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bardicbear's review
4.0
Did you ever wonder where toothbrushes came from or who invented the paperclip? Then this is a great book for you. It contains comics that present short, humorous histories of things we use every day. There are some inspirational stories of people using their ideas to get ahead as well as multiple stories where the inventors never patented their products. The story about cinnamon and giant birds, in particular, made me laugh.
kstericker's review
5.0
Really delightful! The graphic novel format and Warner's strong sense of humour made this book easy to plow through in a couple sittings. I appreciated that Warner featured a large proportion of women and POC and didn't gloss over the role that factors such as racism, sexism, and religious persecution played in the stories.
erylgrey's review
4.0
Contrary to the title, some of the histories of the objects Warner includes aren't as straightforward as one might think. Some histories presented are myths and speculation along with some popular misconceptions, though he does make that clear, since no one knows for sure for of the true history of some objects in question.
This book is pretty great for I'd say middle school ages and up, and is pretty great for learning some neat trivia about things you likely had never thought of before. The comedy shines through as also enlightening the material, and the illustrations are clear and easy to follow.
This book is pretty great for I'd say middle school ages and up, and is pretty great for learning some neat trivia about things you likely had never thought of before. The comedy shines through as also enlightening the material, and the illustrations are clear and easy to follow.
nerdella_reads's review
5.0
This book has an abundance of single panel jokes and observations that are gold.
maiakobabe's review
5.0
Andy Warner, frequent contributor to The Nib, delivers a well-researched and highly entertaining serious of short histories of objects you have probably used many times without much thinking about before. The toothbrush, the paperclip, safety pins, bottle caps, paper bags, flush toilets, sports bras and many more get their tales told here. The number of inventors mentioned in this book who forgot to file for patents will probably also surprise you!
noveladdiction's review
3.0
This was fun - and fast, considering it's told in graphic-novel format. I think I liked the "briefer histories" panels even more than the regular ones. This isn't an exact history of the items, some of them were already invented and the "history" that we get is just when something was changed, or came from another country, etc.
sydthedreamer's review
5.0
Interesting, humorous read! I loved the recurring jokes and the modernized viewpoint the author took in conveying these histories. I wish there was a part 2! I would read something else by him.
heather_h's review
4.0
Pretty Interesting book. However, if you are looking for complete histories you will be dissipated since these are more like how things were popularized in the US. Overall I think it was well written and drawn with good use of running jokes to link some of the stories. I would definitely recommend to a history buff.