Here are fifty concise, entertaining histories on a broad, eclectic range of ideas (borders, feminism), global issues (migration, world trade), commodities (bananas, jeans), regions (Africa, Ireland), and institutions (corporations, the World Bank).

Lucid and irreverent, Brief Histories of Almost Anything challenges common perceptions associated with the subjects by going behind the facts. Each history has been selected from the New Internationalist magazine, a leading authority on alternative history and “Best International Coverage” winner in the Utne Reader Independent Press Awards.

Edited by Chris Brazier, author of the best-selling No-Nonsense Guide to World History.