Books that look at the history of specific items, concepts, industries, etc.
created by FictionandFlora
last updated August, 2026
CAPS LOCK
Ruben Pater
Hello, World!: A Brief History of Programming in 90 Languages
Dale Biagio
The Dictionary People
Sarah Ogilvie
Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class (Politics and Society in Modern America)
Max Fraser
Salt: A World History
Mark Kurlansky
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
Dan Koeppel
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts
Simon Garfield
Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
Malcolm Harris
Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans
Bill Schutt
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
John Green
A Place For Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order
Judith Flanders
A History of Reading
Steven Roger Fischer
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
Roland Allen
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
Christopher de Hamel
Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
Irene Vallejo
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