Being caught up in some of the events of our day-to-day world right now can be wearing and disheartening. Even NPR broadcasts too much news of public and governmental response to the latest storm, shooting or presidential tweet. I long for perspective. Mercifully, I can sometimes find it in what I read.
Again this morning, I settled with incredible pleasure into Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. It is a weighty tome, bright red in color and 650 pages long. Its heft is an added delight as I hold it.
The History evolved into a book following its 2010 presentation in the U.K. as a BBC Radio 4 program, when MacGregor served as director of the British Museum. All of the objects are from the museum and have been beautifully photographed for the book. They were chosen, MacGregor says, because of their significance in serving as “signals from the past.” They tell of the world in which they were made and in many cases, also of their travels to other parts of the globe.
As I encounter some of the early objects — the Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool, an Egyptian Clay Model of Cattle, and the Indus Seal I read about today — I feel both ignorant and inspired. I have so much to learn, and I am excited by the possibilities that lie ahead.
One that I find especially fascinating is a pristine — likely never used — jade axe discovered near Canterbury, dating back as far as 4000 BC. What it reflects, according to the discussion in the book, is that even in a location as isolated as Britain was then, there was a culture that shared with the larger world “a taste for the expensive and the exotic.” The axe was, in fact, imported from Italy, more current research has confirmed. Its makers cut, honed and polished the exotic stone for days on end, making an object of rare beauty.
And to learn all this? MacGregor cites the work of two 21st century archaeologists who recently discovered, in Italy, “the very boulder which the axe came from,” high in the Italian Alps. From this quarry, the jade-seekers “could take the stone that came from a place midway between our world on Earth and the celestial realm of the gods and ancestors,” thus giving it special powers.
These lives — of the Brits who acquired the axe, the Italians who made it, and the researchers who painstakingly located the boulder from which it originated, were enriched by their contact with a precious piece of jade. It’s remarkable now how MacGregor’s carefully chosen words rise from the page to similarly enrich my life, magically linking me to those same special powers.
Clearly MacGregor’s book, along with several others I’ve spent my mornings with lately, introduces me to places, people and ways of life that add depth and breadth to my musings in the day ahead. They urge me to turn down the volume on the news.
My list of other engaging and stimulating works includes two by Stephen Greenblatt. The first is The Swerve, spinning out the 15th century discovery of a work by Lucretius that explains, Greenblatt says, “how the world became modern.” Will in the World is fascinating if you enjoy Shakespeare. And if you’re intrigued by poetry, both Nine Gates and Ten Windows, by one of our current outstanding poet/scholars, Jane Hirshfield, are guides to understanding and sources of pleasure in the reading.
For the future, Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, about her explorations of a number of threatened natural sites around the world, is high on my list. And my lifelong love affair with fiction is a subject for another opinion day.
But we all read differently, based on the lives we have led, the careers we are or were a part of, and the families whose histories surround us. Whether reading choices reach back to “signals from the past,” as MacGregor’s book does, or focus us elsewhere, stories enrich lives. Turning our attention to books can be satisfying. And it is a pursuit that has the chance of restoring equanimity, even for a moment, in a world that can seem jumbled and disordered.
Mary Otto lives in Norwich.