Brief Histories of Everyday Objects
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Hilarious, entertaining, and illustrated histories behind some of life's most common and underappreciated objects - from the paperclip and the toothbrush to the sports bra and roller skates
Brief Histories of Everyday Objects is a graphic tour through the unusual creation of some of the mundane items that surround us in our daily lives. Chapters are peppered with ballpoint pen riots, cowboy wars, and really bad Victorian practical jokes.
Structured around the different locations in our home and daily life—the kitchen, the bathroom, the office, and the grocery store—award-nominated illustrator Andy Warner traces the often surprising and sometimes complex histories behind the items we often take for granted. Readers learn how Velcro was created after a Swiss engineer took his dog for a walk; how a naval engineer invented the Slinky; a German housewife, the coffee filter; and a radical feminist and anti-capitalist, the game Monopoly.
This is both a book of histories and a book about histories. It explores how lies become legends, trade routes spring up, and empires rise and fall—all from the perspective of your toothbrush or toilet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this history lesson about the mundane, Warner's fascination is with the daily objects that clutter your bathroom, bedroom, office, bar, and all the places you frequent without even noticing you're there. Each strip in this webcomic collection is a breezy romp as Warner recounts the histories of objects such as toothbrushes, toilets, and billiard balls with a tongue-in-cheek wit and glee for some of the more disgusting elements in their origins. Warner reveals in his illustration of an early toothbrush, for instance, a bone with animal hair as bristles. He's equally interested in the chaos that often follows entrepreneurial initiatives, and each strip, though brief, has the power of a parable, outlining how some inventors were cheated, fell into greed, or used their wealth to attempt to fund new, even quirkier endeavors like flying off to Bolivia to become a missionary or attempting to build a utopia. Warner is a deft cartoonist, able to convey a lot of information, humor, and emotion within a single panel.
