Tag: history

Review – The Biscuit

Posted February 7, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Biscuit by Lizzie CollinghamThe Biscuit: The History of a Very British Indulgence, Lizzie Collingham

When I mention that I’ve been reading a history of biscuits, people’s usual response is confusion about why that would take a whole book or be particularly interesting. The answer is that Collingham discusses the social, economic and political circumstances surrounding the development of biscuits, and though the subtitle calls it a “British indulgence“, it discusses other countries too and the colonial uses of biscuits (yes, really — they were thought to be useful in ‘civilising’ places like India).

This was exactly what I was hoping for: a microhistory on a really narrow topic that used that topic to reflect on larger issues. You might not automatically think of looking at the Industrial Revolution through the role of biscuits, or realise the extent to which naval voyages of exploration relied on ship’s biscuit, or appreciate the fact that the original biscuits were twice-baked bread made a couple of times a year in communities that couldn’t afford to bake fresh bread every day… but all those different topics can open out when you start digging in.

You don’t just get to learn about when they started making Jammie Dodgers, or that the company was notoriously cheapskate and used plums for the “raspberry” jam in them because it was cheaper than raspberries… that’s certainly one of the things I learned, but I also learned that the custom of following savoury food with a sweet dessert has come down in a very long tradition from when the stomach was thought to putrefy food, and Arab ideas that sugar was ideal to help seal off the stomach from harmful vapours caused by that process.

In the end, it’s a history of biscuits and it comes back to that pretty swiftly when it strays away, but using the biscuit as a home base, it can tell you an awful lot.

In addition, it also contains some recipes between chapters, some of them traditional and others from modern sources. I haven’t tried any, since I’m not the baker of the family and I’m also very lazy, but it’s a nice touch and we’ll probably keep my copy in order to give them a try someday.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Genuine Fakes

Posted February 4, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Genuine Fakes by Lynda PyneGenuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff, Lynda Pyne

I didn’t really expect this book to be so riveting, but it really was. The central idea is a bit shaky, because Lynda Pyne’s definition of “genuine fakes” is very, very elastic: one example is lab-created diamonds, another is the Spanish Forger’s faked medieval illustrations, another is the faked Archaeoraptor fossil… The things that make each item “genuine” or “fake” are pretty flexible. The reasoning is most solid when it comes to art like the Spanish Forger’s work, which has now become desirable in and of itself. The reasoning for the Archaeoraptor fossil is basically “well, it’s made up of real fossils!” Yeah, who cares, those fossils have been ripped from their original correct context in a desperate attempt to deceive people and get more money. That’s not a genuine fake, that’s just a fake.

And then there’s a bit about wildlife documentaries and how they’re kind of fake (sometimes, depending on how they’re filmed) and kind of not, and the point kind of dissipated somewhere in there for a while in favour of just explaining how much money it takes to create a documentary like Blue Planet II.

That all said, though, even if Pyne’s examples don’t all hang together, I enjoyed her dissection of each item and the things it has to tell us. I didn’t know anything about the Spanish Forger before, and that was maybe my favourite thing to learn about. Interesting stuff here, just… not really very organised.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – A History of the Paper Pattern Industry

Posted January 23, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of A History of the Paper Pattern Industry by Joy Spanabel EmeryA History of the Paper Pattern Industry, Joy Spanabel Emery

I don’t think this book would be of great interest to someone who isn’t interested in sewing at all, but you don’t have to actually sew to take an interest — a couple of episodes of the Great British Sewing Bee should set you up with all you need to know for background, if you feel you need to know a little more. Mostly, what you need to know is explained in the text, as the history goes through the development of early patterns from “rock of eye” to printed patterns showing various different sizes.

It seems that paper patterns have a surprising amount to tell fashion history: although paper patterns for home sewers were behind the fashion by a little, they couldn’t be that far behind or they’d be pointless, so they did follow fashion and sometimes inform it (for instance, in the length of mini-skirts). Patterns have survived well, despite the flimsy paper, because the paper was acid-free, and often systems of notches and punched holes were used instead of ink. Carefully unfolded, very old patterns are still useable and useful.

It’s surprising to me that the companies which established themselves early in the history of providing patterns for home sewers still exist! It was a little odd to meet their names back before printed patterns became possible, for instance.

The book is richly illustrated with images of the fashions and pattern-packets discussed, showing the trends through time very visually as pattern companies started putting the pattern pieces in envelopes, providing more instruction, and expanding their ranges to tempt younger sewers into following fashions. It also comes with some vintage patterns, which make no sense to me, but might interest people with a less academic interest in sewing and actually making garments.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Life in Miniature

Posted January 15, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Life in Miniature by Nicola LisleLife in Miniature, Nicola Lisle

Received to review; published November 23rd 2020

Life in Miniature is a bit of a survey of dolls’ houses, mostly a descriptive one, which talks about some key examples in order to illustrate trends over the years, and ends with a chapter of advice for those interested in collecting dolls’ houses themselves. I’m not; I was more interested in this as a microhistory, and it does do a little of that, discussing the things dolls’ houses stood for, for those who owned them, and how trends developed.

For me, though, it was a bit too much plain description, too many descriptions of particular houses rather than the higher-level trends. Maybe there isn’t more to analyse about dolls’ houses, or the style is different to other microhistories I have loved… but it just didn’t turn out the way I hoped.

That said, if you’re a big fan of dolls’ houses and you’d like to know more about what’s out there, this book would be a great guide.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Bookseller’s Tale

Posted January 12, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Bookseller's Tale by Martin LathamThe Bookseller’s Tale, Martin Latham

I feel like this book wasn’t quite sure what it was. History of the book? History of access to books? History of what people think about books? Autobiography of Martin Latham? There’s some genuinely interesting stuff sandwiched in between Latham making sure we know that he worked for Tim Waterstone and knew a bunch of famous people before you could Google them. Sometimes his anecdotes work to illustrate the narrative he’s trying to spin… and sometimes he’s telling us about weird dreams he had.

It was also full of this… reverence for the codex (not the contents) as a physical object, and being passionately in love with the physical form of a book. He’s a fan of physical books you can fondle, annotate, spill things on, write your name in… And I can get it, to some extent, but you’d think people aren’t real readers if they don’t like to caress books or crease spines or whatever. He does bring across the sensual enjoyment of books, and what a delight that can be for some people, but, yeah, just not sure about this absolute lionising of the codex-form of books above all else, above even the contents (which he rarely discusses in detail).

I expected to love this, but found myself fairly nonplussed. Overall, I can’t say I really enjoyed it — something about Latham and me just didn’t click, for a start.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Acessories: Shoes

Posted January 5, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Shoes by Linda Wooley and Lucy JohnstonAccessories: Shoes, Lucy Johnston, Linda Wooley

As with Accessories: Bags, this book caught my interest less because I have an inherent interest in the subject, or even fashion more generally, but because it suits my current rabbit-hole interest. I was here for the titbits about why certain shoes went hand-in-hand with certain dress fashions, and the book certainly had plenty of that kind of titbit — like the fact that the very long points of shoes like poulaines were somewhat eschewed by women at the time; they just weren’t practical and would tangle in the long hem-lines of dresses.

The book is beautifully presented with full-colour photographs/reproductions of art, and it’s structured well as a chronological dash through shoe fashion. It’s much better about women’s fashions than men’s (which is not, of course, because women have always had the reputation for being obsessed with their shoes — I refer you to top boots and Hessians, not to mention the aforementioned poulaines!) because of a survival bias in the existing shoes, and it is much stronger on more recent shoes… which are perhaps least interesting to me.

Definitely interesting, and one I’d recommend if you’re interested in the subject.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Accessories: Bags

Posted January 2, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of Bags by Claire WilcoxAccessories: Bags, Claire Wilcox

This short volume is from the V&A Museum, discussing the trends in fashion for bags and purses, with a bit of an insight into pockets as well. In many ways it’s a very feminine story, since men retained pockets in clothing and haven’t been such targets of fashion for much of the time. It’s a very Western European history of bags, but nonetheless, it’s interesting to see how they developed and what was considered important or essential in a bag through time. The text is descriptive and refers to items from the V&A collection to illustrate their points, photographed beautifully and carefully labelled to help you match up the two.

I’ll admit, some of these bags are just weird to me, which is an entertainment factor all its own — mostly I mean the newer fashionable ones, like the one which looks like a bag of Walkers crisps. Why?!

Fashion. Apparently.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Murderous Contagion

Posted November 16, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Murderous Contagion: A human history of disease by Mary DobsonMurderous Contagion: A Human History of Disease, Mary Dobson

I’d expected this to be right up my alley, but in the end, it was too general to really serve up the kind of titbits I’m looking for. Each chapter is a pretty high-level summary of the disease, its effects, its place in history and the current state of affairs, and though here and there some snippets were new to me, on the whole it just wasn’t deep enough for me. There’s some sourcing and recommended further reading, which is worth digging into, but it’s very much a layperson’s book.

As a layperson’s book, because of course I’m not a layperson in this field, it’s a pretty good overview of some very important diseases. The section on SARS and MERS is, well, not prophetic, but an intelligent person mentioning a warning they were aware of which we should all have heeded. The information in the book, as far as my own knowledge goes, is correct and interesting, though I wondered now and then if some things might be apocryphal (Albert Szent-Györgyi calling vitamin C “godnose”, for example).

I think the writing style might be a bit dry at times, though. I can’t tell if I thought so because so little of the information was new, or whether it was genuinely boring.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – How To Change Your Mind

Posted October 31, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of How to Change Your Mind by Michael PollanHow to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics, Michael Pollan

If you’re interested in the recent findings that psychedelic drugs (like LSD and magic mushrooms) could help treat forms of depression that have proven themselves resistant to the usual standard of care, this is pretty helpful in many ways as a survey of how LSD et al were originally perceived, how and why things changed, how a psychedelic experience feels, and where things are right now with research (roughly, given that anything based on research can be refined or retracted by the time the book’s printed).

It is also, however, very much about the author: his experiences with various different psychedelic substances take up a whole chapter, and another chapter is given over to the hunting of mushrooms (and the descriptions of a psychedelic trip based on those, too). It’s a very personal history, though I feel that Pollan does make his biases and prejudices — and how they changed with the research — pretty clear, so the unwary reader is still aware that some of this is coloured by opinion.

It sounds like psychedelics are a pretty promising avenue not just for treatment-resistant depression, but for quite a few other mental health issues too. I don’t think that I’m ever likely to see out psychedelics recreationally: the described dissolution of the ego and changed perceptions don’t really appeal to me, and I’d rather find my oneness with the universe through meditation and just trying to be a good person. The one way in which it appeals to me is the finding that it often changes people’s relationship to death (having been used with great success as part of palliative care). As someone with 10-15 years of constant anxiety about my health and anxious predictions of my imminent death under my belt, the idea of feeling able to let that go to some extent sounds very appealing… if only there were an exact science to having the kind of trip that leads to that outcome.

There are a few things that bother me about the current perception that psychedelics could be a panacea for almost all mental health problems, and to his credit, Pollan does discuss them despite his enthusiasm. One is the near-impossibility of randomised controlled studies; another is the impossibility of tightly controlling all the variables when psychedelic drugs are used, because people’s experiences depend highly on their setting and their mental state beforehand, and crucially, what they expect to happen. As soon as you’ve got someone’s informed consent for a psychedelic to be administered, you’ve changed the outcome of their trip.

Finally, we’ve had seemingly amazing breakthroughs in mental health treatments before, but over time they have lost their efficacy — repeat studies on antidepressants like fluoxetine (Prozac) now find far smaller effects, even when everything is carefully controlled. It’s not entirely clear why that is, so it is also unclear whether that will apply to psychedelics as well, and to what extent.

In any case, Pollan’s book is an interesting survey of the history and the state of the field now, and well worth it if you’re interested in the topic.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Story of Wales

Posted October 1, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Story of Wales by Jon GowerThe Story of Wales, Jon Gower

The Story of Wales is an attempt to tell (some of) the history of Wales, and come to some kind of understanding about what shaped the nation as it is now. A lot of this history is familiar to me, but only vaguely and through literature, so it was nice to get it all laid out and clarified.

Well, “nice” is a very bad word for it, since the history of Wales quickly becomes a history of oppression of the language and customs. People don’t like hearing this, but what are the Welsh Not, Brad y Llyfrau Glaision, the wanton drowning of Capel Celyn to get water to Liverpool, but the oppression of a native people? And these events aren’t all hundreds of years in the past: Capel Celyn was drowned in 1965, after Liverpool put it through Parliament to avoid having to get planning permission from the local council (who would have denied it). All the Welsh protests against the drowning mattered not at all; only what the English Parliament said.

It was a little funny to see my tiny part in history mentioned there: I voted in the 2011 referendum, and voted “yes”. I wonder if one day I can go home to live in an independent Wales — I’ve never particularly wanted the end of the United Kingdom, but if an independent Scotland and an independent Wales can re-enter the EU, I’ll head home like a shot to get my rights back. It’s nice to know a little more of the history of my home, for sure, though The Story of Wales was at times a little dry or unengaging.

Rating: 3/5

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