ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ORDINARY THINGS

A highlight-reel history of shoes, skates, toilets, toothbrushes, and other common household items.

In a breezy style reflective of this Czech import’s slapdash approach, Sekaninová offers a mix of basic facts, debatable factoids (“The first ever double bed was made in Ancient Rome”), and not-so-buried assumptions: “But what did the first perfume look like? And who was the first woman to use it?” Not to mention a Eurocentric focus that only rarely widens to include other cultures or continents, and outright errors like a shoutout to eyeglass-lens maker “Alexander Spinosa” (actually Alessandro della Spina, who’s not definitively their inventor) and a present-tense reference to an 18-karat-gold toilet that hasn’t actually been available to view (and use!) in New York’s Guggenheim Museum for a few years. Except that everyone in her human cast, from prehistoric squatters on, has pale skin, Chupíková does better with galleries of small but exactly detailed images of archaeological artifacts, dolls, umbrellas, related inventions like zippers and coat hangers that expand the general scope beyond the main 11 items, and historical costume (mostly European) of diverse eras. Surveys of inventions are hardly rare, but by sticking to the everyday, this is worth note as a natural companion to more technology-oriented flyovers. There is not a bibliography or even any scrap of sourcing to indicate where Sekaninová found her information. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Has a certain appeal for its art and premise, but it’s sloppy in both research and assumptions.