Lessons from reading 100 books on world history in a year
☀️ Today is the spring equinox, aka the first day of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere (and the first day of fall for our friends below the equator). The sun hovers directly above the equator, meaning equal parts day and night for all of us.
When TV shows jump the shark + cleaning your windows (Issue #292)
Pierz Newton-John — writer, coder, former psychotherapist, and (incidentally) Olivia Newton-John’s nephew — realized a few years back that he had a gigantic knowledge gap. In school, he’d been taught history as a “dreary, black-and-white world” populated mostly by dates and facts; this static view of history tends to be how it’s often taught, because history is actually really complex, interconnected, and ever-changing. Dustin Arand, a lawyer who was getting his history-teacher certification a few years back, defines it not as a “record” of the past, but a “reflection” on it — and as we change, that reflection evolves, too.
To correct gaps in his historical understanding, Newton-John embarked on a project to read 100 history books in a year. After making his way through Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Medieval World, and 98 others, he came away with some perspective. “I could suddenly see that the island of peace and prosperity I inhabited in my privileged life was just that,” he writes, “an island surrounded on all sides by an abyss of violence, turmoil and cruelty…” Also: Newton-John was surprised by how often we ignore history, fixating on the most immediate causes of problems “rather than seeing… how the momentum of the past continues to drive the current moment towards its future.”
If you’re interested in taking on a challenge like Newton-John’s, you’ll find a few of the books that stood out to him during his 100-book project here.
💬 Good quotes
- A top highlight on Medium this week, via psychologist Singh Bhai: “The ones who still show basic respect even when there’s no social benefit, those are the real ones.”
- Data analyst Daniel Parris, who conducted an absurdly in-depth study of TV viewing habits: “I analyzed IMDb ratings to determine when the average show ‘jumps the shark’ […] typically, this inflection point occurs around seasons five and six.”
- Food and wine expert Charlie Brown: “Food and travel writers have a responsibility to go deeper than we often do. A little more Bourdain, a little less TikTok and everyone wins.”
🪟 Your daily dose of practical wisdom
If cleaning every window in your house feels too intense, just clean the inside and outside (if possible) of the one you look out most.
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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