THE NEXT FIFTY THINGS THAT MADE THE MODERN ECONOMY

TIM HARFORD

Bridge Street, 344pp, £20, ebook £12.99

The economist and FT columnist Tim Harford made a splash with his modishly listy 2017 book Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy – based on a radio programme and podcast of the same name. Now he expands his list with a follow-up.

Writing in the Times, Tom Knowles found that ‘this latest book follows a similar pattern to Harford’s ten-minute podcast episodes, breaking inventions into bite-size chapters of five or six pages, detailing how they have affected the world we live in’.

And what irresistible bites. Who knew about the ‘Wardian case’ that allows plant seedlings to be transported without soil or fresh air and allows us to enjoy tea, gin and tonics or bananas? Or about the roguish life of the inventor of the sewing machine, an ‘incorrigible womaniser’ who fathered at least 22 children? Or how Nazis accidentally invented CCTV? Or that ‘the invention of the mail-order catalogue, in which a company could offer more than 200 completely different items, seemed so implausible to the Chicago Tribune in 1873 that it initially told readers it was a scam’ – and yet it inadvertently improved both the postal service and roads in rural America?

Knowles did grumble that some of

the entries, though fun, were short on detail, ‘as if they had been written for a rush-hour commuter who could only get in snatches of reading on the way to and from work’ and said that ‘often the chapters feel like a verbatim write-up’ of the podcast: ‘a missed opportunity to give existing fans something extra’. Still, here is ‘a lively introduction to some of the most ingenious, yet often overlooked inventions that have changed the way we live’.

And as Marcus Berkmann summed up in the Mail: ‘Harford is a fine, perceptive writer, and an effortless explainer of tricky concepts. His book teems with good things, and will expand the mind of anyone lucky enough to read it.’