I've enjoyed books narrating the history of a company or a thing, like David McCullough's <i>The Path Between the Seas</i>, Jon Gertner's <i>The Idea Factory</i> or Dava Sobel's <i>Longitude</i>.<p>But, missing a name for this particular genre, I have a hard time finding new entries. Does HN have anything of that kind to recommend?<p>Other books I've found so far:
- Skunk Works by Ben E. Rich & Leo Janos
- The Box by Marc Levinson
- Apollo by Charles A Murray & Catherine Bly Cox
- The Great Bridge also by David McCullough
Mark Kurlansky has done a brisk business in this kind of biography-of-a-thing, <i>Salt</i>, and <i>Cod</i> were the first two books I thought of when I read your post, but he's also got books called <i>Salmon</i> and <i>Paper</i> that I haven't read.<p>I think that I would put those books under the broad heading of social histories, which is a genre. You may also look for "microhistories", and here's a list of them:<p><a href="https://www.librarything.com/tag/microhistory" rel="nofollow">https://www.librarything.com/tag/microhistory</a>
"Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age"
April 2000 by Michael A. Hiltzik
Publisher: Harper Business, ISBN:978-0-88730-989-2<p>See the description of the book here <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/518513" rel="nofollow">https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/518513</a>