In a Dublin bookshop today and I came across "How Ireland Saved Civilisation: The Untold Story"

?***!!!

A worthy story but untold? I've got a DVD from 1968 that tells that story. To be fair it was by a crusading Irish nationalist keen to right the anglocentric wrongs. Actuallly it was Kenneth Clark.

What do you reckon? The author supports Celtic?

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

I thought it was amusing self-effacement at first, then I read the book. Perhaps I just don't get Eggers.

A Hand in the Bush: The Fine Art of Vaginal Fisting

Or did you have a different kind of irritation in mind? I'm sure this could chafe if you're not careful.

Tubby Isaacs wrote:

QUOTE:
In a Dublin bookshop today and I came across "How Ireland Saved Civilisation: The Untold Story"

In the US, it's published as How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

The author has written a series of books with similar titles. The second one is The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels

I hate this trend (it seems to be dying out now) of histories that look at one group of people, places, or things with titles that make incredible claims about the subject's importance. Some are microhistories focusing on food commodities. Mark Kurlansky specializes in these:

Salt: A World History
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell

I haven't read any of those (he also has a book titled The Basque History of the World), and it's not like none of these can be good--Sidney Mintz's Sweetness and Power: the Place of Sugar in Modern History is a fantastic book. It's just that so many of them seem to be copycats looking to ride on the popularity of others (there was a book about the color mauve and it's importance, for christsakes).

It's just that so many of them seem to be copycats looking to ride on the popularity of others (there was a book about the color mauve and it's importance, for christsakes).

That doesn't neccesarily make them bad does it? I mean the title is essential a marketing device but the approach to the subject is valid isn't it? I mean, I haven't read the book, but based on what I know of it, the history of the colour mauve/purple is indeed very interesting.

The book title that most irritates me at the moment is "From Teacher to Manager: Managing Language Teaching Organizations"

On many levels.

Amor de Cosmos wrote:

QUOTE:
It's just that so many of them seem to be copycats looking to ride on the popularity of others (there was a book about the color mauve and it's importance, for christsakes).

That doesn't neccesarily make them bad does it? I mean the title is essential a marketing device but the approach to the subject is valid isn't it? I mean, I haven't read the book, but based on what I know of it, the history of the colour mauve/purple is indeed very interesting.

No, not at all. But you have to wonder if the author is writing the book to fit to a publishing fad.

Maybe my problem with the mauve book is that I have no interest in it to begin with, so I find the subtitle--"How One Man Invented A Colour That Changed The World"--extreme.

Yes, if that's all it's about you're right. The history of purple, its scarcity as a pigment, consequent exclusivity, associations with royalty, the church and death is quite fascinating though and certainly worthy of study.

But you have to wonder if the author is writing the book to fit to a publishing fad.

Possibly, but it's more likely his publishers who are titling it to fit a fad I should think.

Kurlansky's books are supposed to be quite good. I haven't got around to reading any yet, but I do mean to. Also, the Observer's review of his latest points out that Jonathan Cape changed the UK subtitle of his most recent one to disguise the fact that it's mainly a story about one US fishing community and make it seem like a big apocalyptic thing. So I don't know how much we can blame him for the other titles.

The good blog Chapati Mystery wrote about these microhistories a few years back (and linked to a post I had at my blog that is now gone).

Thinking about this on the drive home from work, I guess the main thing that irritates me about a lot of the microhistories--and again, this isn't necessarily the fault of the authors', I certainly understand that publishers can tweak titles to make them seem similar to other books--is that in marketing themselves (and make no mistake, in the era of Barnes & Noble and Borders charging publishers for better placement of their books on displays) these books claim that their topic changed the world, or changed history, etc. It's not enough to just tell an interesting story of something that we might not have spent much time thinking about before, we have to be convinced that the subject was something exceptional.

It's puffery without a doubt. But then again puffery has a long tradition in its own right which some of the most widely respected authors instigated (and were damn good at too, cf: Dickens and Zola.)

Of these books, I really enjoyed Salt, but then it just claims to be a global history of salt, rather than being the ubiquitous nacreous substance that saved humanity, or something.

It's probably a better book for the fact that everyone knows salt is everywhere and is essential to human life, so it doesn't push its case to ludicrous extremes. One of the bigger flaws with it is the fact that he spends ages talking about both the Basques and cod, which suggests that the obsession with Basque cod fishing and salting is probably all he cares about.

The how Irish saved civilisation book is utter garbage. Admittedly I read it in the mid-90s when the astonishing love of all things Oirish in England had driven me to distraction already, with the insane plethora of O'Neillses proclaiming Great Craic and so on. So I almost certainly went in wanting to hate the book. But its central thesis was such utter bollocks (Christianity and classical knowledge were preserved in Ireland through the dark ages and the rest of the world would have lost them) that it was easy to hate.

My favourite microhistory is actually the one I've read which has by far the least rigorous and most bullshit understanding of history. It's called The Devil's Cup, and is half travel half history about coffee, and the writer's theory that, basically, people being stimulated by coffee has driven all the great advances in civilisation and all the great imperial adventures since coffee first came on the scene. It's rubbish history, but it's written as such a joyously entertaining romp rather than a rigorous analysis that I really don't care.

(Oh, and Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering... is, like How Ireland Saved Civilisation, a book that is as bad as its title).

I'm waiting for Kurlansky to write Chips and Vinegar, myself.

My current one is A Case of Exploding Mangoes. It sounds like the subject matter is pretty interesting, and it may even be good, but the title just looks like they have no confidence in it without trying to make it sound like one of those awful magic realist fable things. They might as well call it The Colonial Bandwagon; or, Winsome Anglo Indian Stuff Always Wins Prizes and Sells Bucketloads Doesn't It.

QUOTE:
But its central thesis was such utter bollocks (Christianity and classical knowledge were preserved in Ireland through the dark ages and the rest of the world would have lost them) that it was easy to hate.

Not utter bollocks, though certainly overstated. I mean, if the dude really says that about Christianity, he's talking out his arse, but the point about Classical Civ is defensible (though it leaves out the role played by Al-Andalus, which is slightly mental).

The only Kurlansky I've read is his book on 1968, which is takes nearly the opposite approach to micro-history, slicing up the worldwide upheavals of that year to give a country by country snapshot.

Did flick through A Basque History... once, but all I can remember is a joke about how ETA kick-started the Spanish space program by sending Franco's deputy into orbit via a car bomb.