But it’s not a joke. Enough is enough! Except of course, it’s not. They keep coming. You can’t stop them. Here on my desk, just over the past couple of weeks: Sugar: The Grass that Changed the World (Sanjida O’Connell, Virgin Books); Gunpowder: A History of the Explosive that Changed the World (Jack Kelly, Atlantic Books); Jacquard’s Web: How a Hand-loom led to the Birth of the Information Age (James Essinger, OUP — and, come on, you know he wants to say: How a hand-loom changed the world).

Where did it all begin? Some say with Dava Sobel’s Longitude (1996) — yes, the clock that changed the world. Prior to that it seems to have been thought that cataclysmic change ought to be looked at as part of a larger picture: so John Harrison, the hero of Sobel’s book, can be found in Daniel Boorstin’s The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself, originally published more than a dozen years before Longitude, and a veritable treasure trove of . . . that-changed-the-world.

But now, like those orange slices of American cheese, innovations, events and, indeed, animals, vegetables and minerals need to come individually wrapped. So, we’ve had Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlanksy; Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World by Simon Garfield; Model T Ford: The Car That Changed the World by Bruce McCalley; Napoleon’s Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed History by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson; The Cable: The Wire that Changed the World by Gillian Cookson and even How the Fender Bass Changed the World by Jim Roberts.

This is only a very partial list. And — the Fender bass changed the world? Really? I’m willing to accept gunpowder, Harrison’s clock, the Model T Ford and even the fish, but I’ll draw the line at a guitar. Or (critics are nothing if not full of contradiction) perhaps I won’t. Because it would be perfectly possible to argue that everything changes the world all the time. It’s the chaos theory/butterfly flapping its wings/El Niño school of thought. The Literary Editor’s First Cup of Coffee That Changed the World. The No 8 Bus Driver’s Running That Red Light That Changed the World. Pick your moment, note the change.

Maybe the short attention span is to blame, or simply a longing for hyperbole. Stasis is bad; change is good. Change is progress and improvement: and, after all, whose life wouldn’t be much the poorer without mauve?

Read on

Nelson’s Purse by Martyn Downer (Bantam): this book, about a cache of Nelson’s belonging’s found in 2002, exemplifies a sub-genre of the “that-changed-the-world” school, in which domestic objects (hopefully) act as springboards to larger themes. Charlemagne’s Tablecloth (Nicholas Fletcher, W&N), for instance, is a history of feasting, while The Cardinal’s Hat (Mary Hollingsworth, Profile) tells of life in and around a Renaissance court.

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