In a good perspective

Title: A History of Mechanical Inventions
Author: Abbot Payson Usher
Brief Comments: The first chapters should be mandatory reading for everyone interested on history. It deals briefly with concepts of interpretation and with the importance of quantitative analysis whenever possible. The author carefully discuss, as well, the interconection of factors such as geography and culture, natural resources and technology. And a directy criticism is made against simple interpretations of history that take facts as part of a linear continuum through time. Usher knows that almost every society is always in a state of intercharge with its sorrounding in every aspect that matter, and that there is no single present time for a society, for each aspect of it - a particular technology, a particular institution - has its own dynamics of change. The proper term, as used by Usher, is "system of events". After such a wonderful and very open-minded introduction, the chapters to follow, dealing specifically on different aspects of history of technology, cannot be anything else but a delightful reading.