This is one of those books that can be opened on any page and you'll be immediately intrigued by the image. it could be a page from an 1883 Japanese fireworks catalogue, a 1920 photo of two men recreating a traffic accident using miniature cars, or Vincenzo Requeno's 1779 system for signing numbers with fingers. The five hundred images are all in the public domain and originally appeared on the Public Domain Review website (and well worth a visit).
Fittingly, the first image in the book is Robert Fludd's 1617 black canvas depicting the time just before the creation of the universe. I thought the strength of the book is that it doesn't lower the tone and have historical freaks of nature pictures or gruesome human activity from the past. Every page has some thought-provoking work and luckily everything is captioned and added extra captions with an asterisk have extended mini-essays on the back pages.
An amazing book for anyone who is intellectually curious.
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