And I did for the first half, more or less. Then I started tripping over odd comments, possible errors, and some authorial assumptions that made me wonder about the first half. This is more of a problem in non-fiction than fiction, but it’s happened in novels, too. I knew enough to stop, reread the bit, look at the footnote, and start to doubt the rest of the author’s argument. That’s not good. It threw me out of the story, which happened to be the history of story, and the conflicts between old and new media and stories.
In fiction, Gell-Mann amnesia and reactions are a bit less of a problem for most readers. Look at all the Regency romances that have historical errors, cultural bloopers, and presentist philosophies (a countess lobbying for women’s suffrage, because of course she would), and yet sell very well and have loyal audiences. If the story is good enough, I’m willing to sigh, roll my eyes a little, and keep going. If the story was already hanging by a thread, I take it back to the library without trying to finish, because life is too short to spend arguing with fiction. Or more correctly, arguing at fiction, because the book can’t defend itself.
In two cases, historical errors were so blatant, and the plot so contrived even with them, that I gave up on the authors entirely. Basic research, people. These books were not alternate history, either. Alt-history allows for a lot of playing around and tweaking timelines (see the Lord Darcey novels, where the Angevian Empire exists because someone did not go on Crusades and die young, or my three WWI alt-hist/secret-history sci-fi stories). Have fun, just make it plausible, please. Historians will just grin and move on, and readers probably won’t notice anything unless your characters mention the reason for the difference. However, if you have, oh, say, a well-developed railroad network in Europe in 1800, and it is not alt-history but a massive error, and the historical romance plot depends on that? No. I’m not giving you a second chance.
Which takes me back to the book I want to like. The errors could well be in the secondary sourced that the author uses for parts of history he’s not familiar with. However, to say that the Reformed Churches (Calvinist and offshoots like Presbyterian and Disciples of Christ), and Anabaptists (Mennonite et al) are not Protestant, because they are not direct offshoots of Lutheranism (but the Church of England is derived from Luther’s teachings)? I hit a wall and bounced. There were a few other things like that, very minor in the course of the book and that should not have affected the book’s argument, but that had me doubting the rest of the work. The author’s personal philosophy also grated in a few spots, because we differ on what “censorship” means, but that’s not as much of a problem for Alma-the-Reader.
The book, The Story of Stories, is about how people process the world and tell stories to each other. It starts with Paleolithic and Neolithic people, then moves forward through oral storytelling and cultures to the advent of writing in all its forms and technologies, and how that could change stories. From there the book moves to the printed word, and forms of literacy, and how stories and counterstories began to proliferate, leading to challenges to authority that ended up shattering Christendom, among other things. The author then follows those disruptions to the modern age, and the situation of the various forms of media shaping stories (think YouTube™ shorts, Tic-Tok™, how internet essays have shrunk, and the rise of video games as long-form storytelling). I agree with the author’s point about the need for critical thinking and the ability to sort out wheat from chaff, good stories from bad or even dangerous ones.
But the unforced errors left me questioning everything else in the book that I am not personally familiar with. I wanted to like the book, and it has a lot to chew on and consider in the current period of communications disruption and dueling stories in fiction and nonfiction. The errors in fields I know well left me wondering about the author’s other ideas and arguments.
Which is a story about the problem of stories and readers, isn’t it?
Book: Kevin Ashton. The Story of Stories: The Million-Year history of a Uniquely Human Art. (New York: Harper, 2026)
Mad Genius Club 
11 responses to “I Wanted to Like the Book …”
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus
How true.
I once read a book on Mexico that lost me when it assumed that the Spanish exaggerated Aztec human sacrifice — without considering that maybe the Aztec had committed the exaggeration.
It’s weird how often I’ve seen that very argument joined with ‘The Spanish didn’t understand the Aztec culture; they and we moderns had no right to judge it’. Never ever thinking that (a) maybe they perfectly understood how to deal with a gang of demon-worshiping, warmongering, brutal cannibals (b) if we have no right to judge the Aztecs for their crimes, why should we judge the Spanish for being revolted by them?
B — because logic is racist
To like the book, or to trust the book?
Like the book. The first half, as I said, was intriguing, the final bit about the problems of story creation in a digital world fit what I’ve seen, but the combination of errors and bias chaffed so much that I can’t really like the book. Nor can I trust it entirely.
On the one hand, it got published by tradpub, which at this point makes it automatically suspect. On the other hand, at least it’s not by Malcolm “Midwit that midwits think is a genius” Gladwell.
Well, the author is apparently some kind of British techlord and sometimes the Limeys are a bit insecure about Henry VIII and all that, but i have no idea what the guy’s beef with the Anabaptists might be.
“However, to say that the Reformed Churches (Calvinist and offshoots like Presbyterian and Disciples of Christ), and Anabaptists (Mennonite et al) are not Protestant, because they are not direct offshoots of Lutheranism (but the Church of England is derived from Luther’s teachings)”
The actual…what? This isn’t a matter of “error derived from bad secondary sources” this is really basic stuff that the author would know if he’d paid attention in <i>high school</i>. You are far more generous than I have been–I’d’ve ditched the book right then and there.
Annabaptists not Protestant? Having been raised around Mennonites, Amish, and Moravians/Unitas Fratrum, the idea that “They aren’t REAL Protestants” makes me wonder what that author’s definition of ‘Protestant’ is .
His secondary source says that “Protestant” is a technical term that should refer only to Lutheranism and direct offshoots from Lutheranism. Which still does not include the C of E.