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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone recommend a book (I'm imagining sort of 'coffee table' style picture book, but not necessarily) on technological advancements through human history, ideally roughly chronologically but more organised around what needed to happen before the next was possible?

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Well, there is "The Book - The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization" - I don't have a copy but it certainly looks interesting:

https://howtorebuildcivilization.com/en-gb

I have it. Its not scientific - just a collection of nice illustrations.

A history of technology, edited by Singer, several volumes and many authors. It's old historiographically (from the Fifties) but very detailed and comprehensive; I have a recent Italian paperback edition but you should be able to find it in English easily enough. Lots of fascinating details.

I'll see if I can come up with something with more up to date scholarship / better pictures (the work above is effectively but simply illustrated).

A broad overview, and kid-friendly, there is: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6314442-robert-crowther-... which is just what it says on the cover --- a tour through a house showing when things were invented.

A lot more focused there is: https://goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-perfectionists (but it's a rather dry text and quite periodic and focused on specific technologies)

Perhaps:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48815394-1-000-invention...

There's a site which has come up here a couple of times along these lines which I'm not finding, but Britannica has:

https://www.britannica.com/story/history-of-technology-timel...

I started reading Josephine Quinn's book "How the world made the west" and I can recommend it. It goes quite into detail and is not of the sort "coffee-table"-style picture book. It explains the origins of technologies, trade between groups and challenges the common view how civilizations evolved.

Based on the title it sounds like the intentions of the author were more politically motivated than anything else.

Based on reading the Guardian review (that predictably praises it and seems to be written by someone who doesn't know much history) and a much better review on a website run, weirdly enough, by Christians (written by someone who does know history), I would agree.

The first half of the quality review praises the good parts of the book, the second half is where the meat is.

It is probably a useful book if you don't know much about the classical world but it doesn't seem like one should take one's politics from it.

Quality review:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/how-world-made-we...

Low quality review:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/28/how-the-world-...

The author is a professor of ancient history at Oxford University. What makes you think it is political? A book can specialise in Western history without having a hidden agenda.

Lots of professors have political agendas, especially in the humanities.

James Burke's Connections (companion to his 1978 television series of the same name) does this in fair part, though it tracks a number of distinct (and somewhat idiosyncratic) paths through time.

<https://openlibrary.org/search?isbn=9780333248270>

There's Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China though that's not exactly a coffee-table book. It's staggering in its own way, however:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...>

Not an exact match, but I liked this one a lot (read it twice):

"Faster, Better, Cheaper" in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond by Christoph Roser

James Burke should write the book to accompany his "Connections" tv show.

He did:

<https://openlibrary.org/search?isbn=9780333248270>

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