Valentina D'Efilippo

The objectives of D'Efilippo and Ball in writing The Infographic History of the World were to use advanced techniques of graphical data to succinctly summarise and present the entire history of the world. Just a tad ambitious.

The book is certainly a graphical feast, but I think in the end it becomes self-defeating. Towards the end I just wanted to scan the text to pick up the cogent facts and move on; not at all what the authors had in mind, I'm sure. The complexity of some of the diagrams is bewildering and sometimes far too much information is included, at the expense of clarity. It seemed to me also that the authors often chose what they thought would be a cool graphical shape for the subject under discussion and then shoe-horned their data to conform to that shape. In my view the best graphical design uses the form that best represents the data, not the other way round.

I also wished for a somewhat less glib and smart-arse commentary. I feel that the authors were conflicted over their need to inform and the need to entertain but, to be true to their objective, they should have erred on the side of information, which they do not do. The book is also far too UK-centric; the frequent use of "we" to refer to the UK seems somewhat out of place in a supposed history of the world.

Still there is some very interesting information here, and some of the graphical devices used are excellent. I think overall this is not a book to read cover-to-cover, but rather something to dip into occasionally for a bit of arcane trivia and some idle amusement.… (more)

Corny. The writing is corny. The visual metaphors are corny. For too many of the infographics, there were long explanations and ancillary diagrams for how to read them. This arbitrary icon means this, that arbitrary icon means that, this icon represents some arbitrary number of items, like 29 of whatever unit. Right, I'm going to add up multiples of small primes in my head. There's no rhyme or reason other than what fits on the page (and not even then, many of the graphics bleed off the edge) and what's cute.… (more)