La storia del mondo in 100 oggetti

Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (Allen Lane). MacGregor è il direttore del British Museum di Londra da otto anni e ne ha profondamente modificato la concezione. "This year, first with a radio series and now with a book, Neil MacGregor has set the seal on his vision of the British Musem as the world's supreme memory palace. One hundred objects have been selected from its unrivalled collections to illustrate the entire sweep of humanity's history: from a 2-million-year-old stone chopping tool [nella foto], ... to a solar-powered lamp, which McGregor optimistically casts as embodying the technology of tomorrow. g/o.


Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (Allen Lane). Such "Eureka" moments are controversial. Steven Johnson's new book ... argues strongly against epiphanies and flashes of inspiration. Chance breakthroughs, says Johnson, come from "the connected mind", operating in a kind of intellectual coffee house. He convincingly demonstrates that ideas, especially scientific ideas, derive from networks. But he never gets to grips with the wellsprings of literary motivation, or with the most poignant truth of literary life ... g/o.