The place where Caesar and the Internet meet

This book reads like a history lecture.

While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s a telling description of Peter D’Epiro’s “The Book of Firsts: 150 World-Changing People and Events from Caesar Augustus to the Internet.” The book is a collection of essays, each answering a question about a famous first in history.

The chapter titles propose a question, and then, D’Epiro and his handful of contributors explain the answer, usually in a couple of pages.

The questions range from expected to bizarre with the essay, “What is the first surviving European cookbook?” which follows, “Who first made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire?” Like your history lectures, the majority of the essays are intriguing but several fail to maintain interest.

Additionally, D’Epiro and company tend to get a little long-winded during some of the essays, making even the most interesting questions feel like a chore. To combat this, “The Book of Firsts” should not be read all at once. Instead, it works best as a casual read, allowing you to flip through and learn the answer to the question, “What is the first surviving tell-all memoir about the royals?”

“The Book of Firsts” is perfect for anyone with even a casual interest in human history, although for some of the bigger history buffs, it will read like an exam review.