Historiography

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

While reading How We Disappear, I saw a post that said, “You don’t need to wash your water bottle or your bed sheets or anything. Everything will eventually become clean because of a great big fire.” In a weird and funny way, it connects to one of the book’s main ideas: everything we make, use, and value will eventually disappear. The book blends technology, history, biology, photography, and archival science with personal reflections about the author’s late father. By “archiving” his father’s life through the objects left in his bedroom, the author explores how memories are preserved and how they are fragile pieces of (mis)information. It encouraged me to think about what people leave behind and whether our attempts to preserve ourselves actually work.

How We Disappear by Thomas S. Mullaney, (List Price: $26.99, W. W. Norton & Company, 9781324020783, June 2026)

Reviewed by Chloe, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina