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algae429's review against another edition
4.0
What a great book! Covers history, but in an accessible way. Having the objects to look at as I could read about events really helped in my understanding. However, it covers a lot; this is not a quick read.
bumsonseats's review against another edition
4.0
A book to go back to, as it's full of exciting stories
scheu's review against another edition
5.0
'100 Objects' is like one of those rich desserts that you know is too much to eat all at once and yet it's just so good that you keep eating and eating and you save it in the fridge because you're DAMN sure that you'll finish it eventually if you keep chipping away at it, and it stays fresh, and then you finish it and you're completely amazed that you ate the whole thing.
And it makes you want to go out and eat other similar desserts. It's like that.
It was dense and fascinating. I really enjoyed it. It can't be read quickly. You've got to savor it in small doses. I absolutely want to read more history now, although the only other history I have handy is Theodotus, and that's a different kind of density.
And it makes you want to go out and eat other similar desserts. It's like that.
It was dense and fascinating. I really enjoyed it. It can't be read quickly. You've got to savor it in small doses. I absolutely want to read more history now, although the only other history I have handy is Theodotus, and that's a different kind of density.
coinchantal's review against another edition
3.0
An okay book, but I was expecting way more info with some of the objects. It was very interesting, but I dont know it tells me something new. A shame because this could be a great book.
susanob's review against another edition
5.0
AMAZING book that I will have to buy. The 100 chosen objects housed at the British Museum span the length of humankind and are from all over the world. Each object has a 4-5 page story - where it is from, how it was found, what its significance to humankind is. Additionally many objects have been subjected to newer scientific tests which provide more clues to the history of the object and its culture. A mummy had a CT scan and what was found is so interesting. Very readable book which illuminates and stretches and instigates thought - what more could a person want from a book?
jwsg's review against another edition
5.0
It didn't occur to me until I read the Introduction to A History of the World in 100 objects, that "if you want to tell the history of the whole world, a history that does not unduly privilege one part of humanity, you cannot do it through texts alone, because only some of the world has ever had texts, while most of the wold, for most of the time, has not." And so MacGregor embarks on this ambitious attempt to tell of the story of vanished cultures and peoples through their material objects, a task that requires a "considerable leap of imagination, returning the artefact to its former life, engaging with it as generously, as poetically, as we can in the hope of winning the insights it may deliver". People like early humans who lived in the Olduvai Gorge 1.8 to 2 million years ago, the Natufians from 9000 BC, the Mesopotamians, the Olmecs in Central America in 900-400BC, the Moche people from Peru (AD 100-700).
The stories of the artefacts themselves - the context in which they were used, what they tell us about the societies that created them - are expectedly interesting. Like how the chapter on an Egyptian clay model of cattle from 3500BC explained that Egyptians kept cows not for milk (since digesting milk is a skill acquired relatively recently) but probably to be tapped for blood - to be drunk or added to stews for protein.
Or how the chapter on a clay tablet from 3100 BC found in southern Iraq is a reminder that "we tend to think of writing as being about poetry or fiction or history, what we might call literature. But early literature was in fact oral - learnt by heart and then recited or sung. People wrote down what they could not learn by heart, what they couldn't turn into verse. So pretty well everywhere early writing seems to have been about record-keeping, bean-counting."
But what I especially loved was when MacGregor unpacked how ancient beliefs and practices shape modern mindsets, or how different these societies' mental models are from contemporary ones:
Like how the chapter on the Maya maize god statue explained how maize was seen as divine food, which is why for some Mexicans, "it's unthinkable that maize, the divine food, should end up in a fuel tank" or genetically modified.
Or how the chapter on a North American buckskin map from 1774-75 explained how different Native American and European conceptions of land ownership were. "Land for tribal people is not a commodity...it was a place where you lived, that you shared, that you utilised, but it was not something that you particularly owned. One could not any more own the land than one could own the air above the land or the rain that fell on it or the animals that lived on it...land is so intricately bound into the very soul of most tribal people that it's not something that you trade back and forth." Yet, for the Europeans, discussions on land were about exclusive ownership. In their interactions and negotiations with each other, both were starting from positions that their counterparts could not grasp.
We tend to think that communications technology has made the world so much smaller these days. Indeed, MacGregor reminds us that historically "it was much easier to go by water than it was by land..so that people in say, modern Swindon would have been on the edge of the world to [people in Sutton Hoo, Suffolk], whereas people in Denmark and Holland would have been close neighbours...Seas usually unite more than they separate the peoples who live on their shores. Like the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean has created a huge interconnected world, where local history is always likely to be intercontinental". The artefacts in this book, whose component materials are drawn from far flung places, remind us that even hundreds and thousands of years ago, the different continents were connected by trade. (New discovery: The blue and white porcelain that we associate with China has Iranian influences; Chinese potters used the Iranian blue pigment cobalt to cater to Middle Eastern tastes).
Reading MacGregor's book reminded me how much I miss visiting London's museums. It reminded me that "if we come back to a museum that we visited as a child, most of us have the sense that we have changed enormously while the things have remained serenely the same. But they haven't: thanks to continuing research and new scientific techniques, what we know about them is constantly growing". So visiting and revisiting museums allows for new layers of learning and insight, even if the artefacts on display have not changed.
A brilliant read.
The stories of the artefacts themselves - the context in which they were used, what they tell us about the societies that created them - are expectedly interesting. Like how the chapter on an Egyptian clay model of cattle from 3500BC explained that Egyptians kept cows not for milk (since digesting milk is a skill acquired relatively recently) but probably to be tapped for blood - to be drunk or added to stews for protein.
Or how the chapter on a clay tablet from 3100 BC found in southern Iraq is a reminder that "we tend to think of writing as being about poetry or fiction or history, what we might call literature. But early literature was in fact oral - learnt by heart and then recited or sung. People wrote down what they could not learn by heart, what they couldn't turn into verse. So pretty well everywhere early writing seems to have been about record-keeping, bean-counting."
But what I especially loved was when MacGregor unpacked how ancient beliefs and practices shape modern mindsets, or how different these societies' mental models are from contemporary ones:
Like how the chapter on the Maya maize god statue explained how maize was seen as divine food, which is why for some Mexicans, "it's unthinkable that maize, the divine food, should end up in a fuel tank" or genetically modified.
Or how the chapter on a North American buckskin map from 1774-75 explained how different Native American and European conceptions of land ownership were. "Land for tribal people is not a commodity...it was a place where you lived, that you shared, that you utilised, but it was not something that you particularly owned. One could not any more own the land than one could own the air above the land or the rain that fell on it or the animals that lived on it...land is so intricately bound into the very soul of most tribal people that it's not something that you trade back and forth." Yet, for the Europeans, discussions on land were about exclusive ownership. In their interactions and negotiations with each other, both were starting from positions that their counterparts could not grasp.
We tend to think that communications technology has made the world so much smaller these days. Indeed, MacGregor reminds us that historically "it was much easier to go by water than it was by land..so that people in say, modern Swindon would have been on the edge of the world to [people in Sutton Hoo, Suffolk], whereas people in Denmark and Holland would have been close neighbours...Seas usually unite more than they separate the peoples who live on their shores. Like the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean has created a huge interconnected world, where local history is always likely to be intercontinental". The artefacts in this book, whose component materials are drawn from far flung places, remind us that even hundreds and thousands of years ago, the different continents were connected by trade. (New discovery: The blue and white porcelain that we associate with China has Iranian influences; Chinese potters used the Iranian blue pigment cobalt to cater to Middle Eastern tastes).
Reading MacGregor's book reminded me how much I miss visiting London's museums. It reminded me that "if we come back to a museum that we visited as a child, most of us have the sense that we have changed enormously while the things have remained serenely the same. But they haven't: thanks to continuing research and new scientific techniques, what we know about them is constantly growing". So visiting and revisiting museums allows for new layers of learning and insight, even if the artefacts on display have not changed.
A brilliant read.
jenn756's review against another edition
4.0
This is a cultured, genteel sort of book. It features 100 objects from the British Museum that tell the history of the world - which is an interesting concept as all objects have a story to tell, if only we knew what it was. It is a sobering story too as most of the objects seem to talk of warfare, invasion, exploitation, empires rising and falling like seismic eruptions, especially as you reach the early modern age when civilisation gets its teeth into previously undiscovered continents. The misunderstandings between different cultures was massive and there's some particularly poignant items like the map of Canada made on deer hide by Native Americans when they were trying to negotiate with settlers, and even pieces of eight, which I thought had a romantic history, came from slaves digging a silver mine in South America.
There's quite a few religious items too which makes you realise how religion is hard-wired into the human psyche, even if the religious items vary massively in their form.
It took me ages to read - after all there's a 100 objects and each takes a chapter. Its the sort of book you can dip in and out of. I read it partly stuck up a mountain in France whilst I was on a skiing holiday. I'm no good at skiing so spent my time lurking in cafes drinking over-priced cafe lattes and reading this.
There was accompanying Radio 4 series and of course all the objects are in the British Museum and I'd love to see them sometime if I could get down there.
There's quite a few religious items too which makes you realise how religion is hard-wired into the human psyche, even if the religious items vary massively in their form.
It took me ages to read - after all there's a 100 objects and each takes a chapter. Its the sort of book you can dip in and out of. I read it partly stuck up a mountain in France whilst I was on a skiing holiday. I'm no good at skiing so spent my time lurking in cafes drinking over-priced cafe lattes and reading this.
There was accompanying Radio 4 series and of course all the objects are in the British Museum and I'd love to see them sometime if I could get down there.
alanyoung's review against another edition
5.0
A wonderful, wide-ranging and highly educational reading experience. Here are combined an encyclopaedic knowledge with a eclectic gathering of experts whose opinions he seeks and quotes.
The discipline of historical investigation (supplemented by technology) provides a base for flights of ideas.
That was always meant to be the purpose for the objects themselves were always but the launch pad for an all-embracing journey through time and space.
Loved it!
The discipline of historical investigation (supplemented by technology) provides a base for flights of ideas.
That was always meant to be the purpose for the objects themselves were always but the launch pad for an all-embracing journey through time and space.
Loved it!
hauteclere's review against another edition
4.0
A fascinating read - ideal for a quick dip here and there - with each object featured interesting in a different way. Makes me want to go visit the British Museum!
ihorbook's review against another edition
4.0
Короткі есе про 100 предметів з Британського музею, які разом більш-менш покривають історію всіх епох та континентів. Читаючи, постійно згадував ці меми з твіттера: 