Genre: General Nonfiction
Size: Seven Chapters
I’ve often talked about ‘foundational knowledge’ in my reviews of nonfiction books, be it from history, philosophy, or politics. For while reading books from these genres, I always felt a few steps behind. And although I understood the text I was reading, I couldn’t place into a context – a prebuilt context that is. Every subject has its fundamental building blocks upon which the expansion of the topic rests, for it is necessary for readers to know those basic principles, information, and understanding, in order to proceed in that field.
But I can understand why authors fail, or rather choose not to, give those starting concepts in their books, and instead talk about a particularly progressing topic of that subject matter. Should they start off writing from the very basics, they would exhaust themselves by the time they reach their main point. Moreover, they assume, and rightly so, that their readers would already be educated in the field, from which they are now reading a more advanced study or knowledge.
Yet the dilemma for a toddler reader remains: where from should they attain the ‘foundational knowledge’ about a subject before they begin on reading secondary books on the subject? We all begin our academic and worldly education from school; it is there that we learn about our planetary system, leading to astronomy, and about our country history, leading of a world history and international politics; or we read about our leaders and leaders from foreign land, and thus begin on a personal development task, or we read about civility, fairness, and justice, and then we might, eventually, find ourselves in philosophy or sociology.
Not all of us, however, are fortunate enough to schooled so comprehensively or with such vigor and scope. For some, myself included, being able to read, speak, and cram information was all that school helped us learn, the rest was left upon us, if we dared. Therefore, in most of the nonfiction books, especially in the beginning of my reader life, I found lacking a familiarity and context about what I was reading, and therefore struggled to fully understand the text or avail it to its full use by educating myself.
But again, since there are so many branches of a particular subject, and so many subjects to know about, a starting reader might feel overwhelmed, lost, and confused as to what to read, where to read from, and how much to read. In comes ‘a very short introduction’ series from the Oxford University Press: little books, with the ‘foundational knowledge’ about topics of a very wide range: sciences, humanities, eminent figures, academics, arts, and just about everything you can name or want to know about. With their list of books expanding, I believe, having read some of books from these series, that is a one-stop answer to all the eager readers out there, looking for a starting point into their interested subjects.
This particular book ‘Everything: a very short introduction’ takes an even more fundamental step, in that it talks about the different categories under which they have published their books so far. So, for anyone new to this series of books, this is a perfect place to start. In the seven chapters, which are roughly based on: science, philosophy, anthropology, history, religion, arts/literature, and psychology, the authors in this book give an introduction to these fields, and pave the way for a short summary of the books published in that category by OUP. So, the reader gets both a taste and an understanding of how these books are written and in which way would they help them build concepts about these various subjects.
Although dry, this book isn’t meant to be read perse, but is
there to be used as an encyclopedia for readers to skim through, and then
diving into the areas that interest them. There is a ceremonial feeling about
this book, and it comes from celebrating such a significant and serviceable service
for lay readers, waiting to get their hands dirty in different subjects. This is
it: dive right in!
July
30, 2022_