Scott Christianson (1947–2017)

As an Infographic nut I love this wonderful little book, Scott Christianson's 100 Diagrams That Changed the World. Each diagram includes a photo or reproduction starting with the Cave Drawings done 30,000 years ago in France all the way to a diagram of the iPod. In between you'd be quite surprised to learn that the first bar chart was created by William Playfair in 1786 (or at least I was). Or that the first exploded view diagram was created by Mariano Taccola way back around 1450.

I was very show more pleased to find not only the expected entries by da Vinci and Descartes, but a diagram from my personal hero Ben Franklin for his bifocals. I was surprised to learn that Bacteria was first diagramed by Leeuwenhoek back in 1683. 1683! There are some interesting call-outs like for Ikea's Flat-Pack Furniture (1956) which makes me want to curse when I read it, and even Carl Sagan's Pioneer Placque which shipped out into space in 1972.

My only beef with this book lays in the design itself. Seriously--what is up lately with graphic designers not being able to design for print? Each entry has a couple introductory sentences which are printed in such a light gray as to be unreadable in the evening by a person over their forties. It has to be readable folks! That is the point! show less

Likes: I liked the chronological presentation and I liked learning about people and topics I hadn't heard of before, as well as revisiting topics I was already familiar with. It's true that the strict chronological presentation meant that each spread often had little to do with the preceding or following one, but that didn't bother me.

Dislikes: The selection criteria for the diagrams seemed rather inconsistent. Sometimes a diagram was important as an innovation in information presentation show more (e.g., bar graphs). Sometimes a diagram was important because it depicted a technological breakthrough (e.g., the light bulb). Sometimes a diagram was important because of the specific person who drew it (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci). Also, I'm not convinced that all of the modern diagrams will stand the test of time, but that's always an issue when comparing recent history with older history.

Ultimate verdict: I hoped to enjoy this book and I ultimately did, despite any shortcomings, so I give it 4/5 stars. show less

This really would be better described as "100 diagrams of varying significance, nifty graphical things from history, and random pictures we dug up to illustrate some important ideas." But I guess that is a little too unweildy to use as a title.

Anyway, there are 100 pictures here. Each one is accompanied by just a few paragraphs of text, which really isn't enough to be a satisfying exploration or explanation of anything, but is just enough to make this reasonably interesting to browse show more through. (And I suspect that is likely to be especially true for people who are very visually-oriented, which I confess I am not.) Generally, it looks pretty good, but the text is much smaller than it needs to be, and the introduction to each section -- which is mercifully only a sentence or two -- is written in light gray on a white page, making the whole thing something of an invitation to eyestrain. show less

I bought this on a whim, because it's just a gorgeous book, chock full of old book covers. I figured I'd be interested in the contents too, of course, but was prepared, based on the title, for a lot of hyperbole.

Not so much really. I'd say the editors did a fantastic job of choosing books that most people would agree significantly affected, if not changed, the course of society. I enjoyed the narratives written for each one too; I learned at least a little something about each book, in show more spite of at least 95 of them being familiar to me already.

I knocked the rating back a little because some of the choices would have had a more localised influence than others (A Book of Mediterranean Food and The Cat in the Hat come most quickly to mind), and because there was a slight but noticeable political bias to the choices. Whether that bias was the editors' or history's, I don't know, and I can't argue the impact most of these books had, so it's a pretty small quibble really.

A nice book for the bibliophile or the armchair historian who enjoys the trend of history through objects. show less