The tales within are presented in various sections about items you would find in the bathroom, bedroom closet, grocery store, kitchen, living room, coffee shop, office, bar, and great outdoors.
As you can see from the excerpt above, each section has 4-5 entries that run 4 pages each, making a very accessible and readable book. I learned much about things I was ignorant about, like the origins of the toothbrush or paper bags, and I was also surprised to find I was also misinformed about other items, like the board game Monopoly (which was supposed to be an anti-capitalist teaching tool!) and indoor toilets. And adding icing to any already delicious cake, the author injects a great sense of humor, social commentary (particularly about the disparities women inventors faced), and attention to ancillary matters (like patents and business dealings) that pertained to the topics at hand. The book lived up to my every expectation. I only wish it were longer (or had a sequel already!).
This book's creator Andy Warner has taught comics and cartooning in a number of prominent settings, and he has also published in a number of venues. Notably, he is a contributing editor for award-winning online webcomic collective The Nib. He speaks more about his art and career in this interview.
All of the reviews I have read about this book praise it. Publishers Weekly called Warner "a deft cartoonist, able to convey a lot of information, humor, and emotion within a single panel." Johanna Draper Carlson called the book "a terrific read, the kind of popular history full of trivia we used to see more of before the internet."Megan Volpert wrote, "The entire book can be read cover to cover in about 90-minutes with fair attention to detail, but Brief Histories of Everyday Objects is also dense enough to be worth savoring."
Brief Histories of Everyday Objects was published by Picador, and they offer a preview and more here.
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