REALLY USEFUL: The Origins of Everyday Things

The title might be a bit misleading: is it really useful to know that the ant is the only animal that can survive being cooked in a microwave? And if it's not exactly riveting to learn that Post-its were invented by a guy who was frustrated that his page markers kept falling out of his hymn book, that Leonardo da Vinci was the first person known to have designed a kind of calculator (if you discount the abacus) and that rubber erasers are no longer made of real rubber, it is rather addictive to glean such morsels. Delving into the circumstances that brought about objects from the "inside world" (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) and "outside world"(public spaces and "leisure"), Levy (A Natural History of the Unnatural World) champions the underdog—things as mundane as rulers, umbrellas and even Teflon, he tells us, have a story, too. The photography here is mostly in unabashed product-shot mold, and on the whole the book, with frosty color-faded backgrounds and extreme closeups throughout, looks a bit like a sales catalogue. Yet commerce has always driven invention, and it's heartening to know the human side of products that have taken on a mundane ubiquity. (Nov.)