History books needn’t be sweeping or epic in scope – in fact, you’ll find that often the narrower the scope, the more fascinating the details revealed by the author. In these 21 must-read microhistory books, something small can tell a much bigger story.
Stiff by Mary Roach
Stiff is “a book about the notable achievements of the dead”. Not in the sense of dead white guys, not even in the sense of zombies – but in the sense of literal dead bodies. It turns out a lot of human knowledge is only possible thanks to the contributions of cadavers. It takes a certain kind of mind to even come up with that as a topic for a microhistory book, and have the stomach to research and write it – but Mary Roach is made of stern stuff. Read my full review of Stiff here.
The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
To call The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks a ‘biography’ feels reductive. This 2010 masterpiece of microhistory, by first-time American writer Rebecca Skloot, is much more than the dates and facts of the life of a poor, black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells created the first ever “immortal” human tissue grown in culture. It’s a study of bioethics, a masterclass in accessible science writing, and a testament to the human consequences of scientific discovery. And it’s compelling as heck, to boot! Read my full review of The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks here.
Just My Type by Simon Garfield
Just about everything you look at or read is written in a font – have you ever taken a moment to think about its history? In Just My Type, Simon Garfield uncovers the microhistory of typefaces, like “the businesslike subtlety of Times New Roman, the cool detachment of Arial, or the maddening lightness of Comic Sans (and the movement to ban it)”. It will change the way you look at every printed item you see, from a restaurant menu to a street sign to a presidential campaign poster.
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Do not read The Library Book if your friends and family will not take kindly to being bombarded with “fun facts” about libraries and librarians for at least a month. It is, at its bones, a true crime story, interrogating who could have possibly started the fire at the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986, but Susan Orlean also incorporates a detailed microhistory of libraries, the growth of Hollywood, the bust of the Depression, the psychology of arsonists, the physics of book burning, the lives of the librarians who worked in the building (right down to their preferred brands of cigarettes)… She spent six years researching this book, and it shows. Read my full review of The Library Book here.
Empire Of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
You might not know the Sacklers (unless you spend a lot of time in the museums they’ve paid a lot of money to adorn with the family name), but you definitely know their product: OxyContin, the opioid that triggered an epidemic of abuse. Opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death in America (turns out guns aren’t their only problem, not even their biggest!) and in Empire Of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe carefully examines how the actions of the Sackler family were the catalyst for this crisis. Read my full review of Empire Of Pain here.
The Mosquito by Timothy C. Winegard
Only female mosquitos bite. Of the 108 billion people who have ever lived on this planet, mosquitoes (or, more accurately, the viruses and parasites they carry) have killed nearly half—52 billion. Do you know how elephants defend themselves against the mosquito’s bite? You’ll find out in the first chapter of this microhistory, and the answer will surprise you. The Mosquito is a deep, deep dive into the incredible impact one little insect can have over the course of human history. Read my full review of The Mosquito here.
The Library by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur Der Weduwen
In The Library (subtitle: A Fragile History), Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen explore “the rich and dramatic history of the library, from the famous collections of the ancient world to the embattled public resources we cherish today”. It’s a fascinating window into world history via book collections through the ages, with a focus on the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance history of the library, when it largely existed as personal collections of the wealthy and powerful. Read my full review of The Library here.
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
Caitlin Doughty’s microhistory Smoke Gets In Your Eyes uncovers the underworld of the most macabre jobs: undertakers, grave diggers, and funeral home workers. Starting with her own experiences working in a crematory and caring for the dead, she leans into the gallows humour, and uses it as an entry point to encourage us all to think more about death and dying and our cultural attitudes towards mortality. It makes for an entertaining and eye-opening read.
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
Hidden Figures is one of those (true!) stories that you immediately want to know more about. As per the blurb, it’s “the phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space,”. Margot Lee Shetterly spent years learning about the ‘human computers’ who worked with paper and pencil to put man on the moon, and shared all she had learned about them in her best-selling microhistory. Read my full review of Hidden Figures here.
The Body by Bill Bryson
In a world of 8.3 billion bodies (in an infinite universe, no less), can there truly be any unplumbed depths worth exploring in just one? As per The Body: yes, absolutely. Bill Bryson turns his keen eye for detail and his charming writing style to a microhistory of the one thing we all share, a “wobble of flesh” that is truly miraculous when examined up-close.
The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane. Recognise their names? They’re all famous for the same thing: being murdered, in 1888. That’s basically all we know about them, because the values of Victorian England have clouded our view of them for the past 130 years. In The Five, Hallie Rubenhold sets out to correct (i.e., expand) the record. As this work of investigative microhistory reveals, these five women are far more than simply victims of Jack The Ripper. Read my full review of The Five here.
The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan
How can we distinguish sanity from insanity? It’s a personal question for Susannah Cahalan, author of The Great Pretender, who was destined for a psychiatric institution before a doctor corrected her misdiagnosis and saved her life. It was also the life’s work of a psychology professor, David Rosenhan, who published an explosive study back in the 1970s. His findings changed the course of psychiatric research and treatment for decades, but as Cahalan reveals in this microhistory, perhaps it wasn’t necessarily for the better. Read my full review of The Great Pretender here.
Bi by Julia Shaw
In her microhistory Bi, Julia Shaw explores all that there is to know about the world’s largest sexual minority. She covers Kinsey, bonobos, prison sex, film and television, marriage, threesomes, and more. Pretty much any entry-level question you have about bisexuality can be answered in these pages. It will obviously be of most interest to bisexual readers, but it has plenty to offer a general audience of curious microhistory readers, too. Read my full review of Bi here.
Like by Megan C Reynolds
Have you ever been mocked or derided for saying the word “like” too much? If you’re a millennial woman, chances are good that the answer is yes. But never fear: someone has finally, finally written a book in defense of our verbal tic. Like by Megan C Reynolds interrogates the history and function of the word “like”. It turns out, the perception that it’s a meaningless addition to speech, or that it’s a sign of low intelligence, discounts its importance in making our spoken words mean what we want them to mean. Read my full review of Like here.
Nabokov’s Favourite Word Is Mauve by Ben Blatt
It’s understandable if you’re skeptical that a microhistory book by a statistician can teach us anything about the titans of literature, but Nabokov’s Favourite Word Is Mauve is an eye-opening perspective on the works of great writers. By assembling a database of thousands of books and millions of words, and sharing its secrets, Blatt encourages us to look at the classics on our shelves in a completely new way. It’s “an x-ray through literature, allowing us to see both the patterns that hold it together and the brilliant flourishes that allow it to spring to life”.
Anaesthesia by Kate Cole-Adams
“OK, take a deep breath, and count backwards from ten…” So goes every television scene where a character is put under anaesthesia, but what actually happens in a real medical setting? Anaesthesia is a microhistory book about medicine that goes deep into one particular specialty, albeit one that touches many others. Kate Cole-Adams explores 150 years of putting people to sleep (or, in the traditional definition of the word, ‘rendering insensible’), and the surgical interventions that have been made possible as a result.
Bachelor Nation by Amy Kaufman
Los Angeles Times journalist Amy Kaufman examines the grip that The Bachelor has on our culture, going behind-the-scenes of the franchise to reveal all of its dirty secrets (not that she expects that will make us love it any less – quite the opposite!). If you’ve ever held your breath waiting to see who will get this week’s rose, Bachelor Nation is the microhistory book for you.
The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre
INTJ, ESTJ, ENFP – if these acronyms have you asking WTF, you need to pick up The Personality Brokers. This is an unprecedented microhistory of the world’s most popular and pervasive personality test, conceived a century ago by an unqualified mother-daughter team, amateur devotees of Carl Jung’s psychological theories. How did their work come to be so fundamental to the $2 billion industry of psychometric testing? You’ll have to read this book to find out.
The Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilvie
The days of reaching for a dictionary on a bookshelf might be long gone (we’re now in the era of simply googling “definition”), but Sarah Ogilvie would not have us forget about the creators of one of humankind’s greatest linguistic achievements. In The Dictionary People, she commits to the annals the names and backgrounds of the creators of the Oxford English Dictionary – and it’s a more intriguing microhistory than you might expect (as among them, there were three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, and more). Read my full review of The Dictionary People here.
Mood Machine by Liz Pelly
Once upon a time, playing a song entailed dragging out a gramophone or digging through a case of compact discs – now, almost any song ever recorded is available to us anywhere at any time at the click of a button, thanks in large part to streaming services like Spotify. In Mood Machine, Liz Pelly uncovers how the music industry became “increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed”, a microhistory of the Spotify model. Read my full review of Mood Machine here.
The Secret History Of The Rape Kit by Pagan Kennedy
Reading this microhistory book in public might get you some funny looks, but it’s more than worth it. The Secret History Of The Rape Kit chronicles one journalist’s mission to understand a crucial innovation in forensics and the woman who championed it. Martha “Marty” Goddard may have disappeared from the record (until now), but she was an essential champion of victims rights and it is thanks to her that countless predators have been held accountable for their crimes.
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