I got to like the 6th object and immediately put it down on reading something like "But why did early humans migrate to new areas? Here's what Michael Palin, who's done a lot of travelling, thinks". I'm just extremely not interested in what some random famous person thinks! Before this you have Rowan Williams saying why a carved mammoth horn is a sign of early humans getting into "the rhythm of life" and claiming that's what religion is all about. An extract of David Attenborough narrating from a TV show about how cool stone axes are. And it's like. Yeah they are but I'd rather the limited space was taken up by some actual info rather than uninformed and uninteresting musings. It's just not my sort of book I guess. I was disappointed at the limited info on each object so far and feeling the author kept loudly telling me how cool each thing is rather than letting it speak for itself.

There was also quite a bit of factual stuff that I at least felt suspicious of. For example, dating the entrance of humans to North America basically exactly to the Clovis culture which was under criticism even at publication and is a few thousands year off for sure. Claiming that there was no migration into North America after that until European arrival, when it's well accepted that the Inuit are descended from another migration thousands of years afterwards and there may possibly have been others.

Idk just didn't feel confident reading further or feel it was a book aimed at me.

$218, A first edition, first printing published by Allen Lane in 2010. Strangely RARE!.A fine copy in a fine unclipped wrapper. Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, narrates 100 programmes that retell humanity's history through the objects we have made.

This book came to my attention a few years ago when I discovered its spinoff, A History of America in 100 Objects, published by the Smithsonian. Although I added both to my list immediately, I didn't get around to reading this one until just now (glad I picked it up when I did as my library has only two copies left, and the one I hold in my hands is starting to fall apart). It's an amazing tome for lovers of history and the generally curious. I appreciated learning what it is that makes each object unique and how each is significant in world history. While I have never been to British Museum (someday!), it feels like the British Museum came, in a sense, to me. Wonderful. ( )

Finished this last night. What a remarkable, lovely book. I can't recommend it highly enough. I feel as though it's a curator/archivist's love letter to the world. I learned quite a bit, and will definitely go back to it from time to time, but more importantly came away from it with a profound sense of the deep interconnectedness of people across space and time. ( )

This is a companion piece to the History of the World in 100 Objects BBC radio series, first broadcast in 2010. I listened to it back in the day and really enjoyed it, and on an object-by-object level I often did the same here. The lavish illustrations allow for an examination of details that I could only imagine when listening to Neil MacGregor's audio narration. MacGregor writes with a clear affection for and fascination with these objects, all of which belong to the collection of the institution of which he was then the director, the British Museum.

However, MacGregor's position clearly muzzled him from talking about all the deeply hinky things that have been involved in the gathering of that collection, there are some unexamined assumptions at play here (more than one pencilled 'hmm' or '!' appear in the margins of my copy now), and some quoted experts whose rep has not aged the best over the last decade or so.

(If I may be allowed a moment of petty chauvinism, it was dryly amusing to see that 11 objects of the 100 were found in/come from what's now the UK, 9 of them from England alone, but not one from Ireland. The English do like to claim us while also ignoring us, and to make "British" a simple synonym for "English.") ( )