Three of my all-time favorite books are The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Allusions, 1000 Sayings of History*, and Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. Beyond the divergent content, what ties these three titles together are that they consist of rather a lot of very short (<500-word) histories. Now that I've memorized these three, I'm hungry for more. What other books are out there like these? What are the best published** encyclopedic miscellanies? [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Aug 24, 2010 - 29 answers

BasketballFilter: History of the games "21" and "Utah"? [more inside]
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches on Jul 2, 2009 - 1 answer

Are there any reverse-chronological histories of culture? [more inside]
posted by electric water kettle on Dec 18, 2007 - 3 answers