An Amazon search reveals that 262 books have been published in the last decade with the phrase 'changed the world' somewhere in the title. Apparently, the world has been changed by, among lots of other things, a map, a cart, the colour mauve, a guitar, faith, bridges, the Nasdaq share index, a weekend, a thousand years, a thousand days, 1989, a killer tornado, Noah's Flood, some equations, ships, a machine, an assortment of men, fewer women, 12 lesbians, seven spies, three bears, and three Victorian ladies. Oh, and a partridge in a pear tree.
These books tend to be small-format, to use heavily serifed fonts which give them a quaint, grimoirish look, and, frequently, to overstate the claim of their chosen subject. The Battle of Britain and the Reformation I am happy to admit as authentically world-changing. But what about the credit card? Or the fender bass? Or, indeed, the US Women's Soccer Team? (Truly. See The Girls of Summer - The US Women's Soccer Team and How it Changed the World, by Jere Longman, HarperCollins, 2000).
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