CitizenX just sent me a link to a book called “Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History”. I’d probably like it; I enjoy that kind of boutique pop science book. They can be awfully precious, and the writer often believes that THIS ONE THING IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVERYTHING, but they’re fun like candy and I do learn from them. It’s like the enjoyable bits of college lectures.
Anyway I realized that there are about a hundred books out in the last decade with titles in the form: [FAMOUS PERSON]’s [NOUN] and they’re almost all this kind of book. Some of them are just [PERSONAL NOUN]’s NOUN
Examples: Galileo’s Daughter, Halley’s Quest, Miss Leavitt’s Stars, The Mapmaker’s Wife, Humboldt’s Cosmos, Kepler’s Witch, Einstein’s Heroes… Those are just from a quick look at Amazon’s “History of Science” category.
Maybe we should make a matrix of Famous Dead People and Nouns and write all the ones that aren’t done already. Dibs on “Kropotkin’s Bicycle”, here!
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