The History of Everything

   

   I am undertaking this post during the COVID-19 pandemic and my assignment is to come up with books for you to read. I am doing so because the emails I now am receiving are desperate indeed. Even my hockey-playing buddies are looking for books, since they have already watched the Chatham curling championship from 1979 three times and their wives have seized the remotes. (I should clarify because one of the hockey playing guys says he sometimes reads this dribble. They play hockey; I am just a ‘buddy’.)

   The answer I am suggesting for the shortage of good reading material  comes in the form of history books, many of which are now marginally more interesting than curling. Historians  are no longer concerned only with Kings or Queens. They now embrace the Commoners and look below stairs where they have found subjects like sex and ‘queens’ of a different kind. The Cliometricians have come along behind them and calculated everything, but that is a subject for a different post. In short, historians are now studying everything.

   Bryson’s, A Short History of Nearly Everything is mainly about science and Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything looks a little too spiritual and philosophical, while Sigmar Polke’s  History of Everything is really about only paintings and drawings. Daum’s, The Problem With Everything is about the culture wars, a subject which I am trying to avoid. I will not pretend to be able to write about everything since I have difficulty in writing about anything. But, I can at least direct you to books about the history of all the things included within everything.

 ABECEDARY

   I will present you with an abecedary of books. For each letter I will offer a history book. For some letters there will be more than one, so there will be more books recommended than whatever the number is for the number of letters in the alphabet.

   I know you are thinking this will be easy. For even those letters in the lower latitudes it can’t be that difficult to find a corresponding historical work. Take “Y” for example. Surely there must be a History of Yugoslavia -- but, Yugoslavia no longer exists. See how tricky this exercise is. Now you can appreciate the problems that I have had to deal with.

   You will find some interesting books. I am still wondering about a few of them: how does one research the history of TWILIGHT, the NIGHT, SLEEP or the WIND? You will also find some that are not in alphabetical order: I snuck some BOOZE histories under the letter “G”. You will also find some odd juxtapositions: “C” books about Cannibalism and Cookbooks, and “F” books about Fat and Famine. There is also one there about the history of the F-Word, just to provide a little additional incentive.

  You will also not find some books. These two, for example, about the history of Fear: Fear: The History of a Political Idea, by Corey Robin and  Fear: A Cultural History, by Joanna Bourke. We have enough to be fearful of and I thought it best not to include them. You will not find any works of fiction since they can be about anything. Most of these books will not be found at the local Indigo store or library and, anyway they are closed. Amazon and Abe, however, seem to still be up and running.

   Those of you who are interested should consult A History For Every Letter which, alone provides you with enough reading for the rest of the day. It may take a bit of time to load since I have provided some cover art for those of you who judge books by their covers.