Brief Histories of Almost Anything is the sort of book you keep coming back to again and again. It contains fifty articles (or ‘savvy slices of our global past’) covering a huge range of subjects from A Short History of Food to A Brief History of Megalomania, from The Rich History of Pan-Africanism to Britain’s ‘Adventures’ In Ireland. Each article, written by past and present co-editors of New Internationalist magazine, aims to give a whistle-stop introduction to its subject. Whilst there were one or two that didn’t particularly grab my attention, for example A Short History of Architecture wasn’t really up my street, most of the chapters were fascinating and either introduced me to completely new subjects or gave me a fresh perspective on more familiar ground.

    For myself, the most interesting part of the book covered chapters
20 to 26, Global Issues. This section challenged a lot of commonly held
misconceptions about some important topics, as well as being
entertaining. The chapters here seemed to get the tone exactly right
between being light-hearted enough to read out to friends and yet
serious enough that they stirred compassion and awareness of the
issues’ relevance to the current world situation. I would say the most
frustrating thing about the book is that there is no ‘live update’
option – I found myself several times desperate to know what this
editor or that would make of latest developments in various fields!

   
I also enjoyed the far more objective tone than you usually find on
these subjects in the mass media, as the writers (as in New
Internationalist magazine) did not scruple to criticise America and
Britain at least as much those countries criticise other nations. The
book is obviously written by writers with left-wing views, but they
seemed to be very good at not allowing these views to colour the facts
given. I found the text to be fairly impartial, and although I did not
agree with some of the points raised, arguments were put forward
convincingly and led to many discussions between myself and my husband
once the book was put down.

    One other feature of the book,
which I was sorely tempted to photocopy to carry around with me, was
the Prelude, which gave 13 lists of five themes of the twentieth
century, including unfulfilled national dreams, ridiculous wars,
nonviolent direct actions, and revolutions that raised then dashed Left
hopes. This was a wonderful way to start the book, and I would have
liked to have read further on the issues the Prelude raised.

   
Brief Histories is an essential book for, well, anyone actually. It
should certainly be a starting point for anyone who wants a broad
picture of how the world has got the state it is in today, and where it
is heading. It manages to touch on a lot of issues of global justice,
and the breakneck pace manages skilfully to lead from ancient history
to the modern world in a way that is never dull or dry. It would be an
excellent book to lend to a friend, a source of inspiration for a
writer for example, and a good springboard to find out what interests
you and what to go away and learn more about. And all this for only
£8.99!

Chris Brazier (Ed.)
ISBN 978-1-906523-00-8
New Internationalist; pb; £8.99 

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