100 Books Like The Gift

This slim volume, first published in 1995, possibly jump-started the current genre of science narratives–I was certainly well aware of it when World on Fire was published in 2005. The tale begins in 1707 when the English fleet crashed into the Scilly Isles twenty miles southwest of England; two thousand men drowned, all because navigators had misgauged longitude.

The desperate quest for a solution becomes a well-funded race to make sure this never happens again. Sobel chronicles how it was solved by a simple clockmaker, and the obstacles thrown in his path by the more respected members of the era’s scientific establishment. It helps to read Kuhn’s work first, or in tandem: for all the accolades heaped upon success, both works make clear the hard road and lonely life traveled by the outsider.

This book completely changed how I thought about the technology that surrounds us, the electric grid, assembly line production, the military-industrial complex, and on and on.

I grew up at the end of the time period Hughes writes about when all these huge technological systems were in place. I didn’t give them a thought. They were like the air we breathe. But they were created during this century, and it was amazing to read about this transformation of our world.

Reading this book, for me, was like learning to see the world I live in anew, to feel the air we breathe.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was The Way Things Work, not the more recent David Macaulay book—which is also good—but the earlier 1967 book by T. Lodewijk. With great diagrams, it showed how complicated machines work.

Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer, while less comprehensive, similarly captures this magic for me. It has great diagrams and simple clarifying text—self-consciously limited to the 1,000 words people use the most. I could stare at the diagrams for hours, learning about everything from cameras (“picture takers”) to submarines (“boats that go under the sea”).

Another odd choice for this category and an unusual but nonetheless compelling book. Elkins talks about painting in terms of medieval alchemy. The point, however, is right down my street: it is about the materiality of painting.

Put aside the meaning of a finished artwork and think about the acts behind its making, from creating paint from various pigments and oils to brushing them on stretched canvas. This helped me understand the lives of people who work with materials, things, and stuff, including scientists and engineers. What they think is important, but so is what they do and their facility in doing it.

Before there was money, people bartered one kind of stuff they had in abundance for another kind that they needed (or wanted). That may be true, but little appreciated in our market-oriented Western worldview, there was once an even older gift economy.

The Gift, among other related topics, explores the gift economy, which characterized the lifeways of many American Indian peoples. Hyde provides the key to understanding many of the stories in our book.

Hunters are portrayed as “visiting” the lodges of beavers, moose, and bear. They come bearing gifts that only humans can create through artifice or cultivation: knives and tobacco, for example—things much prized by the animal recipients.

In turn—but not necessarily in return—the animals give the humans their flesh and fur. The bones are their somatic souls, which should not be broken, but returned to the element from which they came—earth or water—to be reclothed in flesh… show more.

If there is one foundational text in economic anthropology, this is it. The French anthropologist Mauss showed, in this 1924 book, that gift exchange is the glue that connects people in communities with no formal authority. He is perfectly aware that there are no free gifts, but shows that all economic transactions have a moral element: They create social obligations, they connect us to each other.

If you’re into investigating the origins and mythos of Santa from other cultures, this is the book to find. It is a well-researched look at the international history of the legend from the pagan god Odin to the present day Father Christmas, Weihnachmann, Père Noël, Ded Moroz, and Santa Claus. While not for young children it is a great and thorough historical study of the evolution of the various legends through time. A must for history buffs with great illustrations and documentation.

Jamaican American author/illustrator Rohan Henry, in a deceptively simple sweet book, illustrates the gift of true understanding and friendship. I first met Rohan at a book fair here in Maine, when we traded books - one of my early picture books (Dancing Feet) for his self-published The Perfect Gift. I happened to be having lunch with my agent the next day. I showed her this book and she sold the rights almost immediately. It's now out in several languages and is, in my estimation, the perfect gift.

One reason I love snow so much is the way it muffles the world, making everything soft and fuzzy around the edges.

The essence of that feeling is distilled perfectly in Lewis’s beautifully-lit pastel and pencil illustrations, squeezing so much colour into every inch—even of “white” snow.

It’s a lovely story about a little boy taking responsibility for his action. I love a children’s book with a final illustration that undercuts the sentimentality of any preceding message, and this does that hilariously.  

Kassirer, also like Angell a highly respected physician and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, first opened my eyes to how extensively drug companies use their vast wealth to turn physicians into promoters and middlemen.

I knew about the small and not-so-small gifts, speaking fees, travel junkets, and the like to individual doctors and “key opinion leaders” of the profession, but not about the “institutional conflicts of interest” gladly entered into by specialty medical societies heavily dependent on drug money for their events and activities such as scientific meetings, journal publishing, clinical practice recommendations, and, not least “continuing medical education” required by law for license maintenance.

Although Kassirer, also like Angell, proposed reforms, from what I know about conditions today, not much has changed, so On the Take remains an indispensable window into corrupted medicine.