumph over the better.”
7. From Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, because this is the turning-point of the story, and in a way taught me to be less anxious by facing my fears:
   “You must hunt the hunter.”
8. From Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, because it’s true but hard to learn:
   “Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.”
9. From Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, so that not all of these are serious (and because this, too, is true!):
   “Books are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with ’em, then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.”
10. From Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, because it’s a good one to end on, and a line I will never forget:
    Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.

With apologies to those who could’ve predicted the inclusion of those quotes from Cooper, Le Guin, Addison, Smith and Sayers…