Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 054

The charm of this collection lies in its magnificent disorder. Sixteen pieces pulled from the public domain, each a portal to a different corner of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. You will find yourself wandering from the sun-scorched excavations of Egyptologist Amelia Edwards to the elegant workshops where Victorian hatters crafted the Bang-Up and the Vis-a-Vis. From Buster Keaton's Hollywood origin story to a meditation on weeds and their relentless colonization of gardens. Kierkegaard offers his Diapsalmata, Kant weighs in on religious education, and someone narrates the tragic fate of romance in the King of Siam's harem. A fire in New York's Bowery, a discourse on relativity, nickelodeons, animal coloration, Rocky Mountain mountaineering. This is intellectual archaeology at its most delightful: a time capsule that refuses to cohere into a single narrative, because history never did either.