Simon Garfield
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
From the "deliriously clever" (Boston Globe) Simon Garfield, New York Times bestselling author of Just My Type, comes the wild and fascinating story of the encyclopedia, from Ancient Greece to the present day.
The encyclopedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, a good set conveyed a sense of absolute wisdom on its reader. Contributions from Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud,...
Author
Language
English
Description
An obsessively readable memoir about the passions-and perils-of collecting, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Just My Type.
From the Penny Red to the Blue Mauritius, generations of collectors have been drawn to the mystique of rare stamps. Once a widespread pastime of schoolboys, philately has increasingly become the province of older men obsessed with the shrewd investment, the once-in-a-lifetime find, the one elusive beauty that...
Author
Language
English
Description
Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana. The Beatles learn to be brilliant in an hour and a half. An Englishman arrives back from Calcutta but refuses to adjust his watch. Beethoven has his symphonic wishes ignored. A US Senator begins a speech that will last for 25 hours. The horrors of war are frozen at the click of a camera. A woman designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar. Roger Bannister lives out the same four minutes...