Witold Rybczynski, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was asked by a New York Times editor to write an essay about the best tool of the past millennium. Rybczynski came up with several ideas and discarded them for variety of reasons (usually because they were invented by the Romans during the first millennium CE), before settling on the screwdriver.

This book is an elaboration of that essay, and it also reaches back to examine the evolution of the screw. The screwdriver was a product of the late Middle Ages and rather than developing slowly over time as most other tools did, it appeared in the toolbox fully formed and has not evolved much. Rybczynski plausibly argues that the screw was invented by Archimedes (although this is based on quite a bit of speculation), but it wasn't until the development of the screwdriver that the screw was commonly used.

As a history, this book doesn't have much to recommend it. Although interesting, it is straight forward and fairly short. However, there are two things that made this enjoyable. First, Rybczynski does a nice job of modeling the process of historical investigation as he discusses the many wrong turns he made before choosing the screwdriver as his subject. The manner in which he uses sources to question one another is a decent example of modern historiography. Second, he suggests that there is a mechanical form of genius that parallels what we mean when we discuss artist genius or intellecutal genius. Someone invented the screwdriver -- Rybczynski doesn't know exactly who, although he pinpointed when -- and that person invented it out of whole cloth. It isn't based on other tools. That person had to make a creative leap to come up with a new tool, one that works so well it hasn't changed much to this day. Those two side trips made the book worthwhile.

One caveat: the book is quite short (only 176 pages in hardcover). I read it during a two hour period in which I also took a nap -- it's a fairly easy read. I was glad I checked it out of the library instead of buying it.