Changing the world ... one book at a time

It's Christmas shopping season. At Indigo, where there's still no sign of America Alone, a college-age girl shopping with her boyfriend is overheard suggesting Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, which, incidentally, is in plentiful supply. The boyfriend slyly asks if she knows who Jimmy Carter is and she hesitates before venturing that he was once president. I feel ancient.

Wandering through the store, I try to figure out what sells. The Carter incident has driven home that if I'm ever to write a book, I'd best start soon.

Hmm. Here is one about the history of flatulence, billed as a sequel to the author's previous book about flatulence. I flip through a copy of David Shenk's The Immortal Game: A History of Chess. A good gift for Dad? There's a subtitle: "How 32 carved pieces on a board illuminated our understanding of war, art, science, and the human brain". Beside it on the table is a book about horses. Subtitle: "How the horse changed the world". Maybe for my sister? She used to sob whenever "Wildfire" played on the radio. But that was 1976; I'm not sure she cares so much about horses anymore.

But what's starting to grab my attention, as a budding author, is all these subtitles -- Margaret MacMillan's new book, Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World. Here's another one: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World. And another: Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. The list of supposedly world-transforming things that people have written books about is almost endless, but here is a sample:

The East India Company
The Book of Revelations
The Fender electric guitar
Christianity
Clocks
U.S. foreign policy
The Flood (as in Noah)
Some advertisements
The discovery of the brain
European Man
The World Bank

How this phenomenon must rankle the Marxists ... the hegemony of their one-size-fits-all explanation of everything (see The Communist Manifesto: How the Class Struggle Changed the World) cruelly mocked by better-selling books attributing independent historical causality, on a global scale, to the likes of horses, clocks, electric guitars and Coke commercials.

On its surface, however, the "How X Changed the World" formulation represents, to me (as a non-Marxist), pretty good historiographical practice -- putting X into context, etc. But I'm guessing that these subtitles are now often slapped onto books about just about anything to make them more saleable. If there's a difference between a general history of Fender guitars and a history that shows how they "changed the world", I doubt I'd notice it. I'm just more likely to purchase the latter.

Anyhow, ever since this epiphany, I've spent my idle hours looking around the apartment for some object whose world-changing history I could write a book about. How the Toilet paved the way for Western world domination? I'm sure it's been done. What else? Toilet brushes? Tiles? Towel Racks? Vim? What did people use before there was Vim -- Comet, I guess. Doorknobs? Walls? Keys? How the invention of the Key created the public/private distinction and changed our world. Maybe. I suppose the key would have been invented contemporaneously with the lock -- or maybe there were locks for awhile with no way to open them.

Oatmeal Crisp? Imperial Cheese? Broccoli? Windows? Balconies? Nope nope nope nope nope. Nothing's panning out so far...hmm, pans?...but it's just a matter of time, I'm sure -- I'm promising you all a best-selling world-changing stocking stuffer by Xmas 2007.